From Basic to Advanced YouTube SEO: How to Optimize Your Videos

November 5, 2022

This YouTube SEO guide includes basic to advanced recommendations on how to learn about YouTube ranking variables and how to optimize for them.

By aggressively pursuing users who are looking for your videos, YouTube SEO can assist in expanding the audience for your material.

You must first determine the subjects that people are looking for.

Then, you must understand the rationale behind YouTube’s video ranking system.

Finally, you’ll discover how to apply everything you are learning.

This post will go over each of the three YouTube SEO pillars and show you how to position your videos to outrank competitors.

Introduction to YouTube SEO

Advanced YouTube SEO: Video content is the best medium for reaching a wide audience, and its use is increasing as more cutting-edge technology enters the market.

People have generally always appreciated and occasionally even relied upon video content. Fun fact: Films aided in our recovery from the Great Depression.

Since then, video has only gotten more popular (hello, Internet! ), practical, and well-produced. Anyone with a computer today can quickly access YouTube from almost anywhere in the globe.

But how can marketers make their content stand out against “the other guys” now that so many people are posting videos to the internet and there is so much video content already online, which is growing significantly in volume every day?

Use these fundamental and sophisticated suggestions to outperform other video publishers who aren’t utilizing video SEO strategies.

Determine the Target Keywords

Advanced YouTube SEO: As with optimizing a website for Google, keyword research is the first step in optimizing a video for YouTube’s search results.

You can make sure you’re producing and optimizing content that people are actually searching for by giving this phase of the YouTube SEO strategy priority.

Starting on YouTube itself, the keyword research process begins. The search box is a data mine because the autosuggestion is based on actual user searches.

When you begin typing a word or phrase associated with your specialization, a list of popular search terms appears:

Click on a recommendation you think will make a good video, and you’ll see which channels already rank

If you know where to look, you can learn a lot from these channels. Start by looking at their most well-liked videos.

best-performing material.

When you go to a channel’s page, you’ll notice right away that a section is devoted to its best-performing material.

Given that you’re receiving ideas from videos that have been shown to be popular with viewers, this is a wonderful place to find keyword inspiration.

Advanced YouTube SEO: Let’s assume, using the aforementioned example, that you’ve decided “Google Easter egg” is a potential subject for your upcoming film.

So far, all indications point to that being a good keyword. To be certain, though, we need further evidence.

We need evidence that people are looking for the topic specifically on YouTube and that there aren’t already too many videos on it.

By conducting a Google search for your keyword, you can make sure it isn’t overly competitive.

You may determine how many videos there are already on YouTube regarding that subject by using the site:’ command.

Lower is preferable. I would advise starting over and choosing a different one if your search yields more than 500K results.

Advanced YouTube SEO: As seen in the screenshot above, there are roughly 168K YouTube videos about “Google Easter egg.” That indicates that it is approved to move on to the following stage.

The final round of keyword research utilizes a well-known tool.

Why?

People can now find videos through Google’s search results in addition to on YouTube. Therefore, you should pick a keyword that works for both search engines.

Once more, the objective is to identify a keyword that is in demand yet isn’t extremely crowded. The ideal amount of Google Keyword Planner average monthly searches is 1,000 or less to attain that sweet spot.

Let’s use the same illustration to determine whether the “Google Easter egg” satisfies the last condition.

The keyword “Google Easter egg” is highly likely to do well on YouTube because it satisfies all requirements for a good keyword.

It’s critical to comprehend the aspects you’re optimizing for and why before learning how to optimize YouTube videos. The ranking criteria for YouTube’s algorithm covering in the following section.

Recognizing YouTube SEO Ranking Elements

Advanced YouTube SEO: The first thing to know about video optimization is that YouTube uses two different algorithms.

The ranking of material on YouTube’s home page and suggested videos is determined by the recommendation algorithm.

The search algorithm also determines how the material is ranked in YouTube’s search results.

All information in the following paragraphs and throughout this article refers to YouTube’s search algorithm. See Search Engine Journal’s explanation of the YouTube recommendation algorithm for further information on how the site recommends videos to users.

Even if there are some ranking indicators that both algorithms use, it’s crucial to recognize the differences.

After making that distinction, let’s go on to the main part of this section.

Search Ranking Elements on YouTube

Advanced YouTube SEO: When sorting through search results, YouTube’s search algorithm gives the following four considerations top priority:

Relevance: Take into account elements like the video’s title, hashtags, description, and actual content.
Engagement measures things like likes, subscribers, comments, notifications turned on, and watch time.
Quality: Consists of signals that can use to identify channels that are knowledgeable, credible, and authoritative about a particular subject.
Personalization: By considering a user’s search and viewing history, YouTube aims to identify the most pertinent results for each individual user.
When users search for news, politics, or medical or scientific information on YouTube, the search engine’s algorithm gives authoritative content a higher priority.

