Getting a video published on YouTube is very easy. Just create a video and publish it on the platform. Once you create your video, upload it and publish this video on YouTube. Now it’s a YouTube video. The process is as simple as it looks.
But it isn’t the end of the story. Rather, the story begins here. Unless you have your videos ranking on YouTube search, no one will notice them. It’s a tough task to get your videos ranking in higher positions for relevant queries.
Tips to Rank YouTube Videos in Google Search
If you’re looking to drive more visitors traffic to your YT videos, then the videos must be well optimized having all the video SEO standards in place. Let’s start with some of the key video search engine optimizations strategies that you can impellent to rank your YT videos higher in the YouTube search.
Optimize the Video Meta:
The first step to video optimization is optimizing its meta tags. Metadata lets search engine crawlers understand the searcher intent of the keyword you are trying to rank for. A video’s title, description, and caption are crucial for ranking.
- Video Title:
- You may have heard that YouTube video titles should include relevant keywords for ranking for specific terms in Google search and YouTube video search. This could be a great practice but isn’t a rule.
An ideal video title is one that precisely matches the user’s intent and tells users what this video is all about. Don’t put too much effort to put keywords in the title if they don’t fit.
The main purpose of a title is to capture the audience's attention and compel them to click the link and watch the video. Going overboard to overoptimize the video title may backfire.
- Meta Description
- YouTube’s video description field can consume more characters if compared to the website's meta description field. The maximum limit to cover a video description is 5000. That means you can offer users and search engines more details about the video(s).
The space is way enough to include all possible editorial details about the video. The description can easily include key points in the beginning since the description itself will be truncated after three lines.
- Use Meta Tags
- YouTube tags are also an important element that needs consideration. Like the video Meta description, tags provide additional information about the context of a video. YT videos allow using tags up to 500 characters. To find the best tags related to your videos, you can utilize various tools available that provide recommendations.
Include Key Moments
Key moments are additional links related to the video that appears in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) below the video listing. These are labeled as ‘chapters” and help users to navigate to different sections of the video. In terms of ranking and visibility, key moments are very important.
Another major benefit of using key moments is that they help to generate more clicks from the video search. Create a list of the timecodes and chapter names in the video description, separated by a hyphen.
Use Catchy subtitles
To make catchy headlines for your videos, you can use YouTube’s automatic subtitle generator. However, creating manual subtitles is always a recommended way to do it. Especially when topics are complex and technical. YouTube allows you to upload subtitles in multiple languages. You can head to the subtitles menu in YouTube Studio to manage subtitles.
Create Impressive Thumbnails
Like other video elements we discussed above, the thumbnails are very important. They attract users and encourage them to click the video link in Google search.
Thus, thumbnails should be created after deliberate thinking. Instead of using the default thumbnails, YouTube allows you to pick from a frame in the video, create a unique one. A good video thumbnail contains bright colors and high contrast, with text overlays and faces.
Test multiple thumbnails and track which one resonates with the users well. You can take the help of YouTube analytics to see which videos are generating the highest percentage of their traffic.
Links and Social Shares
So far we have discussed the elements that we optimize on the video itself. However, it’s also important to look into the off-page SEO factors of the video on YouTube.com or the landing page which embeds the video on your website.
Put all good efforts to earn authority for this page. Create a link-building strategy to obtain natural and authoritative backlinks to the page/video. Run promotional campaigns around your content to generate more shares and backlinks.
Link campaigns for YouTube videos are not very much different from the ones we run for websites. You can run outreach campaigns, contact influencers, create shareworthy content to target audiences. The more your audience will be able to discover and watch content, the more traffic your video receives.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
