From the latest music videos, subscriptions to our favourite blogger channels to entertaining and enlightening marketing videos, the power and popularity of YouTube is ever apparent.
Whether you are inspired to take your first steps, creating a successful YouTube channel, or perhaps you are already an established vlogger looking to expand and extend their audience reach, optimisation of your channel is key for success.
When it comes to video optimisation and YouTube SEO, for the untrained, it can appear to be an unsure and daunting experience. But it needn’t be!
In this article, we will share with you our top tips to improve your videos ranking position, helping you to be seen adminst the ever growing crowded ocean of videos uploaded every minute onto this social platform.
Along with helping to drive traffic, increase the amount of subscribers to our channel, by taking the time to optimise and invest in your channel, you can help turn your passion into a career.
Continue reading to discover how you can begin to optimise your channel with our YouTube SEO tips.
What is YouTube SEO?
The second largest search engine, coming up short to the power platform that is Google, the importance of YouTube can be seen with the addition of 500 hours of video being uploaded onto the site every minute.
For those video creators and stars that want to stand out within the crowd, YouTube SEO is a top choice helping you to be seen.
When it comes to YouTube SEO, a strategy is required to ensure that your efforts are well planned and not wasted.
For those unaware of the meaning behind SEO, SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation. Skilled and well research actions conducted to enhance and push YouTube videos higher up within the Search Engine Results Pages. With the majority of your audience stumbling upon your content through their chosen use of keywords, making sure that you are adding and optimising your content for your audience can ensure that you are receiving a steady flow of traffic.
With many methods for you to begin optimising your YouTube channel, by working to a well prepared YouTube SEO strategy, you can ensure that you are found through both YouTube and the many search engines around the world.
Top 8 Youtube SEO Tips for beginners
When it comes to incorporating our key YouTube SEO tips, this you can do by optimising your playlists, meta data, description and even through the video content that you create. Here are our 8 top tips for beginners.
1- Create a Keyword Optimised Title and Description
A lot like when creating optimised, keyword rich content, the key to YouTube success is to ensure that your titles, description and tags are all optimised with an appropriate and ranking keyword. When it comes to finding the correct keyword for your video, there are a range of different sites that can allow you to find the correct keyword and variations that are being asked by searchers.
When choosing the correct keyword to optimise your video for, make sure that the chosen keyword accurately describes your video.
It should be noted, however, that although you want to optimise your video with your chosen keyword, make sure not to overstuff your video. This will be picked up and can even result in your video being penalised.
When optimising videos on YouTube, it is recommended that you consider the addition of long-tail keywords. The difference between long tail and short-tail keywords can be seen in their traffic the competition that they both experience. A short-tail keyword example, could be seen in the keyword Furniture with a high average monthly search of 74,000 and a high competition. While the long-tail keyword vintage loveseat has an average monthly search of 70 while the competition is still high. By focusing on your keyword, you can ensure that you are found more quickly, essential when it comes to bespoke digital marketing.
Once your target keyword that is suited to your YouTube video has been honed and harnessed, be sure to add it to the title. Meta Description and the Tags that make up your video.
When it comes to crafting your title, a YouTube SEO tip is to create an appealing and enticing title that encourages a higher click rate. This you can do through adding how-to or top tips into the header.
2- Say your target keyword within the video
Another top YouTube SEO tip for those wanting to develop their channel and that follows on from what we have just covered, which is to say the target keyword within the video.
You have discovered and chosen the best keyword for your video, but for extra optimisation, it is recommended that you verbally say that keyword to help increase its rankings.
By saying the word out loud, you can ensure that your keyword is featured within the transcript that is used by YouTube to rank your video accordingly.
Along with verbally saying the word to feature within the transcript, it is also recommended that you include an accurate transcript.
For those wanting to quickly find the keyword best suited to their video, it is recommended that you use YouTube’s Search Suggest. By typing in a word and phrase, you can see the suggestions available.
To discover if your previously used keywords are contributing towards the rankings of your video, you can go view your YouTube search report but going to Traffic Sources- YouTube search.
