YouTube is the biggest video platform worldwide. It is also the second-largest search engine right after Google (which has also owned YouTube since 2006).
Via this channel, people consume tons of audiovisual content across the internet. Businesses saw this as a great opportunity to develop their video marketing strategy.
As time went by, it became harder for online users to find videos of interest on YouTube. It is the reason why the platform organized its content with a powerful search engine.
All search engines work based on an algorithm that ranks content & delivers the most relevant results for each query. This article explains how to get the most from YouTube SEO.
What is YouTube SEO?
YouTube SEO is the process of optimizing videos published on your media platform so viewers can find them. It follows the principles of Search Engine Optimization on YouTube’s environment.
Digital marketers also call “YouTube SEO” by “video SEO” or simply “vSEO.”
YouTube Objective
Most people prefer watching videos rather than reading content. Successful blogs usually embed transcript videos besides the images & plain text. Usually, 3-minute videos tend to beat 15-minute-read articles.
The video format grows within the multimedia world. That’s why the YouTube platform is so popular. To satisfy this demand, YouTube has a double purpose:
- Ease the video search to online viewers
- Keep people watching as much as possible
In 2022, users uploaded around 300 hours of videos every minute on their YouTube channels. It represented a total of 5 billion videos watched daily.
The competition is high, thus the importance of understanding how the YouTube algorithm works.
YouTube Algorithm
Like Google, YouTube SEO is based on market data & online users’ behavior.
The algorithm collects any information like how people interact with suggested videos (the list on the right side of the channel) or how they click to search & watch content.
We will see below how to optimize videos following YouTube’s algorithm. Before that, please find here the most important metrics that the platform tracks regarding the users’ profiles:
- Past video watched history
- Time watched
- Video likes & dislikes
- User feedback
This data affects the way the algorithm returns video results when YouTube users perform a search.
How to Rank Your Videos?
Like Google, YouTube’s algorithm is complex & includes many factors.
To rank high, videos must please YouTube’s algorithm & online users. The indicators of video attractiveness are:
- Number of views
- Number of subscriptions
- Number of comments
- Number of video likes
Following this, the algorithm surfaces the right videos to the right people at the right time. The most desirable videos are those going to the top.
Unlike on websites, there are no backlinks on YouTube. It means the platform cannot evaluate the video quality on referrals. It mostly relies on audience retention & interaction.
YouTube Keywords
To optimize YouTube videos, the first step is to conduct keyword research. What are the terms & queries that people are inputting when looking for videos?
Those key phrases are a gold mine to maximize the chances of ranking high. When a video matches keywords that people are looking for, the algorithm makes it more visible.
There are many ways to select the right keywords. The purpose of this work is to choose terms that:
- Are relevant to the video
- Have enough search volume
- Are not too competitive
Once you identify those keywords, follow the checklist in the next section.
For the keyword research work, we recommend using Ahrefs Keywords Explorer > YouTube. It is a paid & great tool.
Otherwise, you can also consider using the YouTube Search Suggest feature which works pretty much like Google’s, as it gives you a list of terms that people actually type on YouTube.
YouTube SEO Checklist
Once you have your keywords, make sure to optimize your videos following this checklist:
- Video file name
- Video title
- Video category
- Thumbnail
- Description
- Tags
- Transcriptions & closed captions
- Video length
- Cards & end screens
Edit your file name before uploading the video to the platform. Replace names like video_0123456789.mp4 with something like topic_name_including_keyword.mp4.
The video title is one of the first pieces of information that people see. Make it both descriptive & appealing. Use your main key phrase. Good titles length around 60 characters (100 being the maximum).
When you upload your video on YouTube, you can set its category in the advanced settings. Use this option as it is a great & simple way to markup your content.
With the video title, the thumbnail is one of the first touchpoints between the viewer & your video. Choose a great image & make sure it differentiates enough from the other suggested videos.
The video description gives you the opportunity to share content with no length limitation. Use keywords & add social links to get the most out of it.
Tags have some impact on the video visibility & categorization. It will also showcase related videos to the viewers. A rule of thumb is to include from 5 to 10 tags per video.
Transcriptions & closed captions help YouTube understand the media content. Unlike the video itself, the search engines can crawl them. They make a difference to get the edge over competitors.
Overall, longer videos perform better as they match with the platform’s purpose, which is to keep YouTube users watching media as long as possible. Of course, content must remain useful.
The cards & end screens display interactive info on the screen that links to other videos. This trick lengthens the watching time. We recommend creating video series & playlists.
To monitor those vSEO factors, use the free vidIQ Chrome extension.
YouTube SEO Wrap Up
As we saw, it is harder to optimize YouTube videos than online text content. Search engines cannot index this media format. Marketers must find other ways to rank their videos.
Refer to the checklist from the previous section when you consider YouTube SEO. If you follow it, you cannot go wrong.
Last tip: when you embed your videos to your website, mark them up with structured data. It will encourage the rich snippets to feature your videos.
If you need experts to take care of this task, work with vSEO professionals to optimize your videos.