Starting a YouTube channel from scratch is exciting and challenging at the same time. One of the most difficult jobs to work on is YouTube SEO. It is key to make your content visible and discoverable to many audiences. However, the journey will never be plain sailing.
From creating content to understanding YouTube video metrics, we got you covered. Let’s dive in and discuss how to rank YouTube videos higher in 2023!
Encourage Viewers Engagement
One of the most vital video metrics on YouTube is engagement. It shows viewers’ behavior towards your content. For example, identifying how many users watch, comment, like, and share your video content.
Driving engagement is a tough game for newcomers on YouTube. The good news is you can continually improve it over time by encouraging viewers to respond to your content. If you aim to engage audiences for the entire video, create shorter videos for shorter human focus spans. Snackable videos can help audiences find the information they are looking for instantly.
Another way is to create interactive content. YouTube provides features for you to make interactive content, such as live-streaming videos. You can also create non-video posts, such as polling, to evoke the audience’s participation.
Do Keyword Research
Keywords are not only necessary for written content but also for videos. They play a crucial role in defining your rank on search engines. With countless content on YouTube, fighting for the top positions is undoubtedly a competitive battle.
The big question is, how to choose keywords for your content? You can create one according to your topic and consider using long-tailed keywords over one-word keywords. They give better support to your content.
If you’re struggling to choose keywords, try using keyword tools like VidIQ, TubeBuddy, and Google Trends. You can enter your main keyword, and they will give you some potential keywords to use.
Optimize Video Metadata
After deciding on your keywords, optimizing video metadata is the next step. It refers to information about your video that YouTube uses to crawl, identify, and categorize your content in its search engines.
YouTube video metadata includes title, tag, hashtag, and description. In addition, adding video categories, closed captions, and transcripts can also help you optimize your video performance. Make your metadata include your video keywords. and optimize your tags, hashtags, and video description with keyword-friendly text.
Your video title must convey your content. Aim to create short and captivating titles so viewers can see your title entirely. The most important thing is to avoid using a click-bait title, as YouTube highly discourages it.
Create Valuable and Relevant Content
First and foremost, creating valuable content is essential. Informative content can help you build credibility from the get-go, positively influence viewers, and help them overcome problems.
Define your specific niche to create content., such as beauty, fashion, health, art, business, etc. Having a particular niche allows you to create a better content strategy. You can pen down some topics for your following videos. In addition, use scheduling tools to make posting schedules for some months ahead. Find the best days and times to post your content. Your location may also take account of this.
Enhance Video SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital for any content. Optimizing your video SEO goes beyond metadata. There are other ways to boost your video performance and improve its ranking on YouTube’s search engine.
- Use end screens and annotation: Using end screen cards, you can promote other videos from your channels. Meanwhile, use annotations to add information or promote other content using links.
- Add transcripts: Make your content accessible to all viewers. Adding transcripts helps the audience with hearing problems understand the content. You can use AI to write transcripts but still do final checking for accurate results.
- Use the correct format and resolution: YouTube recommends uploading videos in a 16:9 aspect ratio, with a resolution of at least 720p.
- Optimize your file name: Before uploading your video, rename your file using a descriptive and relevant title. This tip helps improve video visibility in search results.
- Use relevant and high-quality thumbnails: As the element that comes to the forefront of the audience, your video thumbnails must be eye-catching. Craft a well-balanced thumbnail by incorporating visuals and typography. Also, consider the colors to make a good contrast.
- Encourage interaction: YouTube will also examine audiences’ reactions to your video. Encourage your viewers to leave comments, ask questions, or share your video with their friends and followers.
Promote Your Video
Uploading your video on YouTube is only part of the job. You must promote your newest content on other social platforms to drive viewers. Consider promoting your video even before launching it. There are many ways to promote your content. For example, you can create a countdown on Instagram or YouTube to evoke anticipation. So you can generate viewers and engagement right after you upload your content.
Monitor Vital Video Metrics
After all your efforts to boost your video performance, another thing that matters is monitoring your content performance. You can see whether or not your content generates the desired result by monitoring vital metrics.
- Search rankings: You can see how your video ranked on search results for specific keywords. You can also get insight on how to improve it.
- Views: It indicates your video’s popularity and reaches on YouTube.
- Watch time: It is the total amount of time viewers spend watching your video. Videos with higher watch time rates are often favored in search results.
- Engagement: It shows how viewers respond to your content. This metric shows the number of likes, comments, and shares by audiences.
- Audience retention: It reveals the average length of your videos being watched before they drop off your video.
- Click-through rate (CTR): CTR is the percentage of people who click on your video after seeing it in search results or on the YouTube homepage.
Takeaway
No matter how authentic and attractive your content is, it won’t thrive without YouTube SEO. The above points can help you rule the platform, and consider using AI-driven tools to help you manage your tasks. You can save countless hours managing tasks and analyzing your content. Best of all, some tools provide insights to help you make informed and accurate decisions.
Need a hand with SEO? Contact us today to learn how the full-service digital marketing experts at Fisher Green Creative can help grow your small business.
Andre Orentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video production company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
