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What Is YouTube SEO: How It Works

YouTube SEO is a critical part of video marketing that focuses on optimizing video material to boost its visibility on YouTube and search engines like Google. With its status as the world’s second-biggest search engine, YouTube has a plethora of opportunities for companies and content providers seeking to expand their reach. This article will explain what YouTube SEO is, explain how it functions, and offer doable tactics to improve the discoverability of your video content.

What Is YouTube SEO?

YouTube SEO

A number of strategies are used in YouTube SEO with the goal of making videos more visible on Google and in YouTube’s search results. You may increase your video content’s visibility to users who are looking for related topics by optimizing several aspects of it. Keyword research, metadata optimization, and audience interaction techniques are important aspects of YouTube SEO.

How to Create a YouTube SEO Strategy

Here’s a roadmap to create a winning YouTube SEO strategy for your YouTube channel:

1. Define Your Goal

What’s the SEO goal for your YouTube channel? Knowing this will help you determine how to proceed when you start creating playlists, descriptions, and more.

The two broad goal categories are:

  • Grow subscribers by engaging viewers and encouraging them to subscribe for more content
  • Drive website traffic by encouraging viewers to click the links in your profile, descriptions, and/or videos

When defining your YouTube channel’s goal, make sure it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Instead of simply aiming to “grow subscribers,” your goal could be to “increase subscriber count by 20% within six months.” 

This provides a clear target and time frame for your channel’s growth. And you can measure the performance of your strategy against it.

2. Channel Keywords

YouTube SEO

YouTube channel keywords are terms that give YouTube information and context about your channel which is an integral factor in YouTube SEO. Specifically, they help YouTube understand the type of content you produce and who your target audience is.

  • To add channel keywords, select “YouTube Studio” -> “Settings” -> “Channel” -> “Basic info”.
  • Think of keywords your target audience would search for by reviewing your channel, and types of videos you’re uploading. Summarize those ideas into simple keywords.

3. Conduct YouTube Keyword Research

Keyword research should be a part of your content ideation process, whether it’s the cornerstone of your strategy or a phase in the brainstorming process. This is true for blog entries and tutorials that you wish to rank in the Google SERP. This also applies to YouTube. You want these videos to show up on YouTube’s own search results page, but they might also show up in the Google SERP. Since YouTube is essentially a search engine.

Thus, look for keyword opportunities when you’re making YouTube videos. To get started, you can view the most popular videos on the homepage of your own account. You can target keyword research on YouTube with popular SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. Many of the same aspects, such as keyword term matches, long-tail related keywords, and ranking level of competitiveness, can be explored in this way.

To investigate popular subjects, Google Trends also features a drop-down menu where users can choose YouTube Search. This is another method (especially if you don’t have a membership to Ahrefs, Semrush, or a comparable tool) to look into keyword opportunities. Although the features aren’t as comprehensive, you can see what others are interested in and find some suggestions for relevant keywords.

4. Optimize your title

Having done thorough keyword research, you already possess a respectable list of phrases. What then should you do with them?

The title is one of the fields where the keyword must appear. One of the most crucial elements in YouTube’s content indexing and ranking process is this.

Additionally, the title of the video needs to be as similar to the user’s search criteria as feasible in order for it to show up in a good position.

For instance, the subject of this Rock Content film is essentially brand building. As a result, “brand building” is the primary term of this film and it starts the title.

 

5. Add relevant tags

It is no longer logical to stuff a page’s code with keywords in the meta tags; anyone involved in Google SEO knows this. Since it was frequently used as spam, the search engine no longer considers this factor when determining rankings.

However, tags are necessary for a video’s ranking on YouTube SEO. These are some of the elements that YouTube takes into account when determining a video’s subject matter and accurately indexing it, as well as when suggesting related videos.

Additionally, such recommendations are a significant source of viewers for your videos.

