Did you know that your YouTube videos have the potential to rank on Google? It’s for this reason that learning how to properly optimise them is a must.
Although short form video formats like TikTok are certainly enjoying their moment in the spotlight, there is one platform that is rightfully considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern day social media: YouTube. What’s more, is that despite its age, it’s still just as popular as ever.
While YouTube has been around since 2005, many of its commercial users still don’t realise that YouTube videos can be weaponised as a part of an SEO strategy. Otherwise known as search engine optimisation, this is the term we use to describe the optimisation of published content such as blogs, articles and even YouTube videos. While it can be tricky for beginners, ensuring that your content meets the technical guidelines can help to supercharge your results.
A Beginner’s Guide To Optimisation For YouTube Videos
Believe it or not, YouTube is actually the second-largest search engine in the world behind Google. Just like people search for products and need problems solved via Google, the same rings true on YouTube, as the algorithms are designed to pick up on particular phrases and words used in titles, descriptions, allocated categories and even tags. Think of it like a library indexing system.
Much like Google, YouTube also has its own set of ranking factors. Among them include video watch time, channel watch time, click through rates, upload frequencies, session duration and audience retention. For users who are able to meet these benchmarks, their content is often promoted first organically.
If you’re not already converted to the idea of optimising your YouTube videos to get more views, it’s also worth noting that your efforts may reward you on another platform as well. Applying SEO best practices to your YouTube videos may not only help you rank well on YouTube, but also on Google. That’s because depending on the topic, Google also includes YouTube videos in its search results, meaning that you could potentially get twice the amount of traffic – so where should you start?
Do Keyword Research – Keywords are the internet’s way of indexing the context and relevance of what your content is all about. Both Google and YouTube use keywords to crawl content and appropriately categorise it, so that the platforms can effectively deliver the right results. As such, if you want to rank for a particular topic, use keywords linked to it in your YouTube videos.
Deploy Optimised Titles – The title of your video is often your one and only moment to hook in potential viewers, so it’s important to make every character count. Although it’s deemed to be unethical to use your video title to trick users into clicking, you do need to write something enticing that motivates potential viewers into action, while still including your keywords.
Video File Names – Not many people seem to know this one, but did you know that including your keyword to your original video file when uploading can also help with optimisation? For such a simple hack, this is an incredibly easy way to help optimise your YouTube videos without going overboard in text that the general public can see.
Write Video Descriptions – Did you know that YouTube videos have a description section that can fit anywhere between 700 and 1200 words? As this is the average blog post length, use this section to embed your keywords, while still providing as much information that you can about the context of the video itself.
Don’t Forget About Tags – Tags help YouTube categorise your video. As an example, if you’re posting a video about surfing in Hawaii, you might use tags like surfing, Hawaii and Waikiki Beach. Your audience won’t see your YouTube tags but the internal algorithms certainly will, so take this opportunity to deploy relevant keywords without putting off your audience.
Although original content that packs a punch like YouTube videos is essential if you want to gain traction online, the downside is that producing quality content takes time, effort, experience and resources. While you’re not alone if you can’t quite commit to that, the good news is that there’s never been a better time to consider outsourcing to the professionals.
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
