Search engines can’t make sense of video content on their own, adding
keywords you want to rank for to the video title and description is
essential whenever uploading a video to YouTube. Choose keywords that
best represent the video and terms consumers will search for when
looking for products or services like yours.
There are many tactics businesses can use to find qualifying keywords to
help with their video SEO. For example, you can use keyword tools like
the Google AdWords Keyword Tool
to help determine the best keywords for each of your videos. However,
you should also conduct searches for single and long-tail keywords
within YouTube to help you understand the types of videos that show up
on YouTube for each term. Seeing how many videos share your potential
keyword, along with the number of views and related videos on the side
bar, can help you determine keyword competition and potential viewership
for your videos.
Making your video titles, descriptions, and tags SEO-friendly is as important as using qualified keywords.
Titles: The titles for YouTube videos have a
100-character limit, and you should include your most important keyword
close to the beginning of your video title.
you should consider adding a standard video “trigger” keyword, a word
that attracts attention in search engine results, to your video. Trigger
keywords you can use are “review,” “how to,” “about,” or your business
name keywords.
Descriptions: Video descriptions are a
critical component of video SEO because they are the main copy
associated with your video and the largest portion of text that search
engines can read when indexing videos. YouTube provides up to 5,000
characters in the description, so use this space wisely and
strategically craft the text for both SEO and viewers. Also, include the
same keywords used to optimize your title so search engines and people
will see a correlation between the two. The description should include a
summary of the video along with a link to a resource, like your
website, where viewers can receive more information.
Creating a playlist for similar types of videos can help improve their
visibility on YouTube. Not only do video playlists appear within the
YouTube search results, but other videos in that playlist can also
appear in the sidebar of the YouTube player as related content when a
viewer watches a video that’s included in the same playlist. This helps
boost views of other videos you’ve added, rather than directing viewers
to other content YouTube deems as similar but that may belong to other
accounts.