How to appear among the first on YouTube? I share with you all the SEO secrets to position your videos and channel at the top of the YouTube ranking.
YouTube has more than 1 billion users worldwide. How to stand out among so many people, channels and videos? Without a doubt, it is not easy, but today I will explain some tips, some known and other true “secret tricks”, which have helped us to gain traffic to your channel and optimize the videos in SEO for YouTube correctly for more views.
Surely even your mother (or even your grandmother!) Who has nothing to do with social networks, knows what YouTube is , right? The fact is that only after Google, YouTube is the largest and most important search engine on the planet , so attracting attention on its platform is not easy.
The efforts of an SEO and web positioning consultant are countless but, unfortunately, many do not know how to achieve that much desired SEO positioning on YouTube and, the channels, waste clear opportunities to generate traffic, gain trust and, of course! gain subscribers.
All this can be summed up in the loss of money because, it is not a secret that having a YouTube channel of certain success, could leave you good monetary gains doing what you like. That would be cool, right?
If you have a YouTube channel, you will need to use certain strategies to attract the public to the content you create and make your videos go viral . I’m sure you know that perfectly well, so next I’m going to reveal what SEO tips and tricks could help you to place your videos in the top positions of searches and trends on YouTube.
What is SEO on YouTube?
Table of Contents
SEO is a set of techniques to get a website to achieve a good ranking on the search engine results page , known as SERP ( Search Engine Results Pages ). It includes a series of techniques and strategies related to the web, from its design, loading speed, content, data, tags, to keywords and much more.
SEO on YouTube is a set of techniques aimed at getting a video or channel to rank on YouTube.
The SEO on YouTube is a set of techniques used to make a video or channel is positioned on YouTube and achieve visibility, generate traffic and get many subscribers.
That is, an SEO strategy for YouTube tries to correctly show YouTube all the information that this search engine needs to understand what your videos are about and why they should highlight it for certain searches of its users.
How does YouTube search work?
Now, there is a drawback in SEO for YouTube and that is that search engines cannot understand the information in images or videos, so YouTube relies on traditional SEO to understand the information that is in your video and in the data you provide in the video title: description, tags, file name, etc.
A great advantage of knowing about SEO Marketing , that is, optimizing a web page for Google correctly in SEO, is that it is not very different from optimizing a video for YouTube in SEO , since YouTube is owned by Google and they share a lot of data and algorithms of search.
Therefore, the data of the video that you index in Google will be quickly considered by YouTube and, if it is indexed correctly, the YouTube search engine will fully trust the textual data that Google shows it.
How to optimize your YouTube videos for SEO?
Start by searching and analyzing SEO and the best keywords
Searching for keywords is one of the most important processes in any SEO strategy, and it is no different for SEO on YouTube.
Video keywords will help you better organize your content and give your YouTube channel a better focus.
You can do it the traditional way; writing something on YouTube and brainstorm all those words that relate. In addition, there are free tools such as Google Trends or Ubersuggest that can help you do this.
YouTube cannot understand what is inside the video, so it will rely on the name of the video file you have on your computer to get a first idea.
The name of your video file, before uploading it to the platform, tells YouTube a lot more than you think.
For example, renaming your video file “ DSC0127361237.mp4 ” to “ seo-tricks-youtube.mp4 ” gives YouTube a clue as to what the video you’re uploading is about.
Choose to name your video with your main keyword , so it will be in harmony with the title of the video and will facilitate the work of the YouTube search engine.
Create an impressive title and using keywords
The title is a determining factor for your video to be considered by the YouTube algorithm.
Leveraging keyword research to create video titles that are friendly, meaningful, and clear enough to be understood by search engines will be tremendously helpful to you .
The title of the video should be simple and contain the most suitable keywords to describe what it is about, no cheating or YouTube will notice!
The impact of the title will define the percentage of clicks that your video will get.
Write SEO optimized descriptions on YouTube video
The video description is a great opportunity to hook your audience and offer them useful information. Many miss it, but it is advisable to write long, very long descriptions, in which the call to action (CTA), links or any extra that you want to include and know that it can be useful to the reader , will be welcome.
Leveraging keyword research to create video titles that are friendly, meaningful, and clear enough to be understood by search engines will be tremendously helpful to you .
