Get a guide to YouTube SEO and learn how to optimise your videos for greater visibility, more views, and higher rankings in search results.
Ieva Treiliha
YouTube is without doubt the largest video platform on the internet today. In addition, it is the second largest search engine online – yes! Right after Google, but ahead of Bing, Yandex and Baidu. That is why, as a business owner, it is important to have a presence on the platform.
You can read more about YouTube statistics here and more about other search engines and their market share here. If these facts do not convince you of the huge advertising potential on YouTube, I am not sure what will – perhaps the rest of this blog post!
Here, I will take a deep dive into YouTube SEO and how to get started with SEO on YouTube.
You may have tried filming and uploading a few videos to YouTube, but you are not really seeing any traffic to your videos. It can be quite demotivating to invest time and energy into video production when it does not seem to attract either your existing or potential customers. There are several things you can do to get more views on YouTube.
The first and most important thing you should consider is whether your video is interesting and relevant to your target audience?
This is actually something you should have considered already during the idea generation process. Will your video be interesting for your target audience? Does your video provide value to your visitors? Does the content of the video match what the title promises?
If you can answer “YES!” to all of the above, your video is ready to be published. But there are also several other things to be aware of here to ensure the optimal number of views and the best chance of ranking higher on YouTube. Read on to learn more about the slightly more technical aspects you should optimise for in order to get more views on YouTube.
To rank highly on YouTube and Google, you need to find out which search phrases are relevant and realistic for you to be found for.
That is why you should carry out a good old-fashioned keyword analysis. A thorough keyword analysis will help you identify opportunities on YouTube and find the keywords that are generally being searched for on the platform, the keywords your target group uses, and the keywords with the greatest potential in your industry.
Keyword analysis for YouTube is done almost in the same way as a regular keyword analysis. When searching for YouTube search phrases, choose phrases whose YouTube results already rank on Google.
There are search phrases where YouTube results do not appear at the top of Google’s SERP, but there are some specific niches where YouTube results typically do come out on top in Google’s search results:
By choosing search phrases that already have YouTube results in Google’s SERP, you can find niches and ideas on how to get your video to rank on YouTube and also on Google.
There are various tools that can help you with your YouTube keyword analysis. For example – Keywordtool.io, which is a paid service if you want access to various insights such as the number of monthly searches, trends, CPC and competition.
If you are not ready to invest in tools yet, you can consider some of these free tools:
One thing to remember when doing a YouTube keyword analysis is that the keywords you identify using these free tools should have at least 300 searches per month. If they do, there will also be a fair amount of searches on YouTube.
To rank on YouTube with your content, it is crucial that your video contains what your customers, potential customers and followers expect from your content. The content should match your brand identity and your “voice” on the other platforms you use, and at the same time, it should deliver what the title and description promise.
If you create a video titled “How to sand your floor perfectly” and use the video to try to sell your products instead of giving concrete tips, your viewers will be disappointed and are likely to click away from your video – and not watch your videos in the future.
To rank organically on YouTube, one of the most important factors is video retention. Video retention shows how much of your video people have watched before clicking away – the more of your video people watch, the better! 🙂
Here are a few tips for creating a good video:
Be credible in relation to your brand identity. You have exciting products that people need – show them! Even if you do not find your products that exciting yourself, be creative and show your customers why they should choose your products or services. Whether it is through innovation, price, quality, functionality or something else entirely.
With video, you can tell many stories in many different ways! Hold a brainstorming session with your colleagues, where you share various ideas about how you can showcase your products and services to customers in an engaging way. You should focus more on the value the content will provide your customers rather than on sales. Sales will come! If customers see the value in your core story, they will also see the value in your product.
Before you start recording the video, write a scenario for everything you want to say in the video and how it will play out. It is important to outline the process and have a clear idea of what you want to say and how.
Editing is perhaps the part of the process that will take the most time, but be patient and remember that editing is what separates average content from high-quality content.
