How do you SEO YouTube Videos? – Find Out in This Post!

Although many of you reading this may see YouTube as a social media channel, it’s actually a search engine. Just like with any other search engine, YouTube works with an algorithm. This means that you can optimise your videos to perform better on YouTube, resulting in more visibility for your brand.

In this post, we’ll teach you how to SEO YouTube videos!

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YouTube Keyword Research

The first step to optimise your YouTube videos is to find the right keyword(s) to target. By finding keywords with little competition and good search volume, you can increase your chances of ranking your YouTube videos. Here are a few tips on how to find the perfect keywords.

Use search suggestions

Try typing your topic and various variations into the YouTube search bar and see what suggestions you get. These suggestions are provided because people often search for them, meaning they can give you some great keyword ideas. This doesn’t give you a number of searches, but it does show you that it’s one of the most popular topics related to the word you type in. If it wasn’t, YouTube wouldn’t be recommending it.

Own ideas

Always make a list of your own keyword ideas. You can check them using the method covered above to ensure they’re being searched enough. There are always going to be keywords that are relevant that aren’t provided by a tool. At the end of the day, you know your topic best and therefor know what people will be searching for.

By searching for the keyword in YouTube, you can see what videos are ranking. Are they getting a lot of views? Do they contain the keyword in the title & description, or are they optimised for other keywords and rank for this one coincidentally? If there are some relevant videos that look like they’re optimised for this keyword, then you’ve got the right idea!

Competitors

Check out competitors and see what keywords their videos are targeting. You can filter videos based on most viewed which allows you to see what videos have gotten your competitors the most exposure. This allows you to reverse engineer their most popular videos.

Note: Don’t flat-out copy videos and always make sure you add your own opinions and flare to content you create.  

Google search

Say you want to know how many YouTube videos target the keyword “books for adults,” type the following into Google:

books for adults site:youtube.*

This searches all relevant pages (according to Google) on YouTube for your keyword.

Want to check if the page contains your exact keyword? Use:

 "books for adults" site:youtube.*

This will show only exact matches (in either the video transcription, title and/or description).

Keyword optimisation

Next, you need to optimise your YouTube video for your main keyword. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Use your keyword in the title (but don’t force it)
•  Use your keyword in the description (but don’t force it)
• Say your keyword in your video (Do this naturally, don’t force it in. YouTube makes a transcript of your video, allowing it to get more context from what is said)
• Use tags containing your keyword & variations

User optimisation

User optimisation may be even more important than keyword optimisation. At the end of the day, YouTube wants the best search results for its users, since this results in more video views which in turn means more revenue for YouTube. Optimising for a keyword is a good way of helping YouTube understand what your video is about but optimising for viewers is even more important to YouTube success. Here are some tips:

•  Make interesting/fun/exciting/unique content
•  Design a great thumbnail that will entice viewers to click on your video
• Write a title that helps people understand what the video is about and entices them to click through
•  Encourage social sharing, comments, likes and other engagement with your video

In the end, it’s usually a combination of choosing the right keyword and then optimising for this keyword that helps get your video in front of people. However, once there, it’s the quality of your video that’s going to make or break your success. By creating a good video and ensuring you get the basics of YouTube SEO down, you should see reasonable success with your video!

If you have any questions after reading this post, feel free to send us a message or give us a call!