The title of the video should be simple and contain the most suitable keywords to describe what it is about, no cheating or YouTube will notice!
The impact of the title will define the percentage of clicks that your video will get.
Write SEO optimized descriptions on YouTube video
The video description is a great opportunity to hook your audience and offer them useful information. Many miss it, but it is advisable to write long, very long descriptions, in which the call to action (CTA), links or any extra that you want to include and know that it can be useful to the reader , will be welcome.
The Subtitles or Closed Caption (CC) function that you will find from the editor of the video itself, within the YouTube video manager section, is of great help when it comes to achieving greater visibility and better positioning within the YouTube and associated search engine. , as is Google’s own search engine.
Adding subtitles to your video manually takes a bit of time, but your video will reach the hard of hearing and foreigners, using YouTube’s automatic translator.
Using this YouTube technology, at the same time, will allow you to reach a larger group of users, including people with hearing disabilities , for example, but also people who do not speak your language , as YouTube has an automatic subtitle translation system into the language. of the user.
Closed captioning, please!
The transcripts or subtitles of the video add up when classifying in the YouTube algorithm, but it is not good to leave it in the hands of the automatic subtitles that the platform generates, since they usually contain errors, time and writing. The most appropriate thing is that you edit the subtitles yourself, or lean on a program or App that can help you with it.
Translate transcripts and subtitles into other languages
Being able to globalize your channel has to be your dream and you will get closer to that if you offer translations of your video in several languages to your audience.
The best thing is that you don’t have to record the video for each language, it would be a waste of time and money! You can rely on YouTube machine translations or, if you can, even have a verified translation done by professional translators.
Assign relevant tags to your YouTube video according to your SEO strategy
Tags make it easy for your video to be found, but only if you use relevant and popular tags , otherwise you are casting the net in an area where there are no fish!
Take a little time and do your research! Search and choose the most searched tags by your target audience, with long-tail keywords or key phrases.
There are a number of free and easy-to-use tools you can use to research your niche tags, or why not, keep an eye on your top competitors.
Create a custom thumbnail (cover) of your video
By default, the thumbnails of the videos appear as the cover of the video in the results lists, since they are created automatically by YouTube , selecting a capture of your video. It is very good, because it makes work much easier and the vast majority of videos use this automatic method.
But the statistics reveal that those channels with the best performance on this platform are those that upload personalized thumbnails of their videos , using striking images, which attract the attention of the user, being faithful to the content that the video contains, and invite them to click. and view the video.
It is well worth spending a little time creating a personalized, impressive cover image (thumbnail) that grabs the attention of your audience, you will notice the difference!
The size of the recommended images is 1280 x 720 pixels, in PNG, JPG, GIF or BMP formats. So let that creativity fly and make an impressive cover for each of your videos.
Create calls to action (CTA) on videos
The call to action (CTA) , Call to Action in English, is crucial to finish conquering the public and persuade them to do the action you want, such as subscribing to your YouTube channel.
Be as convincing as possible about this and show them the way so that, with one click, they become part of your loyal audience.
Remember that the number of subscribers to your channel is one of the factors that YouTube will take into account when positioning your videos in its results lists.
Invite them to subscribe (without shame)
Gaining subscribers is one of the main objectives of any channel on YouTube, so you must be strategic to invite the public to subscribe.
Gaining subscribers sends a strong message to YouTube, telling them that your videos are good and provide a great user experience.
Usually, it is customary to make the invitation to subscribe at the beginning or end of the video . It’s up to you to be persuasive and bold to do it!
If you are adding subscribers, it is because users are having a good experience on your channel; To enhance this achievement, it is important that you keep the focus on your new audience.
To do this, it could help to always upload your content at a specific day and time of the week, as this way the public will be attentive to see what you have created. These first days of ‘love’ are vital to creating a strong bond between your channel and your new subscribers, don’t waste them!
Create YouTube playlists based on SEO keywords
Playlists on YouTube are useful for better organizing channel content and for extra text-based content (and target keywords), which will result in more views and, again, a better image versus YouTube than without. will certainly take into account when positioning your videos.
Take care of the authority of your YouTube channel
Many times it is easy to get hundreds of likes and views on a video individually, but that does not mean that you are doing everything right.
To achieve a comprehensive classification in your work, you must take care of the authority of your channel. That is, promoting the channel as a whole, not just promoting the videos individually.
