No one ever in the history of time decided to create a youtube channel because they love writing descriptions, titles and tags. its one of those tasks that we all know we have to do. but most of us hate it.
also bare in mind that as a small youtuber we are at a disadvantage. the same video with the same title, description and tags will rank higher for a popular youtuber than a new one because youtube knows more people will want to see the popular guy (its like being back at school!) so we have to fight this!
i will take you through a step by step process, from choosing the right title. then talking about tags and description. i will explain my though process behind each of my decisions for one of my video, get a cup of tea as this is gonna be a long one
STEP 1 - make your video, edit it. make it look pretty, and make a cool thumbnail - this guide is about SEO not making videos
lets take a little time here to talk about my video that i am using as an example, there is a strategy game called warhammer total war. if i just did a plain lets play then i would be directly competing with a large number or much bigger youtubers. so i decided before the game was released that i would do some guides instead.
whilst reading the game forums i noticed a lot of people talking about friendly fire in the game. there is no guide on this in the game itself. just people discussing how it worked. why it worked etc. so i spent a few hours collecting information from various different sources to present as a guide
STEP 2 - TITLE - the single most important SEO part of your video, this can help make a crap video get a million views and a great video get 17 views
- don't click bait, the title first and foremost has to match the content. otherwise you will have a horrible retention rate and cause your videos to rank lower over time
- my title for this video was pretty simple. it needed three things. the game name, the subject and a often used word that people search for for this type of thing "Total War: Warhammer - The Friendly Fire Guide" was born
- to get an overall idea for seo. before doing the video. search youtube for search terms relative to your video, see how many results it gets, how good are the first 5 videos in the search, check their tags (tubebuddy) to see if you can compete. also good to check the thumbnails of the competition and find area's where you could improve upon them
- don't be genric, doing a vlog? "vlog #2 dog walk" is not a good title, how about "me and meg the spaniel go swimming" then you can SEO for vlogs. dog walking. dog swimming. spaniels etc and it looks more friendly and inviting
STEP 3 - TAGS - this is not as important as Title and Description but still means a lot and should not be neglected
- first things first. don't use single words for tags "warhammer" "game" "guide" they are so generic its never going to rank highly on that, you need to use longer form tag phrases, single words are pretty pointless unless that one word is very specific
Note - GET tubebuddy, its free for the basic version and helps with a lot of things on youtube. including tags
Lets look at the tags i used for my friendly fire guide video:
- First thing to note. try to use all your tag space. every little helps
- as you can see, i am ranked number 1 on three different searches, put yourself in the position of the person searching. for instance. a few people incorrectly call the game total warhammer (its called total war warhammer) so i included that in the tags and its number 1, you can even use tags for common spelling mistakes, although YT does auto correct the search often
- the big one is total war warhammer friendly fire, that where the majority of the views come from, and its exactly what the video is about, no click baits and thus a good retention rate
- lets say your video is about yoga. no one is going to search for "yoga" they want specific information. put yourself in their shoes. they might search for "best yoga positions" "yoga for weight loss" etc etc incorporate those things in your tags, title and descriptions
The key here is to find a niche. more so find a niche within a niche as i have done so above. 1,5k views may not seem a lot. but i am only a small channel, and the video is only a couple of weeks old. i will check back on this video in a month and i should see even more phrases ranking higher. remember getting ranked takes time. so don't despair if after a day your not finding your video. rankings can take days, weeks or even months.
STEP 4 - DESCRIPTION
the reason i do this last is because often what i need to put in the description will often come from my tags and the research i did
- the key to a good description is to use terms and phrases that people are searching for. think of them as tags. but rather than listing a bunch of tags that make no sense. take what you think are the two or three most important ones and make them into a sentence that make sense
- make sure these search terms form the start of your description, not only does YT give more importance to whats at the top, it also comes up in the search:
- then feel free to add links to other videos, social media etc below the important stuff.
- a last note on descriptions. keep it short. no one is going to read more than a paragraph or so
Don't forget about google. many of your views might come directly from a google search. good thing is, youtube is owned by google so the search algorythms are getting more similar all the time. lets do a google search for "total war warhammer friendly fire"
5th on google. not bad at all for a video of only two weeks old!, interestingly. the actual link that came up on google was a link to the video when i shared it on a google+ community (this is why you should share on google+ communities) google desperately wants google+ to work longer term. and although its kinda shi*. you might not gain a massive amount of views from that community. but it got it on to the first page of a google search
on google search - videos tab i rank second
not bad at all. and considering the number 1 video was made a month earlier. i stand a good chance of going number 1 soon as my SEO is clearly better (look at his description)
SUMMARY - the most important thing is to find a niche within a niche. that way you are not competing with millions of other youtubers, you might only be competing with thousands
don't make a "yoga" video. make a "downward dog yoga pose guide" or a "5 best yoga poses for weight loss" (i know nothing about yoga by the way)
A little about me. i am relatively new to this Youtube game, but i have grown a pretty good amount of subscribers in my 8 months with a gaming channel (2k subs and 300k views). its only a part time hobby at the moment.
I have however got vast experience in SEO. i have built 3 professional websites for companies and done all the SEO for said websites and social media accounts
thanks for reading my epic post, well done if you got this far. i am happy to answer questions or queries you may have. also. let me know if there any other topics you want me to cover. i have a pretty well rounded knowledge and i am happy to help out the community that helped and encouraged me so much
