YouTube is an increasingly popular and powerful place to publish video content, whether it be for your business or personal YouTube channel. YouTube’s search engine is a vital component in the YouTube experience but often overlooked by YouTube creators. This article will go over 8 tips that can help you optimize your videos so they rank better on YouTube’s search engine and get more views!
What is a YouTube SEO strategy?
A YouTube SEO strategy is essentially everything that you do to improve your YouTube video’s rank in YouTube search results, which will ultimately lead to more views for the video. YouTube has a powerful and accurate ranking system algorithm that calculates how relevant each YouTube channel or video is based on a number of factors such as watch time, engagement rate, subscribes, and so on. YouTube’s search engine is one of the most powerful sites in today’s online world, ranking second only to Google for internet searches. YouTube creators who want their videos to rank higher need to take a YouTube SEO strategy into account when publishing content.
You may know the basics of SEO for YouTube videos, but YouTube poses its own set of unique challenges and opportunities that are worth exploring. In this article, we’ll go over the advanced tactics for enhancing your video’s YouTube search engine ranking.
Tip #1. Optimize your video title.
This YouTube SEO tactic is the most important and one of the easiest to implement. The title of your YouTube video is everything! Optimizing it can have a huge impact on how well you rank in YouTube search results, which will lead to more views for the video. If people are searching YouTube looking specifically for keywords that are mentioned in your YouTube video’s title, YouTube will be more likely to show your video. YouTube utilizes something called an “autocomplete” algorithm that tries to predict what the user is looking for in a YouTube search query and gives them possible results at the top of their YouTube search page. If you include keywords from your YouTube content in your YouTube video title, this can help YouTube’s autocomplete algorithm to rank your YouTube video for those keywords.
Tip#2. Use keywords and descriptive language in the metadata tags of your videos.
YouTube’s SEO ranking system will also take into account the metadata tags of your YouTube video. The information you place in these YouTube metadata tags can help or hinder the rank of your YouTube video, depending on how well it describes and uses relevant keywords to describe what is contained within the content of your YouTube videos. The best keywords to use in YouTube’s metadata tags are the same keywords that you include in your title.
Tip #3. Include accurate closed captions in your YouTube videos.
Adding accurate closed captions to YouTube video content is not only a courtesy for those who can’t hear but also an SEO strategy that YouTube ranking system takes into account when determining the relevance of YouTube channels and videos! To add accurate closed captions on YouTube you have two options:
-YouTube’s automatic closed captions is an option that YouTube provides for YouTube creators to automatically generate captions for YouTube videos. YouTube’s automatic closed captioning service does not always get it right or capture all the information in your video, which is why you also have the option of adding accurate closed captions manually by uploading a transcript from an online transcription service
-YouTube support for third-party captioning services is still a work in progress, but YouTube is working hard to improve YouTube’s closed captioning system.
Tip #4 Add a link to your related YouTube channel in your channel description and vice versa!
When YouTube channels are linked together, YouTube’s ranking algorithm takes into account the rank of both YouTube channels to judge how relevant and useful each channel is. For example, if you have a YouTube channel that has over 100 subscribers but not many views on your videos and another YouTube channel with just as few subscribers but has an extensive following, YouTube will rank YouTube videos from the YouTube channel with a larger following more highly than those of your smaller YouTube channel.
Tip #5. Add a transcript to your video description
If YouTube’s automatic closed captioning service doesn’t work well for your YouTube video, adding a transcript to the description of that YouTube video is another way you can make sure accurate information about your YouTube videos will be captured. This transcript should include links back to any videos referenced in the YouTube content as well as any websites or products mentioned in YouTube video content.
Tip #6. Offer subtitles in multiple languages
Just as English captions make your videos accessible to YouTube users who speak English, it’s important to offer subtitles in multiple languages for YouTube viewers who don’t speak that language. This will not only help YouTube videos rank better with YouTube search engine but also give your YouTube channel more international exposure!
Tip #7. Say your target keyword in your video
The YouTube search ranking algorithm also takes into account the keywords that you say in YouTube videos. For example, if your YouTube video content is about YouTube SEO strategy and you mention at least once during your YouTube video “YouTube SEO Strategy” or some variation of it (example: how to do YouTube SEO), then this can help make sure that YouTube’s YouTube search algorithm ranks YouTube videos from your YouTube channel higher.
Tip #8. Use a compelling thumbnail
The YouTube ranking system prefers thumbnails with good quality, strong colours and a clear focus on what is contained in your YouTube video content so it can be quickly scanned by those looking for similar YouTube content.
Use high-quality, high-contrast images that have a 16:9 aspect ratio. YouTube’s ranking algorithm will also favour YouTube videos with thumbnails that are 1280×720 pixels or higher.
Bottom Line
YouTube’s ranking system takes into account YouTube channel activity as well as the keywords you say in your YouTube videos, captions and descriptions. With these eight advanced tips for YouTube search optimization, it should be easier than ever before to rank better with Google searches on YouTube.
