Do you want your brand to gain visibility and are you looking for new opportunities? Now is the time to integrate YouTube into your marketing strategy.
With more than 2 billion monthly users, the video platform is a real boon for many businesses. Not to mention that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google!
But you still need to manage to carve out a place on the world's most well-known video platform.
In this article, the idea is to give you 10 tips to effectively improve your SEO on YouTube. Let's go!
1. Understand YouTube's algorithm
It is now public knowledge that YouTube's algorithm creates a stream of personalized recommendations based on user satisfaction. For optimization, the algorithm takes precedence over the search engine.
Seventy percent of traffic would come more from platform recommendations than from direct search.
It is therefore essential to clearly understand how this algorithm works to expand your visibility.
Here are the user behavior metrics to take into account in the analytics:
- User watch time.
- Percentage of video watched.
- Click-through rate.
2. Keywords
Like written content, keywords are essential for the optimization of SEO organic on YouTube.
To search for the relevant keywords associated with your videos, it is recommended to use YouTube's autocomplete suggestions. Simply type a query into the search bar to see all the suggestions for related keywords. Exactly like on Google.
Make sure to put your main keyword in your file name before uploading it to your channel. It's a SEO tip simple but effective!
Also read : YouTube: 10 tools to boost your SEO
3. Add links to your YouTube channel banner
You can customize your YouTube channel and add links to your website or social networks.
This increases the chances that users will take an interest in your brand.
To do this, click 'Customize channel', go to the 'Links' section and click the edit icon to add the desired links.
Also check out how to create an irresistible banner for your YouTube channel.
4. Add subtitles to your videos
Adding subtitles is an excellent way to increase organic traffic to a YouTube channel. Subtitles are indeed taken into account by search engines.
Enabling this feature on your channel is an asset for your SEO.
Warning: however, make sure the video captions are accurate—automation can sometimes produce surprises!
Adding subtitles helps the algorithm and increases your chances of visibility on YouTube.
Also read : Javascript SEO: best practices to improve your search ranking
5. Structure your channel
Once you have a few well-optimized videos online, you can organize your channel to improve the user experience.
By default, YouTube organizes videos by popularity or by upload order.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes for a moment and think about how they will navigate your channel.
To organize your video content, you can create playlists. Simply select “customize channel,” click the Playlists tab, and create a new one.
Also read : 5 steps to audit your brand’s YouTube channel
6. Optimize video tags and descriptions
Writing a description for your videos is a step not to be overlooked when optimizing for search. The first 100 words are the most important because they are the ones that appear in YouTube search results.
Your keywords should be integrated into the content as naturally as possible. Most of the time, this happens automatically if you write a detailed and precise description of your video.
Optimizing your description is the best way to appear in YouTube’s sidebar of suggested videos.
Don't forget to include your keywords in the tags; they'll be very useful for optimizing your SEO.
7. Add the embed feature
Do you want users to massively share your videos? Also don't hesitate to embed them on your website or blog and encourage users to do the same on their own sites. You can even embed your videos in your newsletters !
Make it easy for them by enabling the embed feature on YouTube. To enable it, go to the "Video Manager" of your YouTube account, then select "edit" under the video where you want to enable embedding. Finally, in "Advanced settings," check the "embedding" option.
YouTube offers great potential for developing a brand's communication. By following these tips you can optimize your YouTube channel and use this distribution channel to increase your visibility. To go further, you can also follow Redacteur.com's advice and read our article to boost your visibility on YouTube.
YouTube SEO: what is it?
Today, video is one of the formats most consumed by users. YouTube has risen among the most consulted search engines in a few years. It is currently the second-largest search engine. And for good reason: it hosts many content formats boosted by optimal web SEO.
Organic SEO on Google consists of implementing a number of marketing techniques to promote your videos on the web.
The goal of a content creator who works on their SEO on YouTube is for their videos to appear at the top of results when internet users search for content. It's an excellent way for them to grow their community by attracting organic traffic to their YouTube channel.
How to rank a video on YouTube?
We strongly encourage you to optimize the SEO for your YouTube videos to build the reputation of your channel and your content. To do this, multiple techniques are available to you.
On the one hand, you will need to work on the textual content of your titles, descriptions and subtitles. It is essential to write titles that include target keywords — keywords that should also appear in your videos' descriptions and subtitles for effective optimization.
On the other hand, knowing YouTube's algorithm well is necessary to adapt to it. By generating engagement on your videos, YouTube will consider your content worthy of interest and will not hesitate to promote it.
What is engagement on a YouTube video?
The more users interact with your content, the more likely your videos are to appear at the top of YouTube search results. Engagement on a YouTube video is reflected by the actions taken by users who watched your content.
Engagement indicators include subscriptions to your YouTube channel, likes (thumbs up), shares, and comments. Note, however, that these actions do not carry the same weight. In YouTube's view, a "like" on a video has much less impact than a share, for example.
The more you succeed in eliciting reactions from people who watch your content, the higher your engagement rate will be. This metric is a key signal for YouTube, which will not hesitate to boost your channel's content.
An engagement rate on YouTube is calculated by comparing the number of likes/comments to the number of views of a video.
Our tip
Hire the services of a freelance YouTube expert! It's simple: Describe your issue on Codeur.comReceive quotes from community managers, communicate with them via a private messaging system, and select the expert who best meets your needs (and your budget!).
