4 Important YouTube Guides for SEO
You probably have heard wonders about YouTube ads. In fact, you may have seen those good things in action on your own marketing strategy! But don’t you wish there was a more cost-effective way to reach out to your YouTube audience?
Research Your Potential Keywords
Keyword research helps identify which terms the audience searches for the most. When it comes to YouTube, there are a few cost-effective ways in which you can carry out this task:
• Looking at the Search Suggestions
Yep, as simple as that. The keywords YouTube offers as suggestions to complete your search can be a great starting point for your SEO strategy since they represent the most searched terms. So, pick a broad keyword related to your content and see what YouTube users have been searching about it!
• Visiting Related Channels
You can always learn from other’s mistakes and achievements. Pay special attention to which keywords and topics are working out for them and which don’t pique much interest among the audience.
• Handling Google Trends
If you already have a few keywords in mind, Google Trends is the tool for you. The coolest part is that you can also use it for Google, and all it takes is to register!
Choose Your Ideal Keywords
The moment you finish your research, you’ll find yourself with a list of different keywords. Looking at them, you’ll notice that the simplest and shortest keywords are more popular than those that are quite specific. Your first instinct might be to go with those popular ones, but you should give that a second thought.
You see, those keywords are usually too generic. When you search for them, millions of results come up. That translates into millions of videos competing with yours for the audience’s attention.
On the other hand, longer and more specific terms – often known as long-tail keywords – throw fewer results, so they involve less competition on the SERP.
Sure, fewer people search for those keywords, but you can use that to your advantage. If your video is inspired by a particular long-tail keyword, you can ensure viewers searching for that term find precisely what they are looking for on your video. You would have a somewhat smaller audience, but also a more involved one, as they would be likely to click on your video
Time to Put your Keywords to Work!
After you have chosen your ideal keywords, it’ll be time to put them into action. You need to include your keywords on your video metadata so that YouTube crawlers can identify what your content is about. Let’s see the elements you need to optimize at this stage:
• The Title
It’s up to you to decide which keywords to put on your title, but remember there’s one you can’t leave out of this spot: your focus keyword.
That’s the professional way of calling your main keyword – the one that represents your video the most and whose searches interest you particularly.
The thing is that the video’s title not only affects your SEO from a keyword-oriented point of view. It also plays a big part in your Click-Through Rate, which is another vital factor the YouTube algorithm takes into account. For this reason, you need to create a title that’s compelling enough for the audience to click on it.
• The Description
The description box gives you enough room for writing a brief text regarding your video while using your chosen keywords. This helps the YouTube crawlers identify what your video is about and present it in the appropriate search.
It also helps the viewer decide whether to click on your video or keep scrolling down the results page.
• The Transcript
A transcript is a text file that contains every dialogue or narration said in your video. Why does it matter? Because YouTube crawlers are still incapable of processing audiovisual content, but they can go through text.
Put simply, if you pair your video with a transcript – whether written by a human, a speech recognition software, or both – the words you mention on your video can count as keywords. This results in a heavier and more diverse keyword density.
Want a little pro tip? Mention your focus keyword in the first 15 seconds of your video and unleash your transcript’s full SEO potential.
Optimize Your Content for SEO
You probably think that Search Engine Optimization is one of the last steps in a video marketing campaign. It makes sense – after all, SEO plays a part in the video’s distribution through YouTube or other digital channels. But it may surprise you to know a superb video SEO strategy begins on the script.
• The Script’s Length
YouTube SEO algorithm has a soft spot for longer videos, and it’s not hard to understand why: these videos make the audience hang out longer on the platform! Moreover, long videos are often related to quality content, as many – quite logically – assume there was a lot of effort put into its production.
It’s essential you know how your video’s length affects its ranking on the SERP. There are many other factors that also influence your SEO, like watch-time, likes, and shares – all elements that can be at stake if your video spends too much time revolving around empty content.
• The Introduction
Here’s another factor YouTube takes into account when defining your video’s ranking: Audience Retention, a metric that stands for how long viewers watch your video.
The ideal scenario would be that most viewers stay until the very end. That’s easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. You just need to learn how to keep your audience gripped from the very beginning.
You can start by mentioning or implying what they’ll gain by watching the full video. This value needs to be consistent with whatever your title, description, and thumbnail have promised – remember that viewers have clicked on your video expecting that.
• The CTAs
Videos that result in new subscribers and loads of comments, likes, and shares tend to perform better on the SERP.
That is probably the most challenging YouTube SEO factor since you can’t control how people engage with your video. You can influence their decisions by prompting them into leaving comments, liking, subscribing, and sharing. That’s why it’s so important to include CTAs on your YouTube video’s script.
How many CTAs? That depends greatly on your video’s length, but to give you an idea, you would find three CTAs on 10-to-20-minute videos: one placed when finishing the introduction, another one halfway through the video, and a last one at the very end.
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