By You recently uploaded a video to your YouTube channel. Congratulations! But do you know that someone may not know that you have a new video on the platform? In fact, your series of video uploads on YouTube may “gather dust” as no one would watch them.
Why you may ask? The reason is not far-fetched from visibility. You see, traffic is the lifeblood of any online platform, be it a website, a blog, or in your case – a YouTube channel. When more persons get to visit your channel and watch your videos, the number of views will go up as well.
But it takes time and in most cases a mastery of keyword optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are no longer limited to blogs, as YouTube videos also need a bit of that. In this article, you are going to discuss some of the best practices to increase your video viewership with YouTube SEO.
YouTube Statistics
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YouTube is one of the top video-sharing platforms right now. According to Wikipedia, YouTube has “the most extensive catalog of online videos.” This is in addition to the fact that the platform had over 2 billion active users as of October 2020.
Statista reports that the YouTube platform had about 81% reach in the United States where most of the users leveraged the platform to access educational clips, DIYs, and gaming videos.
These facts and figures lay credence to the fact that YouTube is one of the best platforms for any video content creator.
3 YouTube SEO Tips for Organic Ranking of Your Videos
If you are looking to rank your YouTube videos organically, here are the top 3 strategies to use. They have been used by several creators and the results have been awesome.
Tip #1: Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are the terms or phrases that people on YouTube enter in the search bar when looking for specific videos. This can be used to your advantage only if you know how to do keyword research.
I leave below some tips on how to conduct effective keyword research to increase the organic ranking of your videos:
1. Spy on Your Competitors
Already, there are millions of YouTube channels. The chances are that 3 out of 10 of these channels cover some of the topics you want to cover. Thus, they are your competitors. Consider spying on them!
Here are creative ways to spy on your YouTube competitors to conduct keyword research:
- Visit Authoritative Channels: One of the best SEO practices is the EAT strategy, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. In terms of being authoritative, you are looking for YouTube channels from leaders in your industry. For example, if you are in the SEO niche, Brian Dean’s and Neil Patel’s YouTube channels are the two leading channels where you can check for keywords. Once you are on these channels, search for the top-ranking videos or videos relating to the topic you want to cover. Go through the description and title to see the top keywords used there.
- Use the YouTube Search Bar: Another keyword research strategy on YouTube is to use the built-in search bar. For example, if you are creating content for “Digital Marketing,” type the words “Digital Marketing” into the search bar. Wait for a few seconds. YouTube will show some suggestions based on that keyword. You can copy out some of those suggestions because being there means that users have been looking them up recently.
2. Use Keyword Tools
Consider using keyword tools to make your YouTube SEO research. SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, UberSuggest and Moz.com can help you come up with a list of profitable keywords to use in your YouTube videos.
Tip #2: Optimize the Video Around the Target Keywords
The next YouTube SEO tip is to optimize the videos you are uploading around the keywords you are targeting. Let’s say you are looking to rank the video for “Digital Marketing,” some keywords you can use for the optimization are:
- Digital marketing for beginners
- Digital marketing course
- Digital marketing strategy
- Digital marketing tutorial
Now that you know the keywords to use, how do you place them? Here are creative ways to do that:
- Use the target keyword in the video’s title. For example, you can use the keyword “Digital Marketing” this way: How to Do Digital Marketing in 2022. Also, ensure that the target keyword naturally fits into the title so it doesn’t look like you are trying to put the keyword there rather than making the title meaningful.
- Include the target keyword in the video’s description. You can both the primary keyword and the LSIs while writing different sentences to explain what the video is all about. You have up to 5,000 characters – that’s a lot of space to cover the most important keywords!
- Now, it is possible to use Chapters in YouTube videos. This refers to the most important parts or sections of the video. You can also tap into this by adding some of the keywords relating to the video when writing the title of those chapters.
- Say the keyword in the video itself. That is, if you are looking to rank for “Digital Marketing,” you can say it this way: “If you are looking to venture into digital marketing this year, I have some tips for you.”
Further Reading:
- 10 Best YouTube Video Ideas for Beginners in 2022
- 5 Reasons Your Brand Should Introduce Video to Its Marketing Strategy
Tip #3: Use Transcripts and Closed Captions
It is clear that YouTube’s algorithm isn’t so fine-tuned to work with videos and images. Rather, it deals mostly with codes and texts. With transcripts and closed captions, you can organically rank your videos.
Start by uploading an SRT file that contains the transcribed version of the video. What this does is that YouTube will transcribe most of the spoken words in the video into text. By the time you set up the closed captions, it becomes easier for viewers to get more information about the video.
Add some of the keywords you are targeting to the SRT file so they can be transcribed into text on the screen as the video is playing.
Wrapping Up
Ranking your videos on YouTube organically is practical. You have to keep trying different strategies until you get a couple of strategies that work for your channel’s optimization. Now, take better advantage of the YouTube SEO tips in this article to rank your videos. Don’t forget – quality matters. Make your video valuable and precise so that the viewers would be delighted to spend more time watching (which signals to YouTube that the video is cool). Who knows, they could share the link to the video with their friends. Before you know it, your video will go viral!
