With over 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute, and more than 2.3 billion monthly active users, YouTube is now the second largest search engine after Google.
But how can you be visible to users? The art of SEO on YouTube comes into play!
SEO isn’t just for blogs and websites, it’s also present on YouTube and many other sites. As an expert in the field, I’m going to reveal the best optimization practices for ranking higher in YouTube search results.
How does YouTube SEO Work?
Working on the SEO of your YouTube videos is an excellent way to ensure more views. The primary goal is to achieve a high ranking for specific keywords in search engines.
YouTube SEO involves optimizing your videos, channel, descriptions, metadata, and playlists. You can optimize videos for search both within and outside of YouTube (for example, for a Google search query).
- Why Do You Need YouTube SEO?
If you only upload videos without optimizing the textual content, they will be more challenging to index and rank for YouTube’s search engine.
This is because YouTube’s search engine cannot view or interpret your videos.
This is why optimization work is required. SEO for YouTube will impact your ranking and the user experience on the platform.
Read on to learn the steps to optimize your videos properly.
1. Research the Most Relevant Keywords
Just like Google, YouTube’s search function relies on keywords to understand the content of a video, index it, and display it in response to user queries.
So, take the time to identify the keywords for your video and place them where the platform’s robots can analyze them.
By doing this, you’ll gain visibility, as YouTube’s search engine can more easily promote your content.
- How to Find the Right Keywords?
You can base your keyword selection on YouTube’s search suggestions, which appear automatically when you enter words or phrases in the search bar.
Other effective tools include Google Trends and Keywords Everywhere, which help identify popular YouTube queries (trends) and search volume.
2. Optimize Your Titles and Descriptions
You may already know that optimizing title tags for web content helps with better ranking. The same applies to YouTube videos: the title is crucial because users decide whether to click based on what they expect to find.
Your title should include relevant keywords and accurately reflect the video’s content.
Another important but often neglected aspect is the description section.
While users may not read it much, filling out the video description is crucial for its organic ranking.
And most importantly, incorporate relevant keywords!
I recommend taking the time to write a 150 to 300 words description with short but descriptive sentences.
3. Use Tags to Describe Your Videos
Before publishing your video on YouTube, you’ll be asked to fill in text fields and tags.
Tags are essentially keywords that contribute to your video’s indexing by the platform’s search engine.
Take advantage of this and choose relevant keyword phrases to help rank your videos higher in search results.
You can add between 15 and 20 unique tags.
4. Optimize Your Thumbnails
The thumbnail or image is perhaps the most crucial element in convincing YouTube users to click on your video.
Having an appealing thumbnail encourages clicks and increases your click-through rate. This statistic also affects your content’s placement in search engine result lists.
Work on your thumbnails to make them easily readable and attractive.
If it matters to YouTube, it matters to Google, which can analyze image quality.
5. Edit the File Name
In SEO optimization, every detail counts.
The file name of your video (or URL) can also be adapted to improve its ranking.
You can include keywords in this section to provide an additional element that can be indexed by YouTube’s search engine.
6. Ajoutez des sous-titres
Always check automatic subtitles, which may contain errors !!
Did you know that YouTube videos are automatically subtitled?
This makes it easier for users, especially those who speak a different language, to understand the content.
A good SEO practice is to work on your closed captions to ensure they align with the audio in your videos.
7. Select the Video Category
When uploading your YouTube video, you’ll be asked to select a category.
This selection helps with the SEO of your content, as YouTube’s algorithm can place your video in corresponding search results.
It’s a way for users to find your videos more easily.
8. Encourage Viewer Engagement
YouTube values content that is liked and shared, while also considering the number of channel subscribers.
In practice, only a small percentage of users interact with content.
However, having a maximum number of comments and likes increases your video’s ranking in search results.
So, make an effort to encourage your audience to leave comments, subscribe, and like your video.
Conclusion
By following these 8 steps, you’ll have done the necessary work for SEO optimization of your YouTube videos.
These best practices may seem complex and time-consuming at first, but with experience, you’ll quickly and easily optimize your content.
And if you have any questions or need assistance with this, don’t hesitate to contact me for guidance on how to improve and unlock your potential on YouTube.
