The SEO for YouTube is a little-known discipline. But it is not much technical as you think.
Nowadays, everything that helps the personal brand is essential. Having a YouTube channel is one of those elements that empower it.
But it is useless to have a channel if we do not know how to rank videos on YouTube. You won’t be able to rank your videos and channel if you don’t know how to do SEO for YouTube.
In this article, I am going to give you some reasons why it is essential to have a YouTube Channel. But I’m also going to give you simple and effective actions to improve the ranking of your videos by doing SEO for YouTube.
With these SEO techniques for YouTube, your videos will come out in the first positions in a few days.
4 REASONS TO HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW
CONFIDENCE
The public that sees you speaking on your channel is more likely to hire. From your channel, you open a window to yourself. You show yourself as you are and that makes you closer.
This closeness increases the possibility that your followers will empathize with you, both to recommend you and to hire you.
VISIBILITY
Having a YouTube channel properly gives you a boost in visibility.
To the possibility of being found in Google is added the possibility of being located in YouTube.
You also have two different types of content with which to reach different audiences.
IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE’S SEO
Having a well-ranked YouTube channel likes Google and helps you improve the SEO positioning of your website.
Embedding your videos within your blog articles increases this feature further.
Mixing written content with other formats such as video increases the chances that your blog articles will come out in better positions.
In other words, doing SEO for YouTube and having a well-positioned channel improves the ranking of your website.
YOUR VIDEOS CAN ALSO APPEAR ON GOOGLE
This is one of the consequences of doing SEO for YouTube. When you do a search in Google you can get only normal results or you can also get mixed results that include images and videos from Youtube.
Google sometimes shows videos mixed with other results.
Sometimes the videos are the first to appear and other times they appear in the middle of the page. It will depend on how relevant they are.
What is clear is that knowing how to do SEO for YouTube is essential to rank a video among the results. It also turns out that it is usually much easier to place your videos on the first page of Google than an article or your website.
Read More: Best SEO Tools to Rank On Google 2021 (Ultimate Guide)
SEO FOR YOUTUBE: FUNDAMENTAL ACTIONS
If you want to do SEO for YouTube you have to carry out these actions.
SET UP YOUR CHANNEL CORRECTLY: THE DESCRIPTION
The setup starts with a broad description of your channel so that YouTube can rank it correctly. This means using enough keywords in the description.
This description serves as the home page of your website. So if Google ranks your website by its text, YouTube ranks your channel by the description you write.
It should be long enough for the keywords to take effect and to give you time to add different variants of them.
You will see, doing SEO for YouTube is not too different from doing it for your website.
ADD YOUR CHANNEL TAGS
This is essential for YouTube to classify your channel based on the themes of your tags. It is no longer just the text that you add to the description. It is also the tags that determine how you will be ranked on YouTube.
The labels do the classification function of your channel based on some categories of content that you decide. You can modify these labels whenever you want. If in Google it seems that everything revolves around keywords, in SEO for YouTube everything revolves around tags.
DEFINE COVER VIDEOS
Youtube has a little-known feature. You can define a presentation video that will be seen only the first time a person enters your channel.
The other times you will see the general configuration of your channel. In this general configuration, you can add another video different from the previous one.
This can be used to introduce yourself on the first visit and to offer a specific service from the second visit.
CUSTOMIZE THE HEADER IMAGE AND THE CHANNEL AVATAR
The cover photo, the account avatar, and the related links are essential for YouTube to unlock certain functions that are necessary to rank your channel.
As you can see in the upper image on the right side there are related links, there is a cover image and there is a photo in the account avatar.
Instead of putting your photo, you can put the logo of your company.
PLAYLISTS
Playlists are one of the key elements of SEO for YouTube. It helps you to classify your videos and group them by subject.
The interesting thing is that YouTube in some of the searches can show videos and lists. So it may be some of your lists also appear among the YouTube results.
That is why it is so important to have lists and that have interesting content. People can subscribe to the lists and with a lot of followers and visits will rank much higher.
At its core, doing SEO for YouTube isn’t that different from doing it for Google. Only the content channel changes, but the premises are the same.
UPLOAD LONG AND INTERESTING VIDEOS
A very widespread idea is that videos on YouTube must be short. That is not the case if you want to do SEO for YouTube.
The short length of the videos is only interesting if you want them to be very viral.
Videos really have to be interesting for your audience.
Have you ever heard it said that the movies you see in the cinema have to be short? No right?
And that’s because they come up with the idea of keeping you seated until the end.
If you are able to make half-hour videos and have your followers see them full, you will have a better ranking of your videos on YouTube.
One of the factors to rank videos on YouTube is the total number of minutes played.
It is the equivalent of the time a visitor spends on your website.
The more minutes of playback you gather, the better your channel and your videos will be ranked.
Obviously, it is easier to achieve this with 30-minute videos than with 5-minute videos.
Also, can you really tell me something interesting and useful in just 5 minutes?
In short, short videos are for passing and viral things. If you want to do SEO for YouTube, the videos must have useful and interesting content and be as long as they need to be.
THE NAME OF THE VIDEO FILE
It may seem silly that to do SEO for YouTube it is necessary to put a proper name to the video file that you upload.
But it turns out that actually doing SEO is nothing more than collecting positive ranking signals.
If the name of your video file has a poorly descriptive name, you will be damaging one of the SEO signals that you have in your hand.
THE VIDEO TITLE
Obviously, the video title has much more effect on the ranking of the videos on YouTube than the file name.
The title is one of the first SEO factors for YouTube that you have to take into account. Think that YouTube usually looks for the match between the words used in the search and the title of the video.
