“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a famous adage often used to describe the effectiveness of visuals over written words. In the same way, a video is much more than that. As a result, 59% of executives would prefer watching videos over reading texts as it provides more information quickly. Be it any form of marketing like running PPC ads, search engine optimization techniques, email marketing, etc.; each form keeps updating with the latest marketing trends. E.g., Content marketing is not limited to writing blogs or articles; audio, podcasts, promotional pictures, ebooks, and videos have become an integral part of it. These are very useful in driving traffic, generating leads, gaining conversions, getting organic clicks, better ROI, and hence in the growth of the business.
Suppose we are talking about the significance of video SEO. In such a case, it is hard to ignore YouTube as it is the top video-sharing platform, and any content creator would want to rank their videos at the top of YouTube results. Now search engine giant Google also starts pulling video results from YouTube that appear on SERPs relevant to the search query to provide its users the more detailed, rich results, as shown in the image below. Thus developing content according to the YouTube video optimization guidelines cannot only rank your videos on YouTube SEO; instead, it is the opportunity to enhance your visibility on Google’s results page. And this is the reason we are here again with another blog discussing YouTube SEO and what are the best YouTube video optimization practices to implement so that you can rank your content higher in the YouTube ranking.
Why to optimize videos on YouTube?
YouTube is the world's largest video-sharing platform, launched on February 14, 2005. It is an American social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. On October 9, 2006, Google announced that it acquired YouTube for a deal amount of $1.65 billion, thus becoming its parent organization. Now it has more than a billion unique monthly visitors who watch more than 6 billion hours of video every month. According to YouTube, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. These stats prove that YouTube is a very popular platform and a great place for content creation and sharing so that you can promote your videos, get ranking, and more traffic to the website. Bigger brands are investing heavily in creating YouTube content as it has good ROI, better opportunity for brands to connect with the users, and, most importantly, easily describe their features & services through engaging video content.
How you can optimize for YouTube video ranking
Social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, etc., have revolutionized digital marketing in the last few years. According to the experts, Google had already seen endless possibilities in YouTube, thus investing in this platform at a very early stage. It significantly contributes to Alphabet's (parent company of Google) revenue. Similarly, for business owners looking for a platform that can quickly boost their marketing campaign then, YouTube is a good option. You can gain traffic, watch time, views, etc., if optimized well for YouTube video ranking. You can also outsource video SEO services or YouTube keyword research services from a renowned SEO company to optimize your videos on YouTube or across any social media platforms.
In general, your SEO strategy, along with the YouTube video optimization technique, will work super smooth and greatly helps in achieving your business specified goal by following some of the YouTube SEO tips discussed below:
1. Start with YouTube keyword research - The most fundamental task for YouTube SEO video optimization is keyword research necessary so that search engines can find your content. Thus, conducting YouTube keyword research and listing some of the keywords that best match your content is crucial. You can use some superb tools like Google keyword planner, Semrush, Moz, and Google search, or you can outsource SEO keyword research services. And if you are new to the world of digital marketing or need more ideas about keyword research, then simply a Google search can help you. Search for your keyword phrase in the Google search bar and analyze the search suggestion, 'People Also Ask box', related searches, etc. this gives you an idea about the users' search queries related to your content. After selecting the relevant keywords, use them all over your content, like video title, YouTube video description, hashtags, comments, video filename, etc.
2. Identify your audience - Before creating YouTube content, you have to be clear with the purpose of the video, like who you are making the video for, the intent of the video, and how it will help the people. In other words, identifying your target audience with your YouTube videos is crucial. The targeted audience depends on your content or the business with which you are associated; you can specify the audience based on age, location, time, etc. You can also set the visibility and schedule your videos for a specific date and time. This helps you in focusing on only those users who have the potential to become your business's regular customers and save your efforts & resources in targeting the users who may need to be more relevant to the business.
3. Optimized YouTube video description - While creating videos on YouTube, you cannot miss its description, as optimizing this can help users and search engines identify the content of the video. Keep important links, video breakdowns, or any vital information you want to share with your audience in the video description. According to Google, the character limit for a YouTube video description is 5000 characters, but using them all may not be helpful for you. Keeping it in 2-3 lines is a good practice; after that, users have to click on 'show more' to view the full description, which is not practical. The rest of the characters can be used to describe the channel, provide links, provide video breakdown, etc. As a recommended practice, a YouTube video description must contain at least one link to the website, product, blog, external reference, etc.
4. Smartly use thumbnails - The use of thumbnails in YouTube video optimization tactics has proved to be super helpful. Video thumbnails are small representations of a video that describes its content, just like the cover of a book. It is one of the first points of interaction for the users with your videos, and an engaging thumbnail has enough strength to gain the users' attention and make them click on it. Always try to create a thumbnail for your videos on YouTube with a combination of texts and pictures that describes the content of the video in a single image. Otherwise, the YouTube ranking algorithm will pull out a thumbnail from the video, which may not accurately represent the video content.
