Video marketing has absolutely exploded in thelast few years and for good reason. Most people prefer to consume informationvia video rather than read a lengthy blog post. YouTube has over 1 Billionusers and has become the third-largest search engine so if it’s the best placefor you to publish your videos.
In this guide, we break down exactly how tooptimize your YouTube SEO.
Let’sdive in.
Optimize the Design of yourChannel
The first impression is really important somake sure that your channel banner and logo make sense to the user. Your bannershould clearly show what you do and what the user gets from watching yourvideos.
For example, if you’re Noah Kagan, awell-known marketer, you should put something about teaching your audience tomake more money or convert more leads into customers. If you’re a lifestyleinfluencer you should mention which topics you cover in your videos and howoften you publish.
Make sure that you include keywords orhigh-intent search words into your thumbnails. That means including words thatthe users will search for on YouTube. This is a strategy that’s good for bothusers and search engines because Google scans the text in your thumbnails anduses it to rank your video. And the user is more likely to click on your videoif your thumbnail has text that’s relevant to them and their search.
Ok, now that you know about the design of yourchannel, let’s talk about the content.
Include relevant keywords
As with all SEO best practices, it’s importantto include as many relevant keywords in your video descriptions and titles.YouTube prefers a description that’s a few paragraphs long and it’s really toyour advantage if you could write 3-5 paragraphs and include all the variouskeywords that you need.
ProTip: repurpose these few paragraphs of each of yourYouTube videos to create blog posts and post on your own blog as well assyndicate to other networks (LinkedIn articles, Medium, etc).
The title of your post is perhaps the mostimportant element of your video for SEO. One strategy we see perform well timeafter time is looking up the most viewed videos of similar channels to getideas for keywords and title formats.
For example, we noticed that in the last fewmonths home decor/lifestyle videos with the keyword “Dollar Tree Haul” haveabsolutely blown up. So a lot of YouTubers are creating videos around thistopic and using this keyword.
Become a master of Tags
Tags are really important for YouTube SEO,they’re equivalent to your regular hashtags on Facebook and Instagram. Thereare several tools that will display your competitors’ video tags so use them tomirror the tags of the most successful videos in your niche.
Don’t underestimate Playlists
Create custom playlists by grouping yourvideos into topics. Then include a keyword or several in the names of yourplaylist. This gives Google an even better idea of what your channel is aboutand may boost your rankings significantly.
Recap
YouTube is a powerful platform if you optimizeit for SEO. First, optimize the design of your channel banner and yourthumbnails. Then, write comprehensive descriptions for your videos as wellinclude keywords in your titles. Finally, use proper tagging and create somecustom playlists to further differentiate your channel from the competition.
If you follow these simple steps you will seemore traffic from your videos and more leads for your company.
