8 Easy YouTube SEO Tips to Help Your Videos Rank Higher in Search

Everyone understands that people would prefer to watch a video than read a lengthy blog article. 59% of CEOs prefer to watch a video rather than read text. That is a large number of individuals. As a result, video SEO may provide several benefits, including increased view time, greater brand exposure, and more sales and leads.

For website and video ranking, search engines such as YouTube and Google apply the same concepts. The goal is to provide the greatest possible experience for the user, and YouTube video search results have now been merged with Google search results to streamline how people search.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use easy SEO techniques to attract traffic to your YouTube videos.

1. Choose your keywords intelligently.
Every month, SERPs become more competitive. New rivals, new goods, and new services are all vying for the top slots. Finding methods to broaden yourself and your offerings is therefore critical. Conduct keyword research, and unless you can compete with extremely competitive phrases, choose keywords that will bring you volume but are less competitive.

You may utilize the same keyword research tools that you would for PPC or SEO.

The Free Keyword Tool from WordStream
Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool.
Semrush or Moz.
Google search—search suggestions, questions asked, linked searches, and more!

2. Use keywords in the title of your video.
Understanding your audience’s search intent is the first step. We know that informative, commercial, navigational, and transactional search intents are the most popular. So, aligning what your video is about with the purpose of your consumer will be critical for getting your video to appear in search results.

Second, make sure you know why you want to make a YouTube video and who your target audience is. For example, if you want to highlight a product review, include the product name in the video title and description. It may appear to be an easy step, but many YouTube channels skip it, resulting in their videos ranking poorly on Google and other search engines.

3. Incorporate the term into your video file.
Simple enough; however, YouTube may utilize this as one of the ranking elements for displaying your video in search results. If the goal term is in the file name you’re uploading, your movie has a significantly greater chance of getting ranked—and gaining more search volume.

The filename is seen when uploading a new video. YouTube utilizes this to guarantee that the video is relevant, so make sure your file name is up to date before uploading!

4. Improve the description of your YouTube video.
Having a great, optimized video description is one of the most essential ranking elements for YouTube SEO. YouTube will review the video whenever you modify or update any YouTube video aspect, including video descriptions, subtitles, closed captions, and video thumbnails. This may be beneficial or detrimental… so do it properly the first time!

YouTube suggests putting your most significant keywords in the opening couple of phrases of your description and keeping it to no more than 200 words. In general, make your description useful. If it does not assist a user, remove it.

5. Make use of video hashtags to boost YouTube search results.
Youhashtags (#) are now widely used on social media to assist people in locating material that answers their requests across a variety of platforms. You may use hashtags in the descriptions and titles of your YouTube videos to help people find your video when they search for a certain hashtag.

Tags, in particular, assist in boosting search by making relevant trends more evident. When you include a hashtag in the video description, it will appear above the title and get hyperlinked.

6. Choose a video category
Users may pick the search to see videos from specified categories if they are looking for a certain film with sophisticated choices. When posting your video, you must contextualize it with categories so that it can be accessed by a user.

YouTube has a wide range of category possibilities, so you should be able to choose one that fits your YouTube videos. When uploading your video, you have the option of selecting a category.

7. Make your thumbnail image unique.
Thumbnails may either assist or hurt your YouTube videos. When consumers look at YouTube search results, they are the first thing that catches their eye. A great thumbnail can result in more watch time, which can have a significant impact on YouTube ranking. Make something that catches people’s attention and stands out from the crowd for your video to get recognized. These thumbnails, for example, are just pulled from the video and are perhaps not the most appropriate for capturing the user’s attention.

8. Subtitles and closed captions should be added.
The third step for YouTube search success is to use subtitles and closed captions.

While video subtitles are intended to communicate video conversation to viewers who do not understand the video language, closed captions are intended to transmit audio to viewers who cannot hear the audio.

Subtitles and closed-caption files, like transcripts, include the text of what is stated in the video. The file will also include timing codes for when each piece of text should be presented in the film so that it can correspond with a voice or another visual element. Check out the file formats that YouTube supports here.

Another advantage of having a transcript for your video is that it may be found by wide search engines, just like a video.