It is every video creator’s dream to get their video ranked on the first page of Youtube. YouTube, Google, etc. all these search engines are very similar yet use different algorithms to rank their pages. For the question, why would one want to rank on YouTube?The answer is very direct; it is the second largest search engine only after its parent company, Google. Every 8 out of 10 video searches are Youtube videos. Many don’t have any other video streaming channel in mind, thus making it the dream place for video producers’ .It is a fact, that there are about 500 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute.
So, how do you avoid getting lost in the sea of videos? Your best possible bet is to produce and publish great videos and then optimize them according to SEO needs. To your aid are below given tips to creating a solid Youtube SEO strategy and rank higher on Youtube.
Here are some tips to help your videos climb up on the rankings:
Keyword Research
Before starting to rank your video on Youtube, one Question which you need to ask yourself: What is the search term you want to rank for?
When searching for Youtube SEO keywords, make sure you choose among the strong one, the ones on the first page. Some keywords like “Content Strategy” don’t have any video searches shown. Thus always try keeping your keywords as:
- How-to
- Reviews of products or services
- Funny videos
- Tutorials
- Fitness or sport related, etc.
By starting with the keyword whose results lead to Youtube videos showing up in SERPs, you can work in improving the rank on Google searches alongside Youtube too.
To help you find the required keywords tools which come in handy include: KeywordTool.io, Keyword Planner, Keys4up, etc.
Increase your engagement rates
Engagement is also an important matrix for YouTube. Always try to ensure that you ask your viewers to comment, like and share. Attracting comments is an important aspect of optimizing your video. Try to ensure that you are able to get your customers and subscribers to comment.
Optimizing for Longer Watch-time
Your video’s quality or content should be such that it forces one to watch it completely or if not fully, for longer time. YouTube consultants always say this thing out:
“YouTube wants viewers to watch more and click less”
This reflects the main criteria for the ranking: The longer people engage with your videos and actively watch your content, the higher the chances for your video to be ranked on YouTube videos. In YouTube Studio, watch time is called Audience Retention. It is a record of the effectiveness of your video towards keeping people hooked to it. While optimizing your videos your main goal should be making at least 50% of your viewers stay for more than 50% of your videos.(The 50% – 50% rule and 100% higher ranking)
Adding a Transcript to Video Description
Video description is the one thing taken very lightly while uploading videos. However, it is the best option for displaying your transcript on YouTube. A total of 4,850 words can fit in the description area. Enough to fit a heavy 10 min video transcript! However, if your transcript is long and wouldn’t fit in, you can always add a truncated version of it in the description with a link to the full version leading to another webpage.
The video description acts as the prime spot for search engines to crawl. They cannot store words from videos but it is text-to text keyword matches what they look for. Your transcript being SEO friendly and keyword-optimized acts as a great fuel to YouTube SEO.
Interesting Ways marketers are taking advantage of Video transcripts:
Once the video has been transcribed, the transcript can be used to boost SEO by creating useful, audience friendly and shareable content. Some uses include:
- Blogs
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
- Website copy, etc.
Thus, acting as a shortcut to your content marketing.
Things to mind while Creating your Video
This is the very next step after finding the keyword to rank for. The main reason a person or viewer is on YouTube is pretty obvious, purpose of watching videos. Thus, the production quality becomes more important. The 3 key elements which come in handy while coming up with a great YouTube video include:
- Storytelling
- Editing
- Composition
Mastering these three key elements, would help increase your ranking and keep you in good books of Youtube.
Optimizing your Video content
Along with the description, the other two things which need to be optimized are- Titles and Tags.
Try keeping the main keywords in the top 2 lines of the description.
Title and tags are the first things which come in the view of the viewers. It is pretty simple to keep them optimized. Put the keywords you have chosen in the tag section and nowhere else since, we don’t want Youtube to rank us for a big list of keywords. Keep things simple for yourself and the viewers too.
Translate your video transcripts and offer subtitles in multiple languages.
When looking for views you never know in which country or place your video might hit. Thus, keep your video accessible to as many countries or languages as possible. A very effective example for this is the song- “DESPACITO”, I am pretty sure you all might have heard it long back .Now who would have wondered a Spanish song would hit globally and add to the top 2B view party videos. Now imagine if it wasn’t accessible to all countries we all would have missed this musical delight.
Now is the time to go for translating and subtitling your videos which are another way of increasing the accessibility. Foreign language subtitles let international and non-native English speaking viewers enjoy your videos. Even more exciting: Search engines will index your translated caption files and include your video in search results in various other languages. This can be huge for YouTube SEO, since you have a better chance of ranking higher for non-English keywords due to lower competition available.
Promote, Promote and Promote!!
Now that you have successfully optimized your content and published you video, the only thing left in your hand to do is PROMOTE!
The first few days after the publishing, decides the ranking of your video. You need this time to promote your video in every way possible. The publishing of content be it a video, blog or article would bring in a wave in market if and only if, it had reached each and every eye. Thus, don’t let the cyclone cool down, let you content float everywhere. Now with social media in hand the ways to promote have been very much simplified than olden days.
Apply these following tips to your videos and you are sure to find your videos in the top ranks of YouTube.