How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for SEO
After its parent company Google, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. YouTube videos make up 8 out of 10 search results, and the platform is continually expanding, with over 500 hours of video being added to YouTube every minute.
How can you not be overwhelmed by all the available video content? Using YouTube videos optimization Seo best practices, your videos will rank higher in search results. The tips will help you develop a successful search engine optimization strategy for your YouTube channel.
So, let’s take a look at how to optimize YouTube videos:
Find Relevant Keywords
Video rankings on Google and YouTube are not the same. It’s easy to assume that a video that ranks highly on Google also does well on YouTube, but the two platforms don’t always correlate. Google’s algorithm prioritizes sites that provide the most relevant results for a user’s search. Fast and accurate service to users is a priority for them.
The primary activity on YouTube is watching videos. When a person looks for a video on their site, they have high expectations that they will be able to see the entire video. Since viewers are likely just to sit back and watch the video, they prioritize those that provide the most detailed explanation.
Like Google, YouTube video SEO prioritizes content users find helpful. You’ll be presented with a panel of similar videos on the side when you play a video. It’s designed to maintain interest as viewers progress from one clip to the next. In light of this information, you can see how crucial it is to achieve high search engine rankings for the correct keywords.
Achieving a high ranking in relevant search results is essential if you want people to find your video. So, finding the best keyword is the first step if you want to know how to optimize YouTube videos.
Use Target Keyword in Video File Name
First, you’ll utilize an SEO tool to determine which keywords are most relevant to your video.
Once you’ve decided on a keyword, use it in the video file before uploading it to YouTube. Why?
YouTube can’t “see” your video to check whether it’s related to your target keyword, and as you’ll find below, there are only so many areas you can include this keyword on your video’s watch page. However, YouTube can understand not just the video’s content but also the filename and any related code. To do so, rename the file “business ad 003FINAL.mov” to include the relevant search term. But how to optimize YouTube videos using a video file name strategy? Let’s understand with an example. If you want to rank for the term “painting and decorating tips,” you should use “painting-and-decorating-tips” as the file name for your video, followed by the file type of your choice.
Naturally, Add Keyword in the Title of the Video
The title of a video is one of the first things that catch viewers’ attention during a search. The title is typically the only thing a viewer sees before deciding whether or not to click through to watch the video.
Although your keyword is essential, it also helps if the title is relevant to what the user is looking for. Videos that have an exact keyword match in the title sometimes get a relatively high boost in search engine rankings.
So, using the focused keyword in your title not only helps you with how to optimize YouTube videos but also makes it easier for YouTube videos at relevant positions.
Add Focused Keyword in YouTube Video Description
A well-written, SEO-friendly video description is crucial if you want to rise in the YouTube search results. YouTube will reassess your video if you edit its attributes, such as the description, subtitles, or thumbnail. This may go either way, so be sure to do it correctly first! You should use your most relevant keywords in the first few phrases of your description, and YouTube suggests keeping your description to no more than 200 words. In general, your description should be helpful. Delete it if it doesn’t add value for the user.
Add Relevant Tags
When uploading a video to YouTube, it’s essential to include tags to describe the content of the video. You’re not just informing your target audience but also YouTube. By doing so, YouTube can classify your video with other videos of a similar kind, increasing your potential audience size. However, be selective with the tags you use.
If you want more views, don’t include a tag that has nothing to do with the content of your video; doing so might have your site penalized by Google.
Create a Custom Thumbnail
Your YouTube video thumbnails may help or hurt performance. Most people ask how to optimize YouTube videos using a thumbnail strategy. It is not difficult. People’s eyes automatically go to YouTube when they see a list of search results. A video’s thumbnail is one of the critical YouTube ranking factors, so it’s essential to make sure your thumbnail captures viewers’ attention. Find a way to make your video stand out from the rest by making it do something unexpected.
The most straightforward strategy to get views is making a custom thumbnail that conveys your video’s topic and value to potential viewers.
Use Accurate Closed Captions
YouTube will instantly caption any video you upload with a transcription. YouTube’s auto-captions, however, only have a 70% accuracy rate, leading to unclear and occasionally embarrassing captions. Google prefers helpful search results and punishes spam. All too often, auto-captions are just as meaningless as the “automatically created gibberish” that constitutes part of the definition of spam.
If your videos include inaccurate subtitles, YouTube may flag them as spam, lowering your channel’s search ranking. You should use an SRT file to provide proper closed captions to your videos on YouTube to counter the negative impacts of auto-captions on your search engine optimization YouTube strategy.
Google and Bing can “crawl” text but can’t “view” videos. So that Google can understand the context of your video and rank it appropriately, you should include plenty of topic-related keywords in the captions.
Conclusion
So, it was all about how to optimize YouTube videos. Always use the relevant YouTube SEO best practices. Maximizing your videos’ exposure is essential if you’re going to put in the time and effort to develop them for your audience.
You need to do what it takes to get your videos at the top of YouTube’s search results for relevant keywords. Follow the YouTube optimization checklist mentioned above to rank your videos on YouTube search results. You can also use a YouTube video rank checker to check the current ranking of your videos.
