YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google with 2 billion monthly active users who are logged in. This makes it an ideal environment to attract millions of viewers if only your videos can get a good ranking on both YouTube and Google.
It is imperative to understand and apply the best practices on YouTube SEO and optimization to enhance the viewership of your posts. If you are a creator, brand, or even a YouTube SEO company that wants to generate more traffic to your YouTube channel and videos, there are some crucial things that you need to know.
In this article, I will outline the best YouTube SEO tips and techniques that you should apply in the coming year to help your videos rank and gain more views.
Optimize Video Title
The video title appears first when a person searches or just randomly navigates through videos on the YouTube website. In this sense, an optimal title of a video can attract attention to the video and potentially increase CTR.
Here are some tips for creating effective YouTube video titles:
- Make sure that your target keyword appears near the start of the title.
- Choose strong words and evoke emotions.
- Avoid long titles for articles – limit to 60 characters.
- Employ powerful words that would trigger the clicks.
- Use numbering for instance, “10 steps to…”
Before starting, make an effort to use the YouTube auto-suggest and Google Trends features to determine which keywords and phrases to use.
Enhance Video Description
Below the title and metadata of the video, you will find the description box which provides you extra space to enhance YouTube SEO and the ranking power of your videos.
Make sure to:
- It is also important to have a meta description that must include the purpose of the video.
- The description should contain the target keyword used in a natural and unforced manner three to five times.
- Include links that point back to your site or channel
- This way you should remind the viewers to subscribe, like, comment, and share.
Include full transcriptions for longer videos
A well-optimized description enables YouTube to know more about the content of your video so that you can start gaining rank for important keywords sooner.
Tag Your Videos
Appending tags to your YouTube videos also assists YouTube in identifying the topic and bringing curiosity seekers to your videos based on those tags.
Some best practices for YouTube SEO tag optimization:
- Use keyword research to establish popular terms and questions.
- Use the primary keywords that are an exact match to the tag.
- Employ both related general and specific tags
- Try to place your main target keyword close to the start of the phrase.
- Have 10-30 tags in total
When you have created tags for your videos, you should occasionally update them since the interests of searchers will inevitably shift over time for the highest continual visibility.
Optimize Thumbnails
Custom thumbnails are similar to the outside covers of books – they are very influential when it comes to attracting attention and clicks or impressions.
Some thumbnail optimization tips:
- However, one must use bright contrasting colors that stand out.
- Accompany the story with bright text containing keywords
- Display the human faces and emotions.
- Make sure any text can be seen in small sizes
- Use Figma To HTML Conversion as one of the tools to create visually appealing thumbnails
Experiment with thumbnail types and pictures to find out which Thumbnail kind is most effective in generating the highest CTR for each of your videos.
Focus on Audience Retention
YouTube considers viewers’ retention/engagement rates in its algorithm. This is likely to be deemed a low quality by YouTube if people quickly click away from the video.
Some ideas to improve audience retention:
- Capture the audience within the first 15 seconds
- Organize information so that the most essential is provided at the beginning
- Make certain the editing is of high quality as well as the images and music used.
- Use the question-answer format as a way of keeping the viewers active during their viewing time.
- Track performance metrics for improvements depending on the dropoff points
Longer videos of greater than 10 minutes should have an average percentage viewed greater than sixty percent.
Encourage Engagement
YouTube also takes into account social signals and engagement and thus you should try to be more active and get more comments, likes, and shares.
Some engagement-building tips:
- Pose questions to the viewers to draw out a conversation
- Ensure the creation of captivating custom thumbnails and titles
- Encourage the sharing of new uploads on social media platforms
- Use YouTube ads as frequent updates on new content to currently trending videos
- Join the discussion and respond to comments regularly
Gaining more subscribers will also ensure that each new video you post in the future gets a lot of views.
Leverage Cards and End Screens
You can add customizable INFO CARDS/END SCREENS on the videos that lead the viewers to watch more content, subscribe, etc.
Some best practices for cards and end screens:
- I am going to link my most viewed videos to the channel to help enhance the overall channel views.
- Suggest viewing the next episode in a series or subscribing to the channel
- The link to a related playlist or an external landing page
- Include poll cards for people to vote to further engage the viewers.
Promoting other videos and conversions in this way helps to increase engagement metrics, which in turn increases the ranking potential.
Include Transcripts
Adding video transcripts in the description or as CC closed captions serves SEO in multiple ways:
- Serves more textual content to search engines such as Google to crawl and establish topic relevance for
- Assists in the transcription of YouTube videos to improve them and sort them into the right category.
- Enhances clear viewing for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences
Transcripts also help in audience retention in the sense that they enable the viewers to scan and glean information much faster. If you are looking to add transcripts in volume, perhaps, it is about time to consider machine transcription services.
Optimize Channel Keywords
Besides, the keywords that need to be optimized are also the keywords for the YouTube channel, and they can be found in the “Metadata” section, which is located under “Basic Info” on the video page.
Select popular keywords that correspond to your general area of interest or your content area of focus. It will assist YouTube in grasping your channel’s significance at a broader conceptual level.
Collaborate With Influencers
Influencer shares or collaborations are one of the most effective ways of increasing reach. Find YouTubers other influencers or industry professionals from your niche that have an active and interested audience.
Some collaboration/promotion options:
- Sponsor influencer videos
- Gift products for reviews or unboxing videos
- Establish content partnerships for co-marketing
- Sharing guest posts on one another’s social media platforms
- Schedule video campaigns on a particular theme
Tap into these creators and their already engaged audience to gain more subscribers and viewers.
Compound Your Efforts
What is Compound SEO? The best approach to YouTube SEO is, in fact, the regular application of all of these optimization tips and tricks for a long time. It accumulates together for better visibility and rankings as well as viewership improvement.
Do not lose faith in the process if you don’t see immediate progress. The thing is that you need to publish lots of highly optimized content and track the data, adjust the approach, and get consistent rankings improvements month after month.
Conclusion
If you do the above YouTube SEO tips effectively, you are likely to see a change in your video and channel ranking in the long run. The strategies imply the expenditure of time and energy but add up to the exponential level when implemented in the long run.
In cases where you perform in-house YouTube SEO or you work with a professional YouTube SEO agency, ensure to optimize all aspects of the video including titles, thumbnail images, descriptions and tags, and overall audience engagement. Working with influencers also leverages already established viewership for a subscribership and traffic gain.
As you learned the best YouTube SEO tips for 2023, it is high time to make your videos and channel more SEO-friendly and rank higher! Use your analytics dashboards to focus on what gets the best results and keep refining it. By applying an evidence-based and focused strategy, you can create a widely searchable YouTube channel in your area of specialization.
