Today, we continue with our YouTube marketing strategy series by sharing with you some tips on YouTube SEO marketing. If you have missed last week’s blog post on YouTube channel branding and video posting consistency, make sure you read it. Without further ado, let’s dive into it.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
YouTube Search
YouTube is not only an online video website but also one of the world’s largest search engines. To get more views, you should optimize your YouTube videos for YouTube SEO marketing as an important part of your YouTube marketing strategy.
With over 500 hours of YouTube content uploaded every minute, finding what you need would be nearly impossible without YouTube Search. YouTube Search considers relevance, engagement, and quality. Relevance means how relevant the title, tags, description, and video content are to a search query. Engagement may mean the watch time of a particular YouTube video for a particular search query to determine if the video is considered relevant to the query by other users. Quality means whether a YouTube channel demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.
For example, in music and entertainment, YouTube Search uses relevance, freshness, or popularity to connect viewers to quality content viewers will enjoy. In news, politics, and medical or scientific information, YouTube Search surfaces authoritative content from trusted sources.
YouTube Video Ranking Factors
Now, let’s dig deeper into some key YouTube video ranking factors for your YouTube SEO marketing.
SEO Keywords
The most important in YouTube SEO marketing is to do keyword research both for your channel and each video that you post by following our tips on Keyword Research Best Practices. Besides, you can simply type your keywords into the YouTube search bar to use its autocomplete suggestions for inspiration by focusing on long-tail keyword suggestions. This way, you can craft your YouTube video textual content by using keywords to help YouTube and your target audience find your channel and videos easily.
Title
- A video title should be concise (60 characters) with the most important information in front and episode numbers and branding in the end.
- It should accurately represent its content to match viewers’ expectations.
- Check that your YouTube video titles don’t get cut-off in suggested videos, search results and mobile.
- Spark curiosity with a creative title or teasing what’s in the content.
- Research YouTube SEO keywords for each YouTube video title to better understand what viewers are searching for.
- Identify and feature 1-2 main words prominently in both your video description and title.
Descriptions
- Put the most important YouTube SEO keywords in the beginning of your video descriptions.
- Identify and feature 1-2 main words prominently in both your video description and title.
- Identify and use popular keywords and their synonyms in your description.
- Put your hashtags in the YouTube video description.
- Include links to your social channels and video chapters with a list of timestamps and titles.
Tags
- Video tags associate your video with similar videos.
- Tag the most important YouTube SEO keywords first and then other more common and long-tail keywords to each video as an important part of your YouTube SEO marketing strategy.
Transcript
- Add a video transcript for both YouTube Search and viewers who want to access the words of the content.
- Include the video transcript in the description.
- Video transcripts can greatly improve your YouTube SEO marketing because your video is usually full of keywords.
Thumbnails
- Upload quality custom video thumbnails instead of auto-generated video thumbnails.
Subtitles & Closed Captions
- Add subtitles and closed captions help viewers who speak a different language or live in a country other than your own. This could increase your video watch time, reach, and engagement in new global markets.
Cards & End Screens
- Cards are small, rectangular notifications that appear in the top right-hand corner.
- Add cards to your YouTube videos to poll viewers, or to link to external sites, other YouTube channels, playlists or videos.
- Add end screens to the last 5–20 seconds of a video to promote other videos, encourage viewers to subscribe, etc.
Playlists
- Add playlists to curate a collection of videos from both your YouTube channel and other YouTube channels.
- Not only do playlists help to organize your YouTube channel and encourage viewers to continue watching similar content, but they also show up separately in YouTube search results.
- Creating playlists provides you with more discoverable content.
To Be Continued
Now you know how you can improve your YouTube SEO marketing strategy. Next week, we’ll continue our YouTube marketing strategy series to grow your YouTube channel fan base.