A clear example of this would be when someone uploads a video to YouTube and makes it reach the public. Then time passes, a long time, and no one else knows about that person who managed to viralize that video. What happened? He didn’t bother to take care of his channel!
What I am saying is that you should worry about issues such as the title, the tags, and everything else that I have been talking about in this post, but also about the amount of content you create and the frequency with which you create it, and if you are showing it. like a single piece, like a channel. You see where I’m going, right? All these things will be key to correctly managing the authority of your channel .
Encourage interaction with your subscribers
Any YouTube SEO strategy aims at one thing only: earning the public’s trust . Your strategy will not be complete if you do not consider the interaction with users in it.
The best way to be able to get what they want is by asking them , encouraging them to express themselves in the channel and giving value to their opinions. Read the comments, respond to them, show empathy towards their messages, show them that you are close to them, or an equal.
The more you interact with your subscribers, the better videos you will upload, as you can make them closer to what the public actually expects.
Respond to the comments of your videos!
Like I said, interacting is important to your channel, and responding to comments is part of this interaction that YouTube hopes its users can have.
The more willing you are to establish fluid communication with your subscribers , the more authority your channel will gain and the more comments you will get. It is a dynamic feedback that will be very pleasant for the public, and useful for the SEO of your videos on YouTube.
Prioritize user experience (UX) in your SEO for YouTube
Google is the king when it comes to user experience (UX); His efforts to make his users happy are numerous, and he will be no less careless in this on a platform like YouTube.
How can you serve the public? How to prioritize their participation in your channel? Let’s see!
Time is money, get to the point!
From experience I know that most of the people who come to YouTube prefer deeds over words ; I explain! If someone wanted to burn out reading 2 long, boring and difficult to understand pages to learn how to make an apple pie, then they would not turn to YouTube, instead they would search for an old recipe book or read it on the web.
Those who go to YouTube are because they want specific, simple, understandable and fast things. Time matters a lot in the multimedia world we live in. Prepare your videos trying not to be unnecessarily long, rather take advantage of the first 15 or 30 seconds to give interesting messages to your audience and urge them to watch the entire video.
Sometimes an image will speak for itself! Now, if you have a 15 minute video but you spent the first two minutes giving an introduction that nobody cares about, I assure you that people will think that your channel and your videos are a waste of time.
Are you going to teach how to make an apple pie? Don’t waste time showing how the 8 apples you are going to use are peeled! Be bold to keep users focused.
Keep your audience hooked!
The session time the user is a very important step for YouTube, as is the bounce rate , dropout rate of the users when entering a site, which is measured on the websites to see if they are useful to the user.
If someone who came to watch a video and left the channel at the end of the video, then YouTube interprets that the channel was not useful to that person. If, on the contrary, the person continued to watch video after video before leaving the channel, then it is because they became hooked with the content they got, which is the purpose of this platform: to keep users as long as possible on it .
Understand what your user is really looking for
Understanding the user’s search intent is possible with SEO, but there are some SEO witches out there trying to guess rather than discern it.
This is not an impossible mission; In fact, it’s easy if you know how, and I hope you do it! Google prioritizes natural searches more and more every day; those that have a simple, real and human language .
Thus, when someone searches for certain information on YouTube, you will have a better chance of classifying yourself and appearing for that search if you put natural, relevant and useful titles to your videos.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and imagine what words they would use to find your content. You don’t need to be a fortune teller!
Don’t roll! Offer simple answers
Do you remember what I told you about the importance of time? Well, without a doubt, the success of YouTube is due to the fact that this platform found a practical way to inform, teach, and entertain, among other things, maximizing our time. And it won’t change!
Statistics don’t lie! The most viewed videos on YouTube are between 4 and 6 minutes long on average . Well-managed brevity is gold for a channel. Get data!
Use YouTube EndScreen and Cards
Cards are annotations or notifications that are created and placed on videos to sponsor other videos or invite the public to subscribe to the channel. They are simple to create and very useful.
As for the EndScreen or final screens, these are similar to the cards, but are reserved for the end of the video. They are a bit more detailed and more visually appealing. You should know that there are certain parameters that you must meet to create final screens suitable for YouTube, among which it stands out that these are useful for the user and not only used to gain publicity or other benefit.