YouTube lets you enter up to 120 characters in this section. In order to avoid confusing the algorithm with phrases unrelated to its substance, we recommend using no more than six or eight words.

6. Optimize your video description.

Your content is fully described in the video description, which is just as important as the title. You have 5,000 characters to showcase your video content, which is wonderful news.

A description for a video is crucial for two reasons. It forces the user to click on the video in the first place, and it also aids the algorithm in recognizing your material by using a mix of keywords.

The search results page only shows a maximum of 120 characters when a user searches for a term. Viewers are then required to click “show more” in order to access the entire description.

We advise including the most captivating material at the beginning of the description because of this.

As you describe your material in the later section of the description, use a combination of broad matches and phrases to contain the exact keywords.

You can insert the call-to-action (CTA) text in the description to ask users to subscribe, download a free ebook, or make a purchase in order to provide additional context.

7. Categorize your video.

Categorizing the videos won’t boost your rankings or improve engagement. But, by selecting the relevant category, the YouTube algorithm gets an idea of what your video is about.

YouTube’s categories divide the large repository of videos on the search engine into different categories such as gaming, education, music videos, pets & animals, fashion, and more.

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.”

It’s important to go through a comprehensive process to find which category each video belongs in. Answer questions like:

  • Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for, and what do they do well?
  • Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?
  • Do the videos within a similar category share qualities like production value, length, or format?

8. Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link.

YouTube will automatically select a still frame from your video as a thumbnail when you upload. You do not want to use this. Instead, you want to take the time to create your own. According to YouTube, 90% of the best-performing videos have custom thumbnails. People want to click on a visually appealing video, and a fuzzy still frame isn’t going to cut it.

Customizing your YouTube thumbnail can be a project for a designer, or it can be straightforward editing in Canva or even Google Slides with a screengrab and a title overlay. Take a look at the thumbnails for the budgeting videos below. They’re all different, but they’re all fairly low-production in terms of design elements. Most are still images with titles, screenshots, or logos added.

When you’re creating your custom thumbnail for YouTube, keep these specs in mind:

  • Minimum resolution of 1280×720.
  • Minimum width of 640 pixels.
  • File types JPG, GIF, or PNG.
  • Maximum file size 2MB for videos or 10MB for podcasts.
  • Required 16:9 aspect ratio.

And while you’re customizing, don’t forget to add your logo as a watermark in the thumbnail.

9. Make longer quality videos

Study have shown these relationship between the ranking and the length of the videos:

  • videos with less than 2 minutes tend to be poorly positioned;
  • the average duration of the first 5 positions is 11min 44s.

So it’s worth starting to invest in longer videos, which are about 10 minutes long.

They probably meet the expectations of those looking for more complete and in-depth content. On the other hand, videos less than 2 minutes long tend to be more superficial.

We’re not saying that you should stick to those numbers, okay? These findings serve only to provide guidance.

However, it is worth mentioning: relevance is better than the video’s length. So, if you invest in quality content, don’t worry so much about the length of the video.

10. Edit the file name

As you may know, the process of optimizing your video for YouTube SEO starts even before it is uploaded. This is due to the fact that the file name must already contain the primary keyword of the content.

To avoid confusing YouTube, use a descriptive name that includes the keyword (e.g., What Is YouTube SEO.mp4) instead of posting the video with a name full of codes and numbers (e.g., VID_94800805.mp4).

As a result, the file name allows the platform to determine the subject matter of the video.

Why YouTube SEO Matters

With more than 2.7 billion users spending 48 minutes a day on the site, you may reach a larger audience and maintain their interest with your content with the aid of good YouTube SEO. You may improve your films’ visibility in Google searches as well as YouTube’s internal search results by making them more search engine friendly.

Apply for our YouTube SEO course

To dive deeper into YouTube SEO strategies and learn how to maximize your channel’s potential, consider enrolling in Fulcrum’s “YouTube Channel SEO Course.” This course offers comprehensive insights into optimizing your videos effectively.

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