YouTube SEO - Tips to Increase Views and Engagement

YouTube being the second largest search engines, it is thus relevant to wonder how you could leverage your SEO opportunities on that platform. YouTube is also one of the most engaging social media with a great popularity and reach.

With millions of videos watched every day, YouTube has become a massive force in the digital world, making it pertinent to familiarize oneself on how to attract more views using SEO for YouTube. It is a great place for businesses and creative content creators to grow and make money.

Visibility is a challenge due to the platform’s vastness, and SEO for YouTube is your companion to gain increased visibility.

When you take the time to create engaging video content, you want to ensure it reaches the maximum possible audience. The best way to do that is by optimizing your videos with YouTube SEO.

To learn more about how to properly optimize video content for your YouTube channel, read through our guide below with 15 tips to help your videos rank.

What is YouTube SEO?

YouTube SEO encompasses optimizing your channel, video playlists, meta data, video description and the videos themselves. You can optimize your YouTube videos for search both within and outside of YouTube.

The Logic Behind the YouTube Algorithm

Unlike Google, that uses backlinks and other parameters to evaluate the quality of content, YouTube has no such luxury so you have to rely on audience retention.

Five important YouTube ranking factors are:

Video comments

Number of subscribers after watching the video

Number of shares on the social media platform

Click-through rate (CTR)

Video length

Audience engagement is one of several ranking signals that YouTube uses in its algorithm.

How to Rank Your YouTube Videos with YouTube SEO?

1. Keyword Research for YouTube Content: The process begins with the first step of generating a big list of potential keywords. The next step, find the best keyword from your list. How? Let’s understand this.

Learn More About Keywords Research Read - Why Keyword Research Important

YouTube Search

The easiest way to do this is to use YouTube’s search suggest feature. All you have to do is just type a word or phrase in YouTube’s search bar and YouTube will provide you a cluster of keywords related to what you typed in. How do you know if these keywords are most popular?

Be sure of this as these are the terms that people have actually typed into YouTube. So, there is no need to doubt if they are popular or not, just relax. If YouTube has recommended this list to you, they are 1000% popular.

Video Tags

Alternatively, an easy tip is to look for a popular video in your niche and use the same keywords this video is optimized around. Pay attention to the keywords used in its title, description, and video tags. Easy right?

YouTube Traffic Source

YouTube search reports can also help you find some excellent keywords from your YouTube Traffic Source.

This report shows all the keywords that YouTube users have searched for to find your videos, this makes it an excellent source. You may find that you know most of the keywords already, however, you may also get to know a lot of keywords that you were not aware of earlier.

The second obvious step is finding the best keyword from the list created. It is advised to target low-competition keywords.

This strategy works best for a channel that does not have many subscribers because going after competitive keywords in this case will bury your video in search results. Hence, a better strategy would be to go for keywords that do not have much competition.

Most views on YouTube videos come from the YouTube platform only, but you can get 3–5 times more views in Google if you optimize your YouTube videos around the keywords that already have video results in Google.

2. YouTube Video Optimization

The simple tip is if YouTube understands that you reference your target keyword in your videos, they will “notice” it.

And because you are actually mentioning the keyword that your video is optimized around, YouTube will easily comprehend that your video is regarding that term.

Your video title should be a minimum of 5 words, try including your keywords without stuffing. Your video description helps YouTube and Google understand the context of your videos and helps rank your videos higher.

Some easy tips for video description:

Include your keywords in the first 25 words of the video description

Make the video description at minimum of 200 words

Include your keyword at least 2–4 times without stuffing

Tags may not be super important but do not ignore tags.

Some easy tips to use tags for your videos:

Keep the first tag an exact target keyword

Include different variations of your keyword or phrase

Make the few tags other topics that your video covers

3. Focus on Your Video Quality

HD videos will rank higher upon low-quality videos. YouTube rewards HD videos in its search results to offer a better user experience. Users don’t want to look at cheap quality videos. Poor quality videos will just lower your brand awareness and your credibility.

4. Design an Eye-Catching Thumbnail

Thumbnails can also have an impact on your SEO. Maybe not directly, but they certainly impact your clicks, which indirectly means better YouTube SEO.

Using the custom thumbnail feature for videos and annotations can help increase video CTR, views and shares. You can choose your own thumbnail for each video (640 x 360 pixels minimum, 16:9 aspect ratio). This custom one should be appealing. Using annotations allow you to add text in a video. From CTA to notes or links, there are different ways to use them. YouTube recently added the Cards feature to expend annotations.

5. Subtitles and closed captions

You can add closed captions to videos. This feature then opens your content to a wider audience including deaf viewers or whose not speaking the language of the video. Those captions are crawlable by search engines which means more opportunities to rank your content. YouTube offers an automatic captions feature but which is in most cases not efficient, you will have to make corrections.

6. Build Links to Your YouTube Channel

Keep in mind that for the best results for YouTube SEO you need to get links to both your YouTube channel and your individual videos.

These inbound channel links help YouTube identify that you are an authority in your niche.

7. Promote Your YouTube Channel

To improve your YouTube video rankings, engagement metrics like views, likes, shares, and links play a significant role. So, it's important to promote your content across various platforms. Share your videos on your social media profiles, embed them on your website, post them on bookmarking sites, and consider including them in your email signature if it makes sense for your audience. You should also reach out to relevant websites to help increase visibility.

Since YouTube is a social platform, sharing your videos on other social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Quora can drive more traffic and enhance your video’s SEO. On Facebook, for instance, crafting an engaging post with the right keywords can help your video reach a wider audience. Cross-posting your videos across multiple platforms is an effective strategy for boosting your video’s visibility and SEO.

8. Optimizing Video Titles and Descriptions

The title and description of your video are essential for YouTube SEO. They ought to contain your main keywords and be concise and descriptive.

A compelling title can increase click-through rates and generate interest, and a thorough description makes your content easier for YouTube’s algorithm to comprehend and classify, making it easier for users to find.

9. Use YouTube for Keyword Research

Google is a great tool for finding keywords, but YouTube is also an excellent platform to discover popular search terms. One effective method is to use YouTube's search bar. When you start typing a phrase, like "What is SEO," the search box will automatically suggest related keywords. These suggestions reflect the exact phrases people are searching for, making them valuable for your own video content. By incorporating these keywords into your video titles, descriptions, and tags, you can improve your chances of being discovered by users searching for those terms.

10. Increase Your YouTube Video Watch Time

Watch time is an important YouTube metric. When your video watch time is higher, this means that people are liking what you are showing.

This lets YouTube’s algorithm know that you’re producing high-quality videos, giving the platform a bigger incentive to show your content to a wider audience.

11. Add hashtags to increase reach

Adding hashtags to your YouTube videos is another effective way to increase their reach and visibility. Hashtags help categorize your content and make it easier for users to find videos related to specific topics.

12. Try timestamps

Timestamps mark different sections of your videos. They make it easy for your audience to find the content they’re looking for within each video. If your video is long, then defiantly use timestamps that can improve retention and user experience because it sets expectations.  

Wrapping It Up

Video marketing is crucial for businesses and creators. No matter what SEO tip or tool you start with, a successful YouTube channel begins with good content. Optimizing your YouTube SEO can help attract more views and build brand — and lead to more conversions and sales.