3- Offer Multiple Language Translations
It can be tempting to hard code subtitles or captioning into your YouTube videos but this really should be avoided at all costs. The problems are twofold here insofar as these are hard-coded and cannot be turned off and they will interfere with the ability of a foreign-language audience to use closed captioning translations to view the videos. Video transcription will allow for the creation of closed captioning in the primary language. It is important to use the video translation as the basis for closed captioning in multiple language translations for the search engines. Closed captioning for YouTube videos use what are known as SRT files that are indexed by the search engines, including the internal YouTube search. This means that the video will now rank for more keywords in both the native language and the multiple language translations on all of the search engines. This should greatly enhance both the ranking and visibility of YouTube videos through the use of translation and transcription, and ultimately increase the volume of organic traffic.
4- Include a Transcript to the video
As mentioned in the previous point, the addition of a transcript, whether in English or another language is an important feature. The entry of a transcript into the videos description is a prime spot to allow search engines to read and decipher the value of your video. With a space to fit close to five thousand characters, there is plenty of room to add the transcript for a ten minute video of pure dialogue.
The description of your video will be used when crawled and indexed by search engines, a valuable feature considering that your video description feature is SEO optimised with keywords appropriate to the video.
5- Choose your thumbnail wisely
You have filmed, edited and uploaded the video with your media workstation, but before you can post, you will need to add a thumbnail that is presented to potential viewers before they click to watch. A YouTube SEO tip is to choose your thumbnail carefully. By making sure that it is appealing and enticing is key to success. When it comes to choosing your thumbnail, YouTube will pull 3 screenshots through from the footage, this you can choose from, or if you prefer, upload your own image.
It is recommended that you choose a high quality, facial close-up that is 16:9 ratio in size. When it comes to choosing the right thumbnail for your video, it should be reminded that YouTube tends to overlay a video duration on the lower corner of the image, so be sure to choose a video that will not be obstructed through the addition of this timer.
6 – Use Video SEO Embed
You have created an entertaining and educational video for your YouTube channel with the inclusion of appropriate keywords, a recommended tip to ensure that you are correctly optimising your video and that is through the added addition of a SEO Embed. By adding a SEO embed through 3Play Plugin, this feature will push all your video meta descriptions, transcriptions, titles and tags to the top of your page to be properly crawled by Google. It has been found that channels with SEO Embed installed can receive two to five times more viewers than channels without.
7- Add a Playlist
Some YouTubers may believe that focusing on long videos are the key for instant success. This is far from the case. Instead, the addition of a playlist and relevant, short, categorised playlists can help increase user engagement while helping to mould an interested and responsive audience. Along with allowing fans to watch videos in short chunks at a time convenient for them, it also makes it easy to share multiple videos across social sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. This can be done by linking to the chosen playlist, instead of linking one video at a time.
8- User Engagement
No matter how well you optimise and craft your videos, the most important aspect to improving your YouTube channel and that is to focus on user engagement. If viewers are quickly clicking on and off your video, this informs search engines that your video is not satisfying their needs, in turn reducing your position within the SERPs.
By focusing on the watch time, session time, user intent and the subscriber base, you can ensure that you are continually meeting the needs and requirements of your audience.
From making sure that watchers are watching as much of the video as possible, enticing
them in with a preview of what will be discovered at the end of the video and by publishing your videos at the same time every week, you can ensure that they remain engaged. This all adds up, helping to tell Google that your content is valued and enjoyed by its audience, in turn seeing it sit higher up within the results.
There you have it, our top 8 YouTube SEO Tips for those taking their first steps when it comes to optimising and creating high ranking, search engine worthy YouTube videos for their audience of choice.
By taking the time to discover what your audience are searching for, and by making sure that you are supplying Youtube, Google and international search engines with all the required information about your video. You could see a rise in viewership, not just in your country of residence, but from around the world.
What has been highlighted, is that, it is not just about creating enticing material, but also by creating entertaining and informative videos that meets the requirements of the viewers. With the viewers being the most important aspect to YouTube success, make sure to spend the time to work out what they want and create material with them in mind.
With our recommended 8 YouTube SEO tips just scratching the surface on how you too can begin to optimise your YouTube Channel, there are of course more methods that you could use.
Let us know you thoughts, or if you too have used the suggested tips featured above and how the traffic to your channel has altered and changed through these SEO additions and comment below.
