The search engine optimization (SEO) of your YouTube videos is a crucial part of your video marketing campaign’s success, and it needs your attention. If you optimize your videos properly, they may never get seen by anyone, which means no traffic, leads, or sales. And any business has to have some form of lead generation to stay afloat.
In this article, I will share with you how to optimize your YouTube videos for SEO so that people can find them when they are searching online. It will also help you increase the number of views on your YouTube videos and improve their engagement rate.
Introduction To YouTube SEO
Today’s most well-known website on the internet is YouTube. It’s used by millions of people every day around the world. The site allows users to upload videos, create playlists, and view other user-created content. In fact, according to Google, more than 1 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube!
But if you want your videos to be found by people looking for what you offer, you need to ensure that they rank high in the search engines. That way, your videos come up first when someone searches for keywords related to your niche.
SEO is optimizing YouTube videos to rank higher in search results and get more views. One can achieve it through various methods, such as keyword optimization and tagging.
8 YouTube SEO Tips
1.Choose Your Target Keywords
Before you start optimizing your videos, you need to identify target keywords. These are words that describe your product or service. They should be relevant to your audience and include long-tail keywords. Long tail keywords are usually longer phrases that contain 3 or 4 words instead of just 2. For example, “how to build a website” would be a short phrase while “build a website from scratch” would be a long tail keyword. Try to include popular keywords in the video, which is an important ranking factor.
Do match your video title to the content you’re showing in the video to target the correct audience. For example, if you are posting a video explaining a concept, mention that concept in the title of the video, like “All about Parliamentary System,” “What is pardoning power,” etc. Choose relevant keywords like this.
In this manner, YouTube learns how to link your video to other related videos, which can increase the audience for your material. However, pick your tags carefully. Google may punish you if you employ an irrelevant tag to increase views.
2. Include proper closed captioning
Closed captioning is another great way to add value to your videos. It helps viewers understand what’s being said in the video, especially those who are hearing impaired. You can easily add closed captions to your videos using tools like Captivate.
Recent studies have found that closed captions help improve your SEO ranking.
– Closed caption data helps Google get a better understanding of your content.
– It is more likely that Google will index your content if it has closed captions.
– This means more traffic for your content, which can help you rank higher in search engine rankings.
– In summary, closed captions provide better SEO for videos.
It helps you to capture a multilingual audience and also increases engagement levels.
Closed captions provide a text representation of a video’s dialogue, sounds, and music. It allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to get the same information from the video as other people. Closed captions also help people new to a language or deaf from birth understand what is being said.
3. Make an Appealing Thumbnail
Thumbnails are small images that appear next to your videos on YouTube. Thumbnail size is important because it determines whether or not your video appears in the suggested videos section. Your thumbnail is one of the most important elements of your video. Your thumbnail should be eye-catching so that users click on it. A custom thumbnail will tell your story and video content without watching the entire video.
You can optimize thumbnails by adding text overlays, including your company name, logo, and contact information. It will capture the viewer’s attention and reach potential viewers.
The size of the video thumbnail is important because it exists in a narrow space, so if it is too large, it will not be able to be accommodated in the limited space, and if it is too small, it will not catch the attention of the viewer.
In general, the size of the video thumbnail is 640*360.
4. Use hashtags for videos to influence YouTube search results
Hashtags are keywords that you include at the end of your video titles. They make it easier for people to find related videos when they search online. Hashtagging makes it easy for people to discover videos that are relevant to their interests.
Video Tags are a very important tool in making your video rank higher in the YouTube search engine. Hashtags can be used to connect with people who have similar interests and to drive more traffic to your video. Using popular hashtags to bring more attention to your video is important.
You can use a hashtag to make your YouTube video rank higher. There are different ways to use hashtags. One way to use hashtags is to use them around the actual content of the video. Another way to use hashtags is to put them at the end of the video’s title.
