How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for More Organic Views, YouTube is now the second most popular search engine, with more than 3 billion searches every month.
Apart from ensuring that each video you submit to YouTube contains thought-provoking information, you can also optimize the video using SEO principles to stand out among the 500 hours of videos uploaded every minute.
If you’re interested in learning more about YouTube video SEO optimization, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of optimizing the search ranks for each video you publish on YouTube.
What is YouTube SEO?
Let’s explain YouTube SEO before we address the question “How does YouTube SEO work?”
It is the process of improving your channel’s rating and exposure on search engines by conducting numerous optimized on-page and off-page operations.
The SEO for YouTube is a little different from web SEO. You may use YouTube’s organic search results page to boost the visibility of your videos, playlists, and channel.
Typical tasks in this optimization process include:
- Make your video descriptions and meta descriptions more optimized.
- Adding closed captioning (a method of adding text captions to videos).
- Choosing the best keywords.
YouTube SEO may help your videos rank at the top of YouTube results pages, improving brand awareness, video views, website traffic, and revenue if done correctly.
The Five Most Important Traffic Sources
Simply making a video and uploading it to your YouTube channel isn’t enough to ensure its success. With over 500 hours of video material posted every minute and over 50 million content creators on the site, you need to know where your video’s traffic will come from.
That’s why you need to devise a plan for attracting traffic to your videos and getting them high in YouTube’s search results. Let’s take a look at five traffic sources that can help you obtain more views and comments on your videos.
YouTube Searches
Because search results can drive a lot of traffic to your content, the title of a video is one of the most significant components of YouTube SEO optimization.
To appear higher in YouTube’s search results, avoid using long titles and instead opt for short, appealing names that include keywords that effectively reflect the video’s contents.
Suggested Videos
The platform suggests videos to users on topics related to those in the videos they’ve already watched.
Once again, the title and description you provide will be critical in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you upload to YouTube has a compelling title that will entice a potential viewer to take action and watch the video.
Advertisement on YouTube
Investing in the promotion of your channel’s content can help you get more views, but different forms of YouTube advertising provide varying returns.
All other sorts of YouTube ads necessitate a viewer’s click and play for YouTube Analytics to register the activity as a view.
Playlists, Channel Pages, and Browse Features
Channel Pages – Views provided by other channel owners, as well as Topic Channels, created automatically utilizing the platform’s video discovery mechanism, are examples of this approach to generating traffic. Your videos are found through search results or video suggestions in either situation.
Browse Features – Your YouTube channel’s homepage, as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features, can be a source of potential views for your videos. Whether YouTube users are signed in or out when they watch a video on your channel, the YouTube Analytics tool will identify their action as a view.
Playlists – Creating material that other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best methods to drive more traffic to your YouTube channel and improve the number of views your videos receive.
Sources of External Traffic
Even though YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, sharing a video’s link on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can greatly enhance the number of views a video receives.
Because the intent to watch the video varies widely among the traffic sources stated above, they are not all equally effective. As a result, you’ll get the best results if you combine several, if not all, of the traffic sources discussed in this tutorial.
6 Ways to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for Google Search
You’ll need to use a range of techniques to optimize your videos to rank higher in YouTube searches. From video descriptions and tags to playlists and more, these are the best practices for YouTube video optimization!
Topic Research
You should undertake topic research for YouTube videos in the same way that you would before writing keywords for your website content.
This research will serve as the foundation for your video topic, and it will also aid you in determining which keywords and phrases to include in the title, description, tags, file names, and other areas of your video.
Furthermore, you should try to come up with techniques to make videos that engage the audience, so that even if you’re only explaining the basics in the video, viewers will feel like they’re learning something.
Video Titles
Many visitors will notice this first, and it will often determine whether or not they will click on your video.
Make your video title as clear as possible so that the viewer knows what to expect right away. Also, to avoid having your video title chopped off in search results, keep it short (usually less than 70 characters).
Second, make sure you know why you’re doing a YouTube video and who your target audience is.
Use the product name in the video title and description, for example, if you want to highlight a product review.
It may appear to be an easy step, but many YouTube channels overlook it, resulting in their videos being near the bottom of Google and YouTube search results.
Video Descriptions
Many people make the mistake of drafting the description in only a few sentences. This is your chance to add links, calls to action, and performer bios to the material in the video.
That’s why it’s a good idea to start with the most critical details, such as your core keyword, CTAs, and any relevant links.
A well-optimized video description may also help your video to appear in YouTube’s suggested video sidebar, resulting in additional views.
Also, in the initial lines of the description, try to incorporate some form of tempting hook that will entice visitors to click “Show More” to see the rest of your video’s description.
The description of a video is a crucial part of YouTube SEO. The first three lines of a video description are displayed on YouTube before the user must click “Show More” to see the remainder.
Thumbnail
Thumbnails can be beneficial or detrimental to your YouTube videos. When consumers look at YouTube search results, they are the first thing that catches their eye.
A great thumbnail can result in increased watch time, which can have a significant impact on YouTube ranking.
Make something that stands out from the crowd and draws people’s attention so that your video gets noticed.
The thumbnail, like the title, offers visitors a sense of what your content is about.
When you post a video to YouTube, it automatically generates a thumbnail for you, but it’s preferable to develop and upload your personalized image that’s clear and stands out among the other video results.
Tags & Categories
Hashtags (#) are now widely used on social media to help users identify information that answers their queries across several platforms.
In video descriptions, you can include related hashtags to help people reach your video when they search for a specific hashtag.
Tags, in particular, aid search by making relevant trends more obvious. When you include a hashtag in the video description, it will appear above the title and get hyperlinked.
And when it comes to searches, Users can customize the search to see videos from selected categories if they are looking for a certain type of content.
It’s critical to contextualize your video with categories before uploading it to increase your chances of being discovered by a user.
YouTube has a lot of different category possibilities, so you should be able to choose one that fits your YouTube videos.
Create Playlist
You can help YouTube recognize your video content subjects by grouping related videos in playlists. Do you have a lot of DIY-related posts? Make a playlist for “DIY Projects.”
Conclusion
These elements may appear to be complex and time-consuming, but keep in mind that the amount of time individuals spend watching YouTube has more than doubled in the last year.
There’s an audience waiting to be discovered, and optimizing for YouTube increases your chances of being discovered.
Now, most of the SEO methods listed above rely on you determining keywords and properly promoting your video.
When it comes to YouTube SEO, keep this basic point in mind: YouTube will go to any extent to keep viewers watching for longer.
It analyzes viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, and viewing preferences to determine what content would be of interest to a certain user.
FAQs
What is SEO on YouTube?
the process of optimizing your webpage/content (in this case your YouTube channel and videos) to get organic or un-paid traffic from the search engine results page.
Is YouTube SEO free?
A comprehensive SEO tool that not only helps you find the best keywords for your YouTube videos but also provides competitive analysis and backlink analysis. It's a paid tool with a free trial option. Use it to find keywords that your competitors are ranking for and identify gaps in their content.
Is YouTube SEO easy?
If you want to optimize YouTube for SEO, content planning isn't just about what videos you're making and when to post them.
What is an SEO score?
The SEO Score is a measure of how well the user-facing and technical aspects of your site contribute to search engine optimization, and ultimately, higher rankings and organic traffic.
