A Complete Guide to SEO for YouTube
If you are a regular user of YouTube, you must have noticed the YouTube ads that bring you to the YouTube videos of content creators and marketers. Well, that’s one way of promoting your YouTube videos through paid marketing tactics. But, what if you don’t have the budget of running an ad campaign or you simply don’t want to use ads to promote your content? Well, there are many ways you can generate organic traffic to your videos. The idea may sound a little daunting at first. After all, YouTube is a popular social networking platform with more than 500 hours of video content being uploaded on the channel every minute. So, there’s little to no chance your target audience will find your videos among such a large number of videos.
The good news is it’s totally possible to have your website ranked on top of YouTube’s search engine through effective content marketing strategies. You only need to focus on getting the on-site SEO right in order to bring your channel to the first page of the YouTube search results. As soon as you are done reading this post, you will know some of the best YouTube marketing strategies to get your website a high search ranking on YouTube.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Perform Keyword Research
Just like how you need to perform keyword research for your website, effective keyword optimization techniques will help boost your YouTube search ranking. Keyword research for YouTube is pretty simple. All you have to do is type in a few words related to your brand, or niche in YouTube’s search bar and check the suggested feature list to get a list of keywords you should use for your YouTube videos.
The keywords you get from the suggestion list are 100% accurate and most popular. That’s because YouTube suggests the keywords that your target audience uses when searching for similar content. Remember that keyword plays a pivotal role in ranking your YouTube content. You could also check your competitors’ YouTube channels to get a comprehensive list of the keywords that are working for others.
Focus on High-Retention Videos
Nobody knows the exact YouTube ranking algorithm, but from what we’ve seen so far, it is obvious that YouTube prioritizes content with a high retention rate. There is a good chance the videos that keep your audience hooked to the screen until the end will be ranked higher on YouTube than the ones that fail to build engagement. The audience retention rate determines the total length of the video your audiences watch. Your goal should be to achieve 100% customer retention by allowing your audience to stick to the video for as long as possible. Videos with a longer watching time are highly likely to show up in the suggested video list.
Optimize the Videos for SEO
Video optimizations work like your website’s on-page optimization. Do not overstuff the keywords into your content, but try to craft a title that contains the necessary keywords. Your video title should be at least 5-10 words long so that you can incorporate main keywords in it.
Next, you should optimize your description for SEO. Google needs to know what your content is about and how relevant it is to your audience. The easier it is for Google to identify the relevancy between your content and audience, the higher they will rank your YouTube videos.
There is also a good chance Google will rank your videos on the first page of the search results if your content has a title and description optimized for SEO. Note that Google considers keyword-stuffed description spammy. You don’t have to fill this section with your primary and secondary keywords. Use keywords wisely, but never overstuff. Make the content as short and compelling as possible.
Promote Your YouTube Videos
You will find a lot of content that talks about the ways to boost audience retention by crafting high-quality videos. It’s important to create compelling videos that can help you draw your audience’s attention to your channel, but the question is how do you increase the views first? There is no point in investing your time in creating high-quality videos when your videos do not receive any views in the first place.
The easiest way to drive traffic to your YouTube channel is by answering a few relevant questions on Quora and other Q&A sites and linking to your vlog strategically. The goal is to present your video as a solution to your customers’ problems. For example, if you create videos on ‘hair fall problems’, you can answer questions around the same niche on Quora and place a link somewhere in the middle of the answer, asking your readers to check out your vlog to learn more about how to control hair fall.
You can also promote your YouTube videos on Facebook, Instagram, and other social sites by placing a small demo video that shows the type of content you are posting and what your audience will learn from the platform.
Add Call-To-Action’s
It goes without saying that content that receives a large number of likes, comments, and subscribers gets the highest SERP ranking on YouTube. Such type of content gets the maximum attention from the audience, as people assume that content with thousands of likes and comments is of the best quality.
One way to get your audience to engage with your content and increase the number of views on your channel is by asking them to drop a comment, like, and share your videos with others. You could also ask them to subscribe to your channel and get regular notifications. Do not start your video with the CTA, as that can have a negative impact on your viewer’s engagement. You should rather focus on adding the CTA to the end or somewhere in the middle. Keep it compelling and short. Do not stress on the CTA, as your audience might leave your website if they find your requests frustrating.
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