YouTube is more likely to consider signals like relevancy, freshness, or popularity when deciding which videos to display in other categories, like music or entertainment.

Using YouTube SEO in Real Life

Advanced YouTube SEO: YouTube allows viewers to manually enter a title, description, and tags as well as select the best video thumbnail and add a new video to a playlist for a reason.

Making it simple for your audience to locate you is key.

All of those options use right away, with the possible exception of adding it to a playlist, which can wait until the right playlist(s) make to give your film even more prominence.

Title

Use keywords to concentrate on user intent and how those keywords align with the real value that the video content provides viewers.

Don’t bother about adding brand names to your titles; the channel name usually contains them already. Concentrate on the crucial components.

To make the most of all fundamental YouTube publishing options where you can use keywords and relevancy, conduct keyword research.

You only have roughly 65–70 characters (including spaces) to communicate what has to say, so make the most of that space by capitalizing keywords.

Titles on YouTube are limited to 100 characters, including spaces, although depending on where they appear, they reduce.

When your video appears on a page, pops up in a search result, and share on social media, the title is one of the first things viewers notice. Make it matter.

Description

Your description is one of the first things a user sees, contains keywords, and reflects the substance of the video, much like your title does.

It’s important to keep in mind that you’re writing a description of the film, not an advertisement or promotion.

A good description should be brief but contain more information than the title.

A user pursuant to watch the movie by your description since the information it contains suggests they were looking for it.

A minimum of one link, usually to the brand website but maybe to a page dedicated to the information in the video, should also include in the description.

Although it’s a way to provide users with extra information, I think that two links in a description—one at the end of the first phrase and one at the conclusion—are a sweet spot. You shouldn’t overwhelm a few links with five links that add little to nothing.

I constantly advise the following:

Create a description of two to three sentences.
Add a minimum of one link.
Keep it to no more than 300 characters, including spaces.

There are 5000 character limits on YouTube, but not required to utilize them all. In actuality, you shouldn’t probably.

Hashtag

Tags are a relatively recent addition to YouTube and are useful for categorizing content.

Use only keywords that are pertinent to your video. Avoid adding pointless tags in the expectation of increasing your visibility because you won’t or will just enrage your audience.

Hashtags aid in the better understanding of your video content by users and Google (and other search engines).

Thumbnail

It’s not that difficult. Select a captivating image.

Choose a still image that readers will be interested in and that might lead to a lot of clicks rather than a title slide or anything diluted by writing.

Playlist
Utilize these to increase the visibility and reach of your videos.

There isn’t much urgency to add videos to playlists, particularly right away.

All of the aforementioned video optimization options are available right away when a video has been uploaded:

All of the aforementioned video optimization options are available right away when a video upload

Translations

Video content creators on YouTube have the option to translate their videos into different languages.

This is helpful when releasing content that is meant for a worldwide audience or when targeting a particular demographic that speaks a language other than English.

The majority of American-based brands shouldn’t require this, but if/when you do, the translation instructions are simple to follow.

Language

Choose English from the Original language drop-down menu if you’re uploading a video in English and most or all of your future videos in English.

Additional Settings

The advanced settings on YouTube provide a number of choices for optimizing videos.

Some might come out as logical, while others might not.

the advance settings adjustments for your video that you need to make and how to do them.

Comments

Although the ability to hide all comments on a video may seem like a blessing from the internet gods, doing so may really seriously harm your video’s visibility.

One of the signs that YouTube uses to assess the relevance, caliber, and freshness of videos is comments.

Ensure that comments permit by choosing the appropriate choice from the drop-down menu.

Reproduction Rights

Since it gives viewers the finest on-site experience, allowing the embedding of your video will probably increase the rate at which it shares and be

Anyone, such as a news organization or blogger, could add it to their website.

The video found and watch more often if it is published to the Subscription feeds and subscribers inform

Age Limitations

If there is no explicit content, age restrictions shouldn’t place on videos.

Whether something is considered explicit will depend on the viewer, but according to YouTube, “violence, distressing images, nudity, sexually suggestive content, and portrayal of risky or illegal behaviors” may all warrant age restrictions.

All viewers logged into YouTube and are older than 18 when the age restriction is in effect.

Additional YouTube SEO Every Video Needs

Some additional fundamental optimizations can assist your films not only in performing better overall but also more visibly in addition to the above optimization methods.

Add a Visible Call to Action (CTA)

The power and engagement of many excellent videos end when the video does. Don’t let that happen.

Provide viewers with concise next steps so they can:

discover more about the movie.
Visit your website to find out more about the company and the products and services it offers.
could convert after being referred by a YouTube visitor.
The YouTube annotation feature is a fantastic tool for CTAs.