VIDEO SEO: OPTIMISING YOUR VIDEOS FOR YOUTUBE
This post will explain some of the basic video Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips. Essentially, these are things video marketing teams can do to help with their video marketing.
Focusing on YouTube SEO, we will look at keyword optimisation for high-retention videos, with SEO tips to ensure your videos reach a wider online audience.
What is video optimisation in SEO?
Video SEO is enhancing your videos, playlists, and channels so that you appear more frequently in user searches.
The idea of growing, promoting, and optimising your business online via video content can be a confusing and daunting prospect for beginners, but it is a crucial one. Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to rank videos that best match content with users' queries.
Why Should you think about SEO?
As an organisation, you might commit significant resources to the creation of high-quality videos. But without ensuring these reach new audiences, what’s the point?
Utilising SEO when producing video content will optimise your video and its potential to match your target audience. If you're planning to embed videos in your web pages, ensuring that high-quality video ranks at the top of search results is key to leading audiences to create more traffic on your own website.
Ultimately, video content that ranks highly in search results will positively promote your brand image and convert viewers into customers.
Keyword Research For Video SEO
We’ve all spent countless hours using different search engines, whether more obvious ones like Google and YouTube or less obvious ones like Amazon or your online supermarket shopping. All these search engines share one significant thing in common: They all utilise keywords that are inputted by the user.
For instance, a user is rarely going to search for an ‘all-weather, zero gravity folding sun lounger'. They are much more likely to search for ‘garden chair’ or ‘sun lounger’. This is why keyword research is crucial: You can see exactly what users are searching for and how frequently various keywords have been searched. Then, you can include them in your video title and description so that your video is relevant to a higher number of user queries in search engines.
YouTube does not have an official keyword research tool, unlike Google's search engine optimisation, for example. However, a free, quick, and easy way of tracking keyword popularity is to use YouTube’s suggestion feature. By simply typing a keyword into the search bar at the top of the page, YouTube will come up with a list of popular suggestions related to that keyword—a list generated from other user search results.
Tailoring your video content, video description and video thumbnail to these popular keywords will satisfy both the user’s and search engine crawler's criteria, making your video appear in more searches.
Keyword Intent
The importance of keywords in optimising a video for YouTube is clear. Next, you need to understand what ‘keyword intent’ is. Simply put, it is why a user searches for a query on a search engine. In YouTube’s case, it is why a user is searching for a keyword and what they hope to get out of that search.
The best way to determine keyword intent is by using YouTube’s search engine and focusing only on the top three video results. When searching the keyword ‘photography’ on YouTube, it is clear that the user’s keyword intent is to find something related to photography for beginners, as each video uses keywords such as ‘beginner’, ‘basic’, ‘mistakes’, or ‘student’. Another observation we can make is the common video length of five to fifteen minutes, indicating the amount of time the average user is willing to invest in your chosen keyword or topic.
This gives you an idea of what a large number of users searching your keyword want to achieve from their search.
To give you another example, when searching for ‘birthday ideas’, we are able to deduce that user’s are typically expecting a list-style video that is clearly laid out for easy viewing. Furthermore, because of keywords such as ‘hacks’, ‘creative’ and ‘surprise’, we can also see that users are hoping to find ideas new ideas that they haven’t previously seen, which may also explain why none of the top three videos at the time of writing this, are over a year old.
YouTube’s search and discovery system sets out to “help viewers find the video content they want to watch”. By considering user keyword intent when you create videos and matching the reason for a user’s query, your chances of increased viewership are maximised.
Google Trends
Google Trends doesn’t just give you a simple list of popular suggestions in relation to your chosen keyword or subject area. Instead, it gives you detailed analytics and infographics on the popularity of your keyword or phrase in the search engine, as well as when and where it is popular, and how it compares with another keyword of your choice. This means you can take this information into consideration when creating and uploading your video.
The data that Google provides is still relevant and useful when it comes to knowing which keywords are the most popular.
Google Search Criteria
Having your video appeal to Google’s search criteria is a way to dramatically increase traffic for your YouTube videos, despite the user not searching YouTube itself. Google even has its own ‘videos’ tab, the search engine uses what it describes as a ‘video carousel’, which is a handful of YouTube videos deemed by Google to be most relevant to the user query.
