YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the practice of optimizing videos and channels so as to rank higher in YouTube search results and on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs). Like traditional SEO, YouTube SEO involves aligning video titles, descriptions, tags with users’ search queries in order to increase discoverability and increase traffic to your channel.
YouTube’s algorithm takes two primary factors into consideration when ranking videos: engagement and quality. If viewers engage with your video by watching it all the way through, commenting, liking it, subscribing, etc, more likely it is that it will rank highly; same with subscriber count and views count – making it important to craft content tailored specifically for your target audience and promote it as much as possible via social media channels like YouTube.
As with traditional SEO, YouTube video SEO also relies on keywords. But while search engines don’t directly watch your videos, they do crawl their text components like transcripts, closed captions and title/description text – which means it is vital to include keywords naturally and thoughtfully throughout these texts if you want your rankings to improve. Too much keyword stuffing may even lower them.
Utilize a keyword research tool to uncover high-volume keywords that align with the topic of your videos. Once you’ve found some promising ones, run them through YouTube’s autosuggest feature to see what comes up when users search those terms; this will give an indication of their competitiveness as well as show what type of videos already appear at the top search results for each keyword.
Once you’ve selected keywords, create videos to compete in those search results and write short descriptions that include those keywords; YouTube will use those descriptions as thumbnails when searchers come looking for your video.
Make sure that, in addition to adding a detailed video description, accurate transcriptions and captions are added as they not only increase SEO but will help people with hearing disabilities find your videos as well as increase views on YouTube. Furthermore, YouTube gives preference to videos with correctly filled out titles, descriptions and tags.
One effective strategy to increase YouTube SEO is the incorporation of info cards and end screens in your videos, which serve as call-to-action (CTA) elements designed to entice viewers to subscribe, watch other videos on your channel and more.
YouTube SEO can also be improved through creating channel playlists, which encourage viewers to watch multiple videos from one channel in succession. This approach can be particularly helpful when promoting related product demonstrations or how-to videos. Adding a link to your playlist in each video’s description enables viewers to easily access all related videos at one place – this also increases your chance of showing up in search result pages as “related videos”, another powerful way of increasing views!