Do you want more people to see your YouTube videos?
Have you optimized your videos for search?
If people can’t find you, they can’t watch your videos or subscribe to your channel, which hurts your search ranking.
In this article you’ll find four ways to tweak your videos to rank higher in YouTube search.
Why is YouTube Search Important?
Every minute, 100 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube. The site gets up to 30 million visitors each day. If you want to find a video, the first place you go is probably YouTube.
Besides being the largest video resource online, YouTube is also the second-largest search engine (right behind its parent company, Google).
If you can tap into the traffic and publicity YouTube offers, you could instantly shoot to the top of YouTube’s search engine results. But I won’t lie: competition is fierce. There are millions of high-quality, impeccably edited videos with carefully crafted SEO.
Like Google, YouTube uses ranking factors to determine which videos end up at the top of each search results page (SERP). YouTube looks at your video’s number of views, how long users watch it and how many positive ratings and comments it has.
Below are four ways to get your YouTube videos ready for Prime Time.
#1: Choose Strong Keywords
You’re familiar with how important keywords are. Choosing the right keywords can be the difference between high visibility and page five of the SERPs (and you know nobody gets all the way to page five).
While YouTube can do a lot of things, it can’t search the content within your video to find keywords, so you’ll have to add them yourself. If you need help choosing the best keywords, use the YouTube Keyword Tool to find out which ones don’t have a lot of competition.
As a general rule, use about 10 tags that include the video category, video content, shoot location and names of anyone in the video.
#2: Include Keywords in Your Title
Your title should tell viewers exactly what they can expect to see in your video. That can be harder than it sounds.
Ideally, your title should have around 120 characters—enough to tell people what they’re watching, but not so much they overlook it.
#3: Optimize the Description With Keywords
When writing your video description, weave in your vital keywords naturally. As long as the description flows and isn’t forced, you’ll be OK.
As you’re writing your video description, be sure to include a link to your website or blog. For Google ranking purposes, a YouTube link to your website is considered a backlink (which means more Google juice for your website).
#4: Customize the Video Thumbnail
Your video thumbnail is the face of your video. It’s the first thing viewers look at when your video comes up in search, so it really has to wow them.
Take the time to create a custom, attractive thumbnail that conveys what your video is about. For best results, your thumbnail should have a 1280 x 720 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Choosing the right keywords; incorporating them into your title, description and tags; and customizing your video thumbnail make a big difference in your YouTube traffic and success.
Now all you need is good content, but that’s the easy part, right?