The title should not start with an emoji or too lengthy. Make it start with your keyword and leave the signs and watermarks for the inside of the title.
WRITE A LONG DESCRIPTION OF YOUR VIDEO
The second most important SEO factor for YouTube is the length and format of the text that describes the video.
Think of it as writing a blog post. You must produce relevant content that includes keywords and semantic variants.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO PUT LINKS IN THE TEXT.
Not only links to your website but also internal links to your video are essential.
It is about creating an index of the video so that your audience can navigate through it.
Every day Google is committed to long and quality content.
This makes it necessary to have an index that divides the content into smaller fractions.
Putting an index of the video is very important in long videos because it helps to go for the part of the video that interests each one the most.
If a visitor can enter several times and watch a video by sections, jumping in the index. This will help you to engage your followers and ensures revisits. That is why it is such an important factor in SEO for YouTube.
SELECT THE BEST TAGS FOR YOUR VIDEOS
Notice that I have not told you to put all the tags but ones that fit. It is not necessary to put the same label in the singular and in the plural.
It is best to use SEO tools for YouTube that allow you to find those tags.
The best ones that I can recommend are these:
- TUBICS: is the SEO tool for YouTube made by YouTube itself. It is the official tool. It is paid.
- VidIQ: It is free and has a paid version. With the free version, you get a lot of information about your competitors. For example, the keywords they use and how relevant they are.
- SocialBook: it is a paid tool. It allows you to control your competitors and offers you some tag suggestions classified by relevance.
DESIGN A CUSTOM HIGH-IMPACT THUMBNAIL
The more impact on the image of the thumbnail, the more visits you will achieve even in lower rankings.
The tricks to make impact images in your thumbnails are:
- Vivid colors
- large texts and few words
- simple pictures
THE NAME OF THE VIDEO THUMBNAIL
YouTube also takes into account the name of the file or photo that you put as a thumbnail in your videos.
It’s yet another YouTube SEO signal that you can send out.
It is logical to think that if the thumbnail, the name of the video, its title and its description always speak of the same thing and do it in the same way, YouTube will take this into account, it will be easier to index your video.
ADD YOUR VIDEO TO A PLAYLIST
I have already mentioned this before when I explained the configuration of the YouTube channel.
Putting a video in a playlist on your channel is a very positive SEO sign.
In addition, users will achieve the way to a particular list that they subscribed, find out immediately, and can see your video.
ADD SUBTITLES TO YOUR VIDEOS
Surely you wonder if your videos are in Hindi for a Indian audience, who is going to need the subtitles?
Well, it is not that users may need them, that too. It is mostly because they are TEXT. YouTube reads that text and indexes and ranks it.
So if you have your channel configured so that it automatically generates the subtitles of your videos, you will be giving a great blow to your videos.
There are also cases where you may need to watch a video silently. If at that moment the subtitles are activated and are available, you will have one more visit on your channel.
Read More: SEO-related Questions that Every Beginner Should Know (Most Important)
INCLUDE CARDS WITHIN YOUR VIDEOS
Info cards are wake-up calls that appear at the top right of the screen.
They are shown because you are talking about a topic that, for example, you have already covered before on your channel or you have another video that is related.
With this card, you are adding additional contextual content to the video and that is of great SEO value for YouTube.
A white circle with a Latin letter i inside is shown superimposed on the video. You simply click on that circle and a window with the link appears.
SET UP AN END SCREEN
When your video ends it is important to add a final screen with links to other videos, playlists, or your website.
Youtube gives you the option to select one of several templates that have predesigned.
The important thing is that in order to do this you will need your video to have about 15 to 30 seconds of the still or black image. If you don’t, this final screen will overlap your video and nothing will be seen. It will be a disaster. I know from experience.
BROADCAST YOUR VIDEO MASSIVELY
You already have your video. Now you need people to see it and leave comments etc.
You will not achieve this if you do not spread it on the networks, your website and other sites.
We are going to see the ways you have to spread it and how you could do it.
In addition, the very concept of “SEO for YouTube” implies achieving the highest possible traffic in the first hours after its publication.
And, on the other hand, you don’t do a good SEO but you work trying to create links that point to your video from different sites.
Embedded Videos
Embedded or embedding a video is the same. It is when they are seen inside a window in another application.
The reason for doing this is because in this way the video receives views that improve its ranking on YouTube. In addition, having multimedia content improves the SEO of the content in any form.
In this way, the blog and the YouTube channel help each other.
Linked Videos
Linking a video is putting a URL or link to it. The reason for doing this is that this way Google indexes the video and it is easier for it to appear on the Google results page.
The greater the number of links, the better SEO. If these sites are reputable all the better.
Very good, but where do we publish it for mass dissemination? I’m going to give you some ideas:
- your blog
- Tumblr
- Any other blog or link platform you can find.
You will see that I have not included Facebook. The reason is because external video links on Facebook are heavily penalized by Facebook. It gives them very little visibility and you will get very little traffic.
And furthermore, the links within Facebook are not visible to Google, so it is of no use in terms of SEO for YouTube.
It is much more useful to create content, either on Facebook or Instagram, talking about the video but without linking it. Talk about how interesting it is or tell an idea.
CONCLUSION: NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO DO SEO ON YOUTUBE
How do you run your channel? Are you going to start making videos like no tomorrow? Do you spend time doing SEO for YouTube and get your videos ranked high?
As you can see in this post, doing SEO for YouTube is nothing more than following some simple and repetitive rules. Once you understand this, it will be very easy.
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