Ensuring your video appears as high quality youtube content on this tool will inevitably increase viewership.
Identify common trends or themes and use them to your advantage. Take note of the video titles, video lengths and the thumbnail image to get an idea of the sort of content that YouTube is wanting to show its users.
For example, when searching for ‘photography’, it is clear from the video carousel that the search returned for this particular keyword (pictured), provides its users with tutorial-like, step by step videos that are between ten to fifteen minutes long with the video's title including ‘beginner’ or ‘tutorial’.
SEO and YouTube
As a video hosting platform YouTube refers to their algorithm as their ‘Search and Discovery System’ and states that it aims to “help viewers find the videos they want to watch, and to maximise long-term viewer engagement and satisfaction.”
Although Google owns Youtube, treat it as an independent search engine when considering how you make and upload videos to the platform: there are YouTube-specific tips that help your videos to appear more frequently in user searches.
High-Retention Video Content
Another vital step to mastering video SEO on YouTube is understanding the importance of high-retention videos. What we mean by this is creating videos that are interesting and engaging enough to keep the viewer watching for its entire duration.
In a recent statement on changes to their algorithm, YouTube stated:
“We’ve started adjusting the ranking of videos in YouTube search to reward engaging videos that keep viewers watching.”
“Videos with consistently high audience retention and watch time have the potential to show up more frequently in Search and Suggested locations on YouTube.”
Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed formula to ensure a video will retain its audience; it can vary wildly depending on video topic and content. There are, however, a few easy tips to keep your videos entertaining and increase their watchability.
Preparation: videos ranking highly
A video that has been well-prepared will help your viewer retention rates hugely. For example, if creating a tutorial video, you need to be as clear and concise as possible. The use of a script can be an excellent way of preventing stuttering and limiting the use of interjections.
Preparation also means that you can take the time to incorporate keywords into your video itself – a technique, believed by many in the YouTube scene, to enhances algorithm success.
The Hook
Users tend to have a short attention span; if a video doesn’t interest us enough, we simply click off and continue with our search. It’s therefore crucial to hook the viewer during the first 10-15 seconds, to give a significant boost to your video’s chances of a high-retention figure. Again, establishing a strong hook varies massively based on a video’s title, topic and content.
Editing Videos Strategically
Editing videos can be time-consuming, but also rewarding if done to a high standard. A multitude of in-depth editing tutorials, tips and guidelines can be found online. But here are a couple of ideas for starters:
Lead the audience’s eye:
In order to limit a loss of viewer interest, it is important to draw your viewers’ attention to exactly what you want them to see. This can include eye catching thumbnails or on screen signage; anything that can prevent a viewer having to search for what is being discussed is helpful in creating a high-retention video.
Jump cuts:
A jump cut is a really simple technique, which involves transitioning from one scene to the very same scene, through the use of multiple camera angles. These can be used to polish mistakes, add dynamics to a video and to make it seem more concise and to the point, as it cuts through long periods of dialogue or film.
On-Page Video Optimisation
Now we know how to best make your video appear on a user’s search page, we now need to know how to make it stand out, when search pages are saturated with other videos on similar topics to yours. This is where on-page optimisation comes in, and it can be broken down into four different parts:
1. Title
A catchy, alluring title title gives context to your video, which makes it easy to find in YouTube’s ‘search’ and ‘suggested’ features. When thinking about your video title, it is important to find and use highly ranked keywords. Other key tips include:
-Keep titles concise (60 characters), with the most important information up front.
-Save episode numbers and branding towards the end.
-Check that your titles don’t get cut-off in suggested videos, search results, and mobile
2. Video Description
Descriptions can convey valuable information that helps viewers find your videos in search results and understand what they’ll be watching.
Well-written descriptions with the right keywords can boost views and watch time because they help your video show up in search results.
Making optimum use of keywords in the video file whilst summarising your video's topic will assist the search engines in targeting your video to an appropriate audience.
Further key tips regarding video description include using natural language and identifying popular keywords from related videos and having them at the beginning to ensure more traffic from the search engines.
3. Tags
Using tags on your videos is a useful way of helping users find your video. Tags are simply keywords and phrases which describe your video. They are effectively YouTube’s answer to the infamous Twitter or Instagram hashtag.
Highlighting common tags in the video description of related videos can assist in inspiration for this. The consensus among YouTube creators is that you should include around fifteen tags when uploading your video.