5. Hashtags are so helpful - Like any other social media platform, using hashtags must be noticed in YouTube video ranking. Yes, hashtags play a significant role in creating campaigns that go viral on the internet. It is the keyword phrase followed by a '#' sign; first used on Twitter and now has become the most trusted symbol in creating viral campaigns or videos. Hashtags are simple; you only have to find the unique hashtags that best describe your business and spread it over all your digital content. The same thing you must do for YouTube video SEO. You must find and use the hashtags in the video description for better YouTube content optimization.
Ranking factors for YouTube video SEO
Just like Google SEO, the YouTube video ranking algorithm is not public. Also, there are multiple factors considered and analyzed by YouTube SEO to prioritize the ranking of the videos. Some of the significant factors are discussed below:
Relevance - The relevancy of the videos to the users' search query is one of the main factors that affect ranking. As YouTube or any other platform is not interested in delivering results that are not useful for their user, thus, as a content creator, you must understand these points. Titles of the videos, hashtags used in the description, YouTube video description, thumbnail, keywords used in the content, etc., must have the same intent as in your video.
Engagement - Then comes the second-ranking factor, engagement; if you deliver relevant content to the audience, then no doubt they will click on your videos. This engagement appears in the form of likes, subscribers, watch time, turning on the notification for your channel, comments, shares, etc., and the YouTube ranking algorithm considers these to display your content in the search results.
Quality - Quality content is the same factor often discussed in Google SEO as YouTube is the part of Google you cannot forget the E-A-T, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Any information included in the YouTube content should be correct and not mislead the viewers. Almost all online platforms are already facing the fake news issue; thus, the ranking algorithms are very strict towards it.
Personalization - Personalized content proved to be a blessing for both publisher and the user. Publishers in the sense that they only focus on those audiences who have the maximum potential to convert into a business customers, while users get rid of the content in which they are not interested. And thus, personalization becomes one of the most crucial ranking factors. By analyzing the users' search behavior, watch history, and many more factors, YouTube decides the most accurate results for their users.
Apart from the freshness and popularity of the content, the YouTube video ranking algorithm also considers the ranking signal.
Some quick YouTube SEO tips
Keep it short and simple - Social media users are in a hurry because they have a lot of resources available. In this case, a short and informative video is preferable to long-form content. Thus keep your videos, description, title, etc., short, accurate, and relevant to the searched query.
Create engaging titles - Optimized titles are another one of the most critical opportunities to attract users. Titles have a character limit of 100, but keeping it under 70 is considered an ideal number as it will save you from truncation of the text. Do not forget to load your titles with the specified keywords.
Comments are useful - Always keep your comments section on to invite users to leave suggestions, feedback, or anything they want to share. If possible, replying to the users' comments with keywords will help improve YouTube video optimization.
Use engaging call-to-action - Using engaging CTA in the content is never an old SEO strategy; thus, it is recommended to use relevant and appealing CTA where it goes right.
Select the video category - The content on YouTube is infinite and continuously increasing; thus, while publishing your videos, it is vital to specify the video category from the list YouTube provides. This makes your videos easy to search; you should also specify the age relevancy and use all the features/options YouTube provides.
Subtitles/closed captions have the opportunity - Subtitles/closed captions can make your videos accessible to a wider audience that can be easily understood by users who do not know the language of the video or have difficulty hearing. Subtitles & closed captions can be added to the videos with the help of an SRT file. Ranking benefits are also associated with it, as search engines can pull out results when users search for the same.
Ask your audience - User engagement is one of the ranking factors for videos on YouTube. Thus you can freely ask your audience to leave their comments, like, share, subscribe, and turn the notification bell on as their one activity can enhance your video performance with YouTube SEO techniques.
Track your insights - Last but not least, tracking your metrics, like watch time, likes, comments, subscribers, etc., can serve you with new ideas and opportunities for YouTube content optimization.
Final thought
The popularity of video content is very high as it is easy to understand and more interactive than other forms of content, and YouTube is a great platform to create and share such content. But it is also true that the collection of videos on it is very high in number; thus, ranking your videos in the top search results of YouTube takes a lot of work. You must be patient and follow the proper YouTube SEO tips & tactics discussed above. As a digital marketing company, we have a team of SEO experts from whom you can get all SEO-related services, like you can outsource video SEO outsource SEO keyword research services, local SEO, SEO analytics, link building, backlink analysis, social media marketing, etc., under one roof.
References
• Video SEO: 10 steps to optimizing videos for search and discovery
• YouTube SEO: how to optimize videos for YouTube search