You can use a hashtag for a particular topic or genre to help people looking for videos on that topic to find your video. For example, posting a video about the Hunger Games could use hashtags like #hungergames, #janefleming, or #suzannecollins.
5. Make your YouTube video description more effective.
Your video description should be clean.
Many people neglect the video description, but this is a crucial step in uploading. The video description will appear in search engine results and act as a preview for your video. It should be concise with the keywords you want to rank for listed. Ensure to include a call to action and a link to your website.
YouTube allows you to add up to 160 characters of text to describe your video. The description provides additional details about your video, such as the type of video (e.g., comedy), length, and special features. You should include links to your website and social media profiles.
6. Choose a video category
Choose a category that matches your video.
Choosing a category is an essential part of uploading a successful video. Selecting a category that matches your video helps viewers understand your content. It also helps other users find your videos. It will help the YouTube search algorithm to rank your video at the top, increasing your video views.
When choosing a category, consider the following:
1. Choose categories that match your target audience.
2. Avoid selecting categories that are too broad.
3. Make sure to select a category that has enough views.
7. To increase views on your YouTube channel, add cards and end screens
Cards and end screens are visual elements that appear before and after your videos, respectively. These elements serve as a reminder to your viewers of what’s coming next in the video.
The cards and end screen are usually displayed during the first few seconds of a video. If you don’t have these elements, your viewers might be distracted from watching your video.
Adding cards and end screens to your videos increases your chances of getting more views.
To create cards and end screens, follow these steps:
1. 1. On the “My Channel” page, click the “Video Manager” button.
2. Click “Edit Video.”
3. In the “End Screen Settings” section, click “Create New Card/Screen.”
4. Enter the name of the card or screen.
5. Add a thumbnail image.
6. Create a short message for the card or screen by typing it into the box below the thumbnail.
7. Click “Save.”
8. Repeat Steps 1-7 until you have created your cards and end screens.
9. Upload
8. Create a video that You can embed in other sites
YouTube is one of many places for your video to be seen. You can embed your video on your blog, website, or another site like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You can create a video with an embedded link at the bottom and share it with your contacts.
Also read: YouTube Backlinks: How to Get Them and Why They’re Important
Great YouTube SEO Tools to Try
There are many tools available online that help you optimize your videos for better rankings. While some of them are free, others demand a monthly subscription. Some of my favorite tools are listed below:
1. Tools for researching trends and keywords
Google Trends
Google has a trend tool on its site. It shows the search trends for various words, phrases, and topics. Google Trends is a popular way to find out trending searches.
It will help you explore how often certain topics are searched for over time. You can use this information to determine which keywords to focus on when creating new content. The trends are displayed as a line, with peaks and valleys, which signify when searches for certain terms were most popular. The tool also shows how the search terms have changed in popularity over time.
It is a great way for marketers to see what people want and use it to their advantage.
Rank Tracker
This tool helps you track the ranking of your videos across Google Search, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, Ask, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex. It provides detailed reports about your performance and allows you to compare yourself against competitors.
You can also view your top-performing videos and analyze where they rank. It is helpful if you’re trying to figure out why one video ranks higher than another.
It provides great information about the ranking of websites, the number of keywords searched for, in what order they are ranked, and how many of those search terms result in a click.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a keyword research tool that lets you enter any word or phrase and instantly get suggestions for related terms. It’s a great resource for finding new ideas for content. One can also use it to monitor keywords on Twitter and Facebook with a browser extension.
The tool also gives you access to a database of millions of keywords to easily find relevant ones to add to your list. It is a neat little app that allows you to see the keywords of a webpage in real-time. It is a Chrome extension created by Google. You can get it here.
For example, if you are looking for information about something, you can search for it on the internet and see what keywords will pop up.
YouTube autocomplete
If you type a few letters into the search box on YouTube, you’ll see suggested results based on what you’ve typed. For instance, typing “p” will show you pages that contain the word “part.” Typing “p” followed by “t” will give you pages containing both words.
