YouTube SEO promotion is a video optimisation process by which you can improve your channel’s ranking in YouTube’s organic search results. SEO for YouTube helps you optimise your video to promote it to the top positions in YouTube search queries.
The better the video and its metadata match the query, the higher it appears in the list of search results. The frequency with which videos are accessed from search results also plays a role.
When creating videos for YouTube, the main condition should be taken into account: videos should be useful and of high quality. If the content of the video does not match the title and topic, it is useless to buy YouTube views. Such a video won’t appear in search results because users won’t like it.
Why you need SEO for YouTube
SEO tools are used to boost rankings on Google search engines, blogs, and social media. The YouTube search engine selects relevant responses based on the same principles.
YouTube’s SEO promotion tools are, of course, different from those used on other resources because video hosting sites don’t have as much text.
Nevertheless, text information on YouTube is still present (in the channel title and titles, video description, tags, subtitles, etc.), which means it is acceptable for SEO optimisation. Google, the search engine that owns YouTube, also considers the presence of optimised titles, tags, descriptions and subtitles in videos.
Of course, not all users find YouTube videos through searches. Many of them follow links and recommendations from the video hosting site or browse the “related videos” section. But SEO optimisation isn’t so much about users as it is about search algorithms that can position content favourably in search results for relevant queries.
Ranking factors
The following factors are important to promote videos on YouTube:
- Audience retention. This criterion reflects the percentage of users who have watched the video to the end.
- Views. This is an important criterion for optimizing videos on YouTube because users often sort videos by this parameter. Sometimes views are increased with bots, but that’s a mistake. Retention drops and YouTube does not consider the video useful, which spoils the promotion results.
- Likes and new subscribers. The role of the metric in YouTube promotion is decreasing because it is easy to cheat. Now the system takes into account the likes from users who watched the video to the end and wrote a comment – really interacting with the content. The same goes for new subscribers: they affect YouTube promotion only when they are really active.
- Shares. They affect promotion only if there is interaction on social networks and sites.
Keywords
Channel Keywords is a section where you can specify specific words that you want to promote your videos and channel. For example, if your channel is about playing computer games, you can include keywords such as Letsplay and anything related to that.
Use keywords when preparing your channel description text
It’s important to specify your channel’s keywords in the appropriate settings section. This will allow YouTube’s search algorithms to more accurately determine which third-party channels and videos of similar subject matter can be recommended for your content.
How to find out the keywords
To see third-party channel keywords, we need a special tool for YouTube that allows you to see any channel’s keywords for free. It’s called VidIQ.
- Register an account at www.vidiq.com.
Install the vidIQ browser extension
- Go to YouTube and log in to the extension. You will notice it, it will be displayed to the right of the video. Once authorized, it will also show stats for each video on the right.
- After installing this plugin, go to any channel on your topic and see all the keywords used on it.
This will help you find search terms. The tool generates keywords by adding different letters and numbers before and after the search term you specify. Then we collect the relevant (appropriate) phrases and save them in notepad or excel.
Then all you have to do is to write a text with the keywords in it, and place the text in the video description, it is also important that these keywords are mentioned in the video.
Promotion on YouTube
Promote your channel and video on various websites, forums and social networks. Let the widest possible audience know about you.
Use the YouTube API to create a YouTube badge and put it on your website. This way you can attract new viewers to your channel.
Allow others to embed your content to help spread your content. Every video has an embedded URL. You can use it to put the video on your website. Send links to blog authors who might be interested in your content.
If your videos are about product reviews, include as much additional information as possible. Include model and brand identifiers in the tags.
Zuella Montemayor did her degree in psychology at the University of Toronto. She is interested in mental health, wellness, and lifestyle.