Good editing will help you communicate exactly what you want in a way that suits your brand, your products and the way you interact with your customers. Cut out anything that does not reflect what you want to say. Videos on YouTube should be short and to the point.
Keep it short and concise – most people will not spend more than a couple of minutes watching your content, so it is important to try to communicate your story as quickly as possible – without compromising on quality.
It will be difficult to get a poor-quality video to rank on YouTube and Google. It is all about high production quality and a strong core narrative to get people to engage with your content.
Be critical of the final result before you publish it. Video production and editing can be a long and costly process, so it is important that you are 100% satisfied with the end product. Before publishing the video on YouTube, you should consider:
If you can answer “YES!” to all of the above, your video is ready for publishing!
When your video is ready to upload, the most important part of YouTube SEO begins. You need to upload your video to YouTube and fill in ALL the information YouTube asks for. The more details you provide, the better for SEO.
When you upload an image to your website, it is good practice to include your focus keyword in the image filename. The same applies when uploading a video to YouTube – the focus keyword should appear in the file name.
The video title should be no longer than 70 characters (including spaces). YouTube allows up to 100 characters in titles, but anything over 70 characters will typically be shortened in search results.
To make the most of the CTA potential of your video titles, you should keep them under 70 characters, include your focus keyword in the title, and pair the focus keyword with other relevant terms. For example: “What is an SSL Certificate? – Explained in under 1 min! │WeMarket”.
The description under your video plays a crucial role for SEO on YouTube. When you write blog articles, Google can crawl your articles to assess the quality and relevance of the content to the keyword. In the same way, Google can crawl YouTube video descriptions to assess their quality and relevance to the topic. The more information you include in your video descriptions, the better your chances of ranking on both YouTube and Google. You actually have up to 5000 characters to write the perfect YouTube description.
Here is an example of a good and thorough video description for a video on beauty care. The description includes a brief overview of the video content, CTA, links to the products used in the video, affiliate links to other products in the same category, and links to social media pages:
Although tags on YouTube videos are less important than, for example, the title or description, they can also help you rank better if you include relevant tags when uploading the video.
In principle, tags are the same as relevant keywords that relate to the content or topic of the video. By completing these tags, you will be more visible in YouTube’s side menu under “related videos”.
Both your video and description should include a CTA or Call To Action. Call to action can be anything – from “read more”, “follow us on Facebook” to a link to another video.
But when it comes to ranking on YouTube, the most relevant CTAs for good ranking on YouTube are encouraging your viewers to click the “like” button on your video, share it on social media, write in the comments section or subscribe to your YouTube channel.
YouTube uses signals from these activities to assess the quality and relevance of videos. That means, if users actively engage with your content, it will rank better on YouTube.
As mentioned earlier, YouTube uses specific factors to measure the quality and relevance of videos on their platform. The ones you should pay most attention to are:
Today, there are many different forms of advertising and even more channels on which we can promote our content. The internet is full of all kinds of content, and you can find information on any subject you want. However, this also means we have to capture people’s attention quickly and effectively before they move on to other resources. That is why video is a good form of advertising – video content is more digestible than perhaps long blog posts (haha).
What sets YouTube apart from Google is their way of classifying quality content. YouTube’s assessment of content quality depends on the quality of the descriptions and user engagement with the content.
Since YouTube is the second largest search engine today, it is important that your content ranks highly on YouTube.
I hope you have picked up some valuable take-aways from this post that can improve your content on YouTube and thereby also your search engine positions. Good luck!
If you are still a bit unsure about YouTube advertising, you are always welcome to contact us. We will help you find a solution that suits you and your business. You can contact us by filling in our contact form or by calling us on 71 99 34 74!
Otherwise, feel free to read about the various services we offer in addition to YouTube advertising:
If you want to get started with YouTube advertising or another form of digital advertising yourself, check out our YouTube channel where we have created a playlist: Marketing Quickfix – perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about various disciplines within digital advertising. You can also find other exciting topics on our blog.
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