20 Sep YouTube SEO – Quick Guide to Rank your Video
As we all know, YouTube is the second biggest search engine, 300 hours of video content uploaded every minute from creators all around the world and there are 5 Billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. Huge numbers!
This huge user base makes YouTube a very important channel for marketers to reach targeted audience segment.
In this post, we are going to talk about how you can get a good amount of organic traffic to your YouTube video with some super cool YouTube SEO techniques.
Topics Covered
Let’s first talk why videos are important in marketing and why you should need to include in your strategy.
The media is always attracting people. When a picture says a thousand words, a video presents more value than that. A 1000 words tutorial post can be explained with a 2-4 minute of video more effectively.
In the digital marketing, each channel, where our targeted audience spends time is important. And no-doubt each internet user spends some time watching videos on YouTube or other video streaming platform on daily basis.
Using videos you can represent your brand more efficiently with high user engagement. Video marketing will always be going to help you reach a targeted audience.
Let’s start the YouTube SEO guide. How you can rank your video on YouTube & Google search results.
Step 1: Keyword Research For Video
There are some queries where video results better compared to a web page in Google search.
The trick here is to find such keywords where video-rich results are ranking better than a web page on Google, and rank your video on that spot. This way your video will get a good amount of traffic from outside the YouTube, and it will rank batter compared to other videos on YouTube search.
Search for “how to tie shoelace” in Google will give you first two results with a YouTube video. This type of actionable keywords is better for ranking in Google SERP. These keywords are known as “video keywords”.
Product reviews (gadgets mostly), how-to’s and tutorials are the most search queries that get this type of search results. If you target this type of keywords for your video, you will get traffic from Google searches that will boost your video rankings on YouTube.
Action:
> Start searching your topic related phrases in Google and find video rich result keywords.
> Then use SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner to check if your selected keywords get good search volume monthly if it is 300 or more, select it for your next video.
This way, combining YouTube and Google searches, your video will get decent traffic.
Step 2: Create The Video
After selecting the video keyword, create a super useful video that provides some unique value to the users and solves problems.
You can hire professionals for video shooting and editing. It will not cost you much as your video hardly cross 10 minutes. Moreover, there are some software available for video editing that will help you if you are running low on budget.
2 points to consider for video creation:
1. Video length
2. Video quality
Video Length
Create a minimum of 5 min length video. If you look at any YouTube search query results, high-length videos are ranking better compared to short one as good length represents more in-depth values.
You can simply search your keyword on YouTube to see the average length of videos ranking on top 5.
Another point with long length video is YouTube’s one of the ranking factors is the number of total minutes your video watched. If your video is of small length, even if you will get a good amount of traffic, the total number of minutes users spent on your video will be less.
Take an example,
If you uploaded 2-minute video and it gets 1000 views, if we consider each user watched the full video, you will get 2000 minutes of the total watch.
Where, in another case, if you uploaded 5 minutes of video and get 500 views (half of the first case), still you will get 500 * 5 = 2500 total minutes of the watch. This will strongly affect the ranking.
The ideal video length is 10 to 12 minutes, where you will get enough time to explain your topic and user will not get bored and jump off from video without a complete watch.
Video Quality:
Video quality matters in user experience as well as in video ranking. You can see, most of the video ranking on top are HD. you do not need to go for 4K resolution. A good high -quality camera will work. Low quality with noise or disturbance will distract users and they will move on another video. So make sure your video contains good video and audio quality.
You can see, most of the video ranking on top are HD. you do not need to go for 4K resolution. A good high -quality camera will work. Low quality with noise or disturbance will distract users and they will move on another video. So make sure your video contains good video and audio quality.
Parameters YouTube Considers
View Duration:
The percentage of your video user watch. If the user completes 60% or more video length, it considered as good, but the more, the better. To improve the video retention you can create more engaging video and need to add value points till the end.
Comments:
Comments show users are engaged with your video. To increase the comments on your video you can ask questions or the opinion of users and start a discussion on comment section by actively replying to the user’s comments.
Subscribe:
If people subscribe to your channel after watching the video, it sends a big signal that your video is delivering value to the user’s query.
Shares And Favorites:
Shares indicate the user liked the video and it is useful for others. Favorites and watch latter also represents a similar value which is good for rankings.
Likes:
The video with more thumbs up likely to fulfill the content what user was searching for. These all matrices combined to give a boost to video and help rank it better.
Step 3: Upload The Video
You have created high-quality (resolution + content) video and now it is time to upload it on YouTube. Take care of below matrics for proper YouTube SEO
#1: Video Title
The video title is the most affecting SEO factor in YouTube. Make your video title more than 5 words including one or two targeted keywords. Don’t spam it with too many keywords. The user will read the title before clicking on the video, so make it natural, catchy and Focused/relevant to the topic.
As per backlinko.com if you put the keyword at the beginning of the title, it will give a small boost.
#2: Description
This is the space we get where we can include other keywords along with a description of the video. YouTube can’t listen to the video and for ranking, they need to depend on the text we provide the title and description.
Make sure you write a minimum of 200 words description including targeted keywords 2-3 times. Try to add your main keyword once in the first line or first paragraph. This will also help in Google SERP, where the link preview-text will be starting lines of your video description. So use it wisely.
#3: Tags
Tags are no longer considered in ranking factors but still, it is very important. Tags will help you show-up your video on “related video” section from where you will get decent traffic.
If user watching a video and not find the information they are looking for, they will go to “related videos” field to find another similar one. When adding tags, again. Don’t spam it with irrelevant tags. Add tags that make sense to your videos and the terms used in your video.
You can use a TubeBuddy chrome extension to see which tags are used by your competitors.
#4: Video Thumbnail Image
Video thumbnail is the main video preview which users see on first place. you will get a small space to show users exactly what about your video is. don’t use too bright colors in try to get attention, and don’t make it dull as well. you can use some text and normal graphics to make our video thumbnail or a snap from your video also will work.
YouTube gives you the option to select a thumbnail from 3 suggestions from your video at upload time, or you can upload your customized thumbnail image.
How To Get Your First 500 High-Quality Views?
Here are some ways you can reach to the audience and get video views.
Share With The Present Audience
If you have some audience segment already like in form of groups on different social media and forums you can share the video with them on the relevant discussion. Don’t rain your links on group feed. Post when your link will help others.
Post Answer On Q&A Sites
Quadra and Yahoo! answers are the great places to ask questions. Find related posts by users where your video can help solve that problem and provide a link or embed your video.
You can embed your video with an explained answer on Quora. You will get high-quality views from this method as users are already searching for a similar solution.
Embed Video in Website/Blog Post
This way you will get another source of traffic to your video and reader will get a good explanation with video without going to other sites while reading.
If your blog already ranking well for that keyword, your video will also rank well on Google SERP and YouTube both.
End-Post Hack:
If you want a high ranking video on YouTube, you can find the video keyword, create a video on that topic explaining already ranking website’s content in that video with good quality, and then offer that video to blog or website owner to embed in their post which is ranking on Google. This way you will get better traffic from the very beginning and the blog writer will able to serve more value to their reader. This way your video will boost ranking on YouTube.
Start uploading the video but this time, wait and think about the steps discussed above and your video will surely rank on #1 spot.
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