Don’t forget local SEO, also on YouTube!
Your YouTube channel should also consider local SEO , how could this not be?
If you have a business on the internet or on your channel you offer products and services, it is advantageous that during the SEO optimization for YouTube you leave the door open to local searches .
Add an address (in ‘advanced settings’ you can do it) and include the name of the place (city, for example) also in the title, tags and in all parts of the video where you include your keywords and key phrases.
Be consistent with SEO for YouTube!
Consistency is essential to keep a channel well positioned on YouTube and for it to be successful over time.
Many are carried away by ‘that first love’, romantic and unrealistic expectations, so they leave the ship soon after. But having a YouTube channel is about dedication, commitment, and dedication. Yes, I know you are thinking about it, just like a marriage! But this is the truth.
Of course, it does not imply that you are stuck to the channel 24 x 7, but that you are consistent and commit to creating high-quality content on a regular basis .
If you dedicate time and effort to your channel, you will soon notice how you become a reference in your niche on YouTube. Give it a try, and don’t divorce your audience!
Earn video views from other web pages
The more traffic you generate, the better results you will get, that’s for sure! But what you should worry about and occupy is how to get this traffic that translates into video reproductions .
A good strategy is to get people interested in your videos from platforms outside of YouTube , so it can be useful to select sites like LinkedIn, for example. This network is very visited and there you will have the opportunity to share opinions, texts and videos that can help you gain more views, reproductions and subscribers.
Detect which social networks are ideal for sharing your videos and getting views; that will help you rank better on YouTube.
Study the market! Do your homework! That is, research what questions or topics are popular on LinkedIn, or on the social network of your choice, and answer them. Start with a short text that is attractive and at the end says something like ‘ if you want more information, you will be interested in watching this video ‘.
Sharing your videos in other communities will make you bond with new users while gaining popularity on YouTube, it sounds wonderful!
It would be unwise to ignore the other social networks and focus only on YouTube when what you want is to globalize a channel .
Because millions of people connect every day on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., it is very beneficial for any YouTuber or channel owner who can broaden their horizons by promoting videos on these or any other social network. , and vice versa. This is something that I also mentioned to you when I told you about SEO strategies on Instagram .
Choose the social network that best suits you , there are also tools with which you can monitor the presence of your content on these social networks, to improve your strategies and strengthen those that are giving you good results.
Linking your YouTube channel to your other accounts on social networks, and to any website you want, is positive for you to gain more audience, and this broadens your horizons .
You can do it by linking from the video description.
How do you deliver your content on YouTube?
SEO for YouTube is essential to achieve success on a YouTube channel, we have already assumed that. However, there are people who have managed to attract any number of views to their videos without titles with keywords, relevant tags and such.
So how do you do it? Is it magic? It is not about magic, rather, we are talking about creativity to record impressive, attractive, funny, unique, interesting videos, etc.
A couple of YouTube SEO tools combined with quality videos that keep your audience hooked is all you will need to be successful on YouTube.
On the other hand, if your videos are basic or more boring than a game of chess on the radio, don’t expect people to stay to watch them. And the worst thing about this is that Google will know, and will tell YouTube. You have the opportunity to be original! To show content never seen before, so don’t waste this opportunity.
Let’s position your website at the top of Google!
No cheat or cardboard; We develop realistic and effective web positioning campaigns (SEO) in Google and other search engines, with our feet on the ground, faithful to your company and with objectives that give real results.
Conclusion: SEO for YouTube + engaging content
SEO for YouTube is not far from SEO for any website, but it does require a bit more dynamism. You don’t have to be magicians or artists of the stature of Picasso to create true works of art on YouTube. And I’m not exaggerating!
The dynamics is simple: you carry out keyword research, choose the most relevant ones, optimize them (in the title, tag, description, etc.), include a location to improve your local SEO, create content on a regular basis and become an accomplice of your subscribers. Well, it is not that now you will be their ‘ bestfriendforever’ but you will be more attentive to their opinions, comments and demands.
By doing this and giving them answers, you don’t need to remind yourself that every video you upload should be original , fun , short, and useful . There is no more to say! I know that you will avoid many SEO mistakes and your positioning will go through the roof with these simple strategies. You will tell me!
If you found this post helpful, I invite you to share it on social networks, so that others can improve their position on YouTube.