Autocomplete is useful because it saves you from manually typing every letter of a long term. You can save time using autocomplete if you know about your query.
2. Tools for finding the most profitable YouTube tags
YouTube Tags
The YouTube Tags Tool is a tool that you can use to help promote your video. It’s a great website for making your videos go viral and get noticed. One of the great things about the YouTube Tags Tool is that it’s free to use, and you don’t need to sign up for anything, which makes it easy to use and quick. The other great thing about the YouTube Tags Tool is that you can find all sorts of tags from different sites and people, so you’re sure what to choose for your video.
Tags are words used to summarize a video’s content. Tags allow a video to be categorized into a group of related videos and searchable by keyword.
RapidTags
RapidTags is an online tool that allows you to create custom video tags. It’s very simple and only takes a minute to set up. Once you have done this, you can add tags to your videos.
There are two ways to do this:
1) Add tags directly to your video page.
2) Create a tag cloud for your channel.
You can then share these tags with others so that they can find your videos more easily.
3. Tools for managing and auditing your channel
YouTube Analytics
YouTube analytics is a tool that helps you manage your channels. It includes viewing statistics, such as views per day, likes per day, dislikes per day, comments per day, etc. It also provides insights into your audience demographics, including age groups, gender, countries, languages, etc.
The analytics dashboard allows you to learn more about the videos uploaded on your channel, see what popular videos are, and see how many views your channel is getting.
There is a customizable date range to choose from, so you can get an accurate look at your channel’s performance. It is a great way to get a good look at your channel’s performance and make adjustments to your content if necessary.
Tube Buddy
TubeBuddy is another tool that helps you manage and audit your channel. TubeBuddy has many features, but one is viewing your channel’s stats. You can view your total views, average daily views, number of subscribers, etc.
It is a great tool for keeping track of your channel’s progress over time. You can also use it to compare your channel against others.
4. Research your competitors
Socialinsider
Socialinsider tool for YouTube is a free and easy-to-use social media analytics software for YouTube channels. The software enables you to monitor your YouTube channel audience, conduct competitor analysis, and get direct insights into your most popular videos, social shares, watch time, engagements, and subscribers.
The user can also click on the video to see where the viewers are coming from, which countries they’re from, and what time they watched the video. This way, the user can figure out who their target audience is.
Rival IQ
Rival IQ is a tool that will analyze your competitors’ data and give you detailed information about your competitors. It means you’ll know what your competitors are doing and how they’re doing it.
It’s important to note that Rival IQ doesn’t just provide you with information about your competitors; it also gives you tips on how to improve your marketing strategy.
5. Tools for moderating your comment section
YouTube comment moderation
YouTube comment moderation is a feature that allows you to moderate comments on your videos. It is useful because it prevents spam comments or inappropriate comments from being posted.
YouTube has a moderation tool that one can use to filter out inappropriate comments. The tool still allows people to post comments, but it filters out any comments that are not family-friendly. This way, people who come to the website and want to watch videos will be able to do so without being offended by the posted comments.
Smart Moderation
Smart Moderation is a tool that allows you to moderate your comments in real-time. It means you can start moderating comments before the video is published.
You can use this tool to moderate comments that are made on your videos. You can also moderate comments that are made during live streams. This tool is meant to help reduce the amount of inappropriate content that viewers may see. It provides users with the ability to set their blocking and filtering preferences, which will then allow them to create a more personalized YouTube experience.
Wrap Up
So there you have it! You should do SEO not just for traditional websites but for YouTube videos as well.
These tips will help your videos be optimized and more visible to the audience. Also, these are some of the best tools available for managing your YouTube account. There are many other tools that you can use to make your life easier as a YouTube creator.
Remember to make quality content to increase audience retention and average view time. Conduct video analysis frequently to know about the weakness and the potential area to work.
If you have questions about these tools or tips, feel free to comment below.
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