There is only one search engine larger than YouTube: its parent company, Google. More than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and eight out of ten video search results are YouTube videos. What are some tips for avoiding getting lost among the sea of videos? The best way to optimize great videos for search is to follow video SEO best practices. You can create a solid YouTube SEO strategy by following these tips.
What is a YouTube SEO strategy?
YouTube SEO strategies often differ from traditional SEO strategies because the world’s second largest search engine has a unique algorithm. Optimizing your video for YouTube can impact your rank on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. If you’re not sure what to do with your YouTube channel, I highly recommend reading our guide on optimizing your YouTube channel. It’s a great starting point for anyone who’s looking to optimize their content for YouTube.
So how do you optimize your video for YouTube? Here are some of the most effective ways to make your videos more appealing to Google: Video Title Your title is the first thing viewers will see when they click on your video. The title is one of the most important elements of your video because it determines whether or not your viewer will watch the video. Ensure your title contains the following elements: Keywords relevant to your video’s content. A description of the video.
YouTube SEO Tips to Boost Ranking
Select A Great Keyword
It would help if you chose the right keyword or phrase for your video before you can boost YouTube SEO. Keywords are frequently found in video titles and metadata, as well as in captions and transcripts when spoken in the audio. For SEO, that’s a win-win situation.
It is important to match your keywords and phrases with a) whatever accurately describes your video and b) the words and phrases users enter into search engines to locate content like yours.
You’ll have to do some keyword research to discover what phrases and keywords people use in search. Search Suggest on YouTube is easy to find keywords for your video. YouTube will provide you with suggestions based on the words or phrases you type into the search bar.
Closed Captions Should Be Accurate
YouTube provides automatic captions by automatically transcribing your videos. The YouTube auto-captions, however, are only 70% accurate, making them often incomprehensible and embarrassing.
Helpful search results are rewarded by Google, whereas spam is penalized. “Auto-generated gibberish” is one of the definitions of spam, and most auto-captions fall into this category. YouTube channels with inaccurate captions may lose search rank and be labeled spam.
If you want to combat the detrimental effects of auto-captions on YouTube SEO, you will need to add accurate closed captions via an SRT file. Search engines can crawl text, but they cannot watch videos. Google will be able to crawl and rank your video according to your captions, which will be full of relevant keywords.
Add A Transcript to Your Video Description
On YouTube, the video description is the best way to display your transcript. It is usually enough for transcripts of 10-minute, dialogue-heavy videos to fit within the description field. You can include a truncated version with a link to the full transcript on a separate web page if your transcript doesn’t fit or you want to include other important information in the description.
Even though Backlink’s research found no correlation between keyword-rich descriptions and rankings for a particular term, keyword-rich descriptions are still recommended as they can help your video rank for related terms and appear as a suggested video.