Inbound Marketing Insights

Did you know that YouTube is the #2 search engine behind Google? If you’re looking for ways to optimize your YouTube channel to get found by your prospects, then you’ve come to the right place! If you're just starting to create YouTube videos, it may be disheartening to see low reach of your YouTube channel and videos, but one thing to keep in mind is that every channel, at one point, started with zero views and subscribers. 

So, how do some videos have millions of views while other videos on the same topic have minimal views? The answer to that is simple: YouTube SEO. With the right SEO strategy in place, you, too, can grow your YouTube views and subscribers. Here are the ten tips you need to know for optimizing your YouTube SEO.

1. Focus on Select Keywords
Creating a few select keywords for each video will improve your rankings. All search engines maintain the same matching method with the most relevant result. YouTube is the same, too, in this case. Look up some big-view videos on YouTube, and you’ll notice that they focus on select keywords rather than sentences to describe what the video is about. YouTube or not, keywords will determine the eventual reach of your audience. You can use tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush to find popular video keywords.

2. Optimize Your Video Titles
Once you’ve selected your keywords, you can focus on optimizing your video to boost your YouTube rankings. One of the best ways to do this is by having those keywords in the video's title. However, with thousands of videos going out every minute, keywords in the title aren't enough to reach your viewers.

It would be best if you made your titles compelling and inviting. Titles that promise something of value can be the most attractive to viewers. For example, a title like “10 real-life hacks that actually work” promises something of value, so it will be more likely to get your viewers interested in watching.

3. Optimize Your Video Descriptions
Besides optimizing your videos' titles, you must also optimize your videos' descriptions. The title is mainly directed towards catching the eye of a potential viewer, but good descriptions can help explain what the video is actually about.

YouTube descriptions will display the first 125 characters, so instead of writing 125, it’s recommended to have a description with 250 characters. It's also recommended to place your most important keywords at the beginning of the video description.

4. Include the Right Video Tags
After optimizing your title and description, you can place your keywords in the video tag section. Regular users don’t see video tags as they are only for YouTube reference. Because of this, the viewers won’t know what you are including in the tags. Feel free to add as many search terms or variations of your keywords as possible because the more diverse you can be with your keywords, the better chance your video will appear in YouTube search lists.

5. Produce an Engaging Script
You might think, what's the need for a script? You might think that scripts give out wooden and robotic feelings while speaking and that a speech should appear natural and spontaneous. Though all of that is true, scripting can give you a better chance to look natural and spontaneous while ensuring you do not get sidetracked and lose viewers.

6. Keep People Watching
The longer a person watches your videos, the more "view time" your channel gets. That’s why it’s essential to keep your viewers watching. However, one of the biggest problems most viewers have is that the content is not constantly engaging. To make your content more engaging, you can add things like animations and jokes to make yourself more relatable with the content you’re creating. This will improve the overall ranking of your YouTube channel.

7. Engage with Your Audience
Do you know why nearly every successful content creator ends their video with these few phrases: “If you like this video, give it a like, share, and subscribe for more content…”

This is because SEO is affected by viewers’ engagement! Whenever your videos get any sort of engagement, such as likes, comments, or shares, it sends a strong signal to YouTube that viewers liked this content. YouTube will then suggest more of your videos for viewers to watch.

8. Use Convincing Thumbnail Images
There are two things that a viewer notices first before anything else: the video title and the video thumbnail. And as visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than words, a thumbnail can make or break your video. By default, YouTube will assign a thumbnail to your video, but it's recommended that you make a rather exciting thumbnail that will make people want to click on it.

9. Connect with Your Audience Socially
It's also important to share your YouTube video and your YouTube channel on as many social platforms as possible. You can share your videos and channel on Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, and more. This will help with cross-channel promotion to further engage your audience.

10. Include Closed Captions
As we’ve said before, the more views on your channel, the better. There are a lot of people with various physical handicaps that don’t allow them to hear or see your video correctly. For the convenience of those people, you can add closed captions to your videos. Though YouTube has an auto-closed caption system, it's not perfect and can lead to a bad experience. Closed captions can also be used for people of different languages.

If you're interested in discussing your current marketing strategy and how you can start improving your SEO results on YouTube and your other digital channels, we invite you to schedule an inbound marketing consultation .