4. Custom Thumbnail
universal search
Arguably one of the most difficult aspects of creating a successful YouTube video is coming up with a thumbnail that is bold, informative and complimentary to your title.
A useful tip is to type your most useful keywords into search engines see if any resulting imagery can help influence your choice of thumbnail.
YouTube’s official guidance on thumbnails is as follows:
90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails. When you customise your video thumbnail, make sure that you've got a strong, vibrant image that conveys key information about your video.
You can apply the rule of thirds to compose interesting and dynamic images, overlaying your branding and/or descriptive text. If you add text, make sure you use a font that's easy to read.
In Video Optimisation
In this step we’ll discuss some well-loved features you can add to your video to make them more accessible and attractive.
Subtitles and Closed captioning
Adding subtitles, closed captions and video transcripts to your videos is a great way to ensure your video is accessible to the largest audience possible,
Cards and End screens
Cards are an excellent way of link building to other high quality videos, associated websites, merchandise all resulting in the increase of a videos rank.
End screens operate in a very similar way to cards, but occur at the end of your video. You might encourage viewers to subscribe, cross-promote another channel or provide a link to other websites. Consider leaving space at the end of your video for your end screen.
By taking each of these aspects of your YouTube video into account, you’ll be able to create appealing videos to users, which complies with YouTube’s ‘Search and Discover’ algorithm and is accessible to wider audiences. Your video will be optimised for a high session watch time.
Video SEO: Final Thoughts
Once you’ve created your video, promoting it is also a crucial step to help guarantee success. A basic promotion technique is sharing your video with your existing audience on social media. Make sure the upload date is accurate across all platforms to direct user traffic appropriately.
You can also use YouTube ads in order to promote your video. Although this comes at a cost, you can target audiences by interest, keywords, or something completely custom to your own business.
An effective video sitemap will ensure that google search results are able to accurately match a user's query to your website.
If we’re to leave you with one final thought from this guide on YouTube SEO, it’s the fundamental importance of creating high quality videos content that will rank well on search engine results pages such as Google search results and other search engines.
However, no matter how much time, effort, or money you spend on best optimising your video for YouTube, if your content does not look professional or well-produced, SEO can offer limited help. The content’s quality is paramount.
You should be well on your way to understanding how YouTube’s search engine works regarding a videos ranking, which keywords are most popular in relation to your video subject matter, and how to conduct your own research to best match your video.
Videos ranked highly on search results with links pointing to your website will inevitably improve you website's ranking too.
Other useful sources:
YouTube Analytics websites
If you want to dive deeper into the statistics and reasoning behind keyword searches on YouTube, there are a whole host of websites written specifically on YouTube Analytics, which go into much greater depth than YouTube or Google Trends. Here’s a quick overview of three of the best one’s we found, depending on your budget:
BuzzSumo
An excellent source of social engagement data across multiple platforms, BuzzSumo recently released their ‘YouTube Analyser’, which provides its users with a seemingly endless pool of graphs, infographics and statistics on YouTube keywords, videos, channels and playlists. This enables you to go a step further than seeing which keywords are highly ranked in the YouTube algorithm, by having access to analysis of almost every facet of the YouTube space entirely. BuzzSumo themselves say:
“ The YouTube Analyzer will return the top content for that keyword which you can rank by views, upvotes, downvotes, engagement and much more to find the videos that excite, engage or indeed enrage the viewer. This is your entry point to the world of video. Immediately we can see the most viewed videos for your keyword, and so we can start to understand what type of videos get noticed and learn from their successes”
VidIQ
VidIQ operates in a similar manner to BuzzSumo, but appears in the format of a sidebar, so you’re able to browse the YouTube platform and receive real-time data alongside the content you’re viewing.
One of the most useful features of the tool, however, is its keyword comparison. Simply type in a keyword, and in return it provides a number of related keywords and popular videos in relation to your keyword, as well as how your keyword’s popularity fluctuates over time. This will give you a score based on search volume.
Social Blade
Social Blade is a fantastic free online account analyser, whether for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube analytics. You can analyse the performances of your own social media accounts, as well as those of competitors.
Simply enter the account name into the website search bar to receive a range of channel data, including views over time, future viewing, subscriber projections, and comparisons between the channel’s videos.