Did you know…YouTube is the second biggest search engine, after Google?
Just like you need to optimise your website content for your business keywords (to maximise it’s visibility within search), you also need to optimise your YouTube content for search.
I’ve been asked 3 times in the past week by different clients about how to optimise YouTube videos, so I thought I would document some quick tips in a blog.
Keyword Research
Google Keyword Planner
Before you can go about optimising YouTube videos you firstly need to know what keywords to optimise them for.
If you are not already aware of keywords you would like the content to be found for you can use Google’s Keyword Planner to type in words people might use to search for your videos, products and services.
For example, if I was a car garage that fixed convertible car roofs I would want to do research around the keyword “Car roof repair”. Google’s keyword planner will give you ideas around what other keywords might be useful for optimising content for, as well volumes around how many people search for those keywords on a monthly basis.
The only drawback with this tool is you need to have a Google Ads account.
Below – I added “car roof repair” into the keyword planner and it has suggested other keyword ideas:
Some of these words may not be relevant so just use the ones that are. In this case: “convertible roof repair” “convertible roof specialists”.
YouTube Search Bar
As well as the keyword planer tool, you can also use YouTube’s search bar for keyword inspiration. This is easier to access than the keyword planner tool. Start typing a keyword and you will see YouTube suggest other keywords:
Google Search
You can also do this within Google search and look at the people also asked bar:
Done your keyword research?
Now it’s time to optimise your videos. We will be looking at the following areas:
- Video Title
- Video Description
- Video Tags
- Video Thumbnails
Video Title
- Keywords in your video title are important in helping YouTube understand what your video is about. Relevant keywords can help your video appear more easily in related search results and suggested video recommendations. It’s a good idea to place any keywords at the front of the title and any branded words at the end. E.g. ‘How to check the drains are clear on a BMW Z4 E85 {company name}”.
However, don’t feel like you need to add in your company name for no reason – in that example I would just leave it as “How to check the drains are clear on a BMW Z4 E85” - Optimise your video title for display on mobile. Mobile only displays the first 50 characters of the title
- Your titles shouldn’t just be a list of keywords, they should be compelling, descriptive and useful. They should be relevant to the content and encourage someone to watch the video
Do not:
- Publish a video without checking your title first
- Include keywords in your title that are misleading
Video Description
- The beginning of your video description is very important as it shows up in search results. Only the first 1-2 sentences will show above the fold. This means you should put the most interesting information first
- Always include links to traffic traffic to your website or to other videos on YouTube
- Always include a call to action in your video description. E.g. Find out more about how clear your drains here: (link to relevant blog post)
- Make sure you add a default description to every video about your business and channel then add a more relevant description above that which relates to the video content
Video Tags
- There is no right or wrong amount of tags the most important thing is relevance
- Have some general keyword tags that can be applied to any video you publish as well as some specific ones for each video around the content of the video
- List tags in order of relevance to the video
Video Thumbnails
YouTube recommends that your thumbnails are high-resolution, bright and high contrast and have visually compelling imagery.
- Thumbnail specs: 1280x 720pixels .JPG, .GIF, .BMP or .PNG
- Think – would your thumbnail stand out among others?
Hope you found those quick YouTube SEO tips useful for optimising YouTube videos.
