YouTube SEO Basics

[u_v]

Hi all,

New to the YTTalk forums - thought I'd introduce myself and give something to the community as I do it. My name is Urvesh Vasani, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 13 years old and I currently run a digital marketing agency that specialises in social media, search and mobile marketing. In my experience of running Six Inch Nails WEB for the past 3 years now, I have had the opportunity to work with over 45+ clients on their digital campaigns from over the world - and YouTube has been a big part of that strategy. I have had success with my clients' YouTube work in the past and have learnt a lot along the way.

While I am not a YouTuber myself, I realised my experience and knowledge can be of use to YouTubers here. I plan to share knowledge that companies and brands pay $$$$ for with YouTubers just starting out (or even the ones well into their journey) as a way of giving back for all the times the YouTube community has helped me kick back and chill.

Now, I realise this community obviously does not consist of the kind of people I usually interact with - business owners or CMOs - however, YouTube SEO is something that can work really well for anybody with a YouTube video and good content to get visibility on what they're doing. While there are a lot of posts that I noticed about YouTube SEO and the different ways to drive traffic to videos, I noticed there wasn't one post to get all the basics down to start off with. To save beginners (and some advanced YouTubers) the trouble of going through the wealth of content that this forum has to get to one straightforward post to get all you need to get started, I decided to write this.

I have a basic hygiene checklist here as well as some advanced tips that you can apply right now to get more traffic on your content. This little guide is assuming you have no prior knowledge of SEO or internet marketing whatsoever. However, before I begin, I'd like to get one thing out of the way which is essential to anything you do on YouTube:

No level of marketing knowledge can replace s**t content.
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How do you know if your content's good? That comes from testing, measuring and learning from your audience. But that's a topic for another post.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to YouTube SEO hygiene. The things you need to keep in mind before to start or try anything else, the basics.

(Note: these things are considering you've already got an awesome video shot, edited and ready to upload)

1. Know your keywords

Keywords are words keyed into search engines (such as Google, Bing or in this case, YouTube) to retrieve the content you are looking for. Just like Google, users type keywords into the YouTube search bar to find what they are looking for. However, your audience does not always discover your content only through the YouTube search engine; your video appears on various search results on other search engines as well (primarily Google), hence, knowing the right keywords for your video is essential.

Keyword research is an art in itself however, as far as the basics go, you ideally want to look at a keyword that has a lot of searches and not a lot of people have videos posted with that one (increasing your chances of getting more eyeballs on your video).

There's the head (1 word), the body (2-3 word phrases), and the long tail (4+ word phrases) keywords. You want to ensure when researching the right keywords for your video to have a good combination or head, body and long tail keywords. Of course, the longer the keyword is, the less searches there would be (when was the last time you remember searching for "black leather sofa with comfy cushions for netflix and chill" instead of "black sofa" or "sofa"?) - HOWEVER (and this is where a lot of people go wrong), if a long tail keyword has fewer searches, it does not mean it's useless. For instance, I'd rather have the 10 people that search for exactly what my video is about instead of having a 100 that are vaguely looking for it and do not end up getting any value from what my video is about.

A good practice is to get started by searching for some of the keywords that you can think of related to your video on Google, looking at what comes up, then looking at the traffic each of those keywords can possibly generate. You want to make sure each keyword you pick, has at least 300 searches.

Tool: Use Google's Keyword Planner or KeywordTool.io to get search volume data.

Once you've got your keywords down, it's time to put them to use.

2. Use your keywords wisely
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File Name

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Now that you've got your keywords ready, let's upload that video. But before you do, ensure that you have your main keyword as part of your video file name.

Video Title

Try and have a title that's at least 5-word long. While there might be some cases where the title of your video is more to do with branding or making people intrigued about the video, when that is not the cases, 5 words give you enough slack to include your keywords there.

(Psst: titles that start with the keyword do better )

Here's an example of a good title: YouTube SEO Basics to get more views.

Description

This is very important. Some basics things to keep in mind:

• Include your keyword in the first 25 words of your description (but DON'T STUFF IT)
• Write at least 250 words as part of your description
• Be sure to have your keyword repeat at least 3-4 times

Lastly, write for your audience, NOT Google. Write a good description that reads well and does not look like a bad excuse to include keywords in your description. This can be tricky if you want to ensure you follow the above rules but put some thought/effort into it. You've made a good video and it deserves the work you need to put in to get the views.

Tags

A lot of people believe tags are the way YouTube SEO works but it's not entirely true; having said that, they are essential and can give your video that extra push it needs. So, do it right.

Be sure to include your keywords in the tags, it tells Google and YouTube what your video is about. It does not only help with the search results, but also tells Google alongside what videos should yours appear as a suggested one.

3. Drive some traffic from other sources
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Traffic/views are an indicator of quality of content as well (duh). Hence, simply making sure you've got the keyword part done right would not really help. Here's a list of things you can consider:

• Answer questions about your video on Quora
• Share it on forums related to your topic. Or even other relevant places like here on YTTalk!
• Embed it on your website
• Share it on your social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram etc.)
• Share it on Reddit
• Tell your friends about it
• Tell your mom about it (every view counts!)

That's about it for the basics, I really hope this was of some value to some of the beginners here on YTTalk. I would love to hear what you guys think and if there's anything else you wanna know, hit me up here or reply to this post.

I plan on doing some more on SEO, getting more views, branding yourself as a YouTuber etc. - my goal is to share everything I have learnt running an agency (things that brands spend $$$$$$$ for) with YouTubers to become power marketers for their content.

^uv​

 

[CramBeats]

thanks man it really helped! I'm looking forward to create a website soon im hoping that will drive more traffic to my videos
But first im going to do some more keyword researches

 

[u_v]

thanks man it really helped! I'm looking forward to create a website soon im hoping that will drive more traffic to my videos
But first im going to do some more keyword researches

Glad I could be of help! Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know about promoting your channel - I'll be happy to write a post on that too!

^uv​

 

[subversiveasset]

I think that this is a great post to bring a lot of the basics in one place! However, I do have one question -- what sort of data do you have that the video's file name matters? I have heard some people suggesting that it is taken into consideration, but I thought the consensus was that this ultimately does not matter.

Also, I would think that there should be some commentary on the importance of watch time/audience retention over sheer traffic/views. In other words, getting several views from people who only watch a small portion of your video could be harmful in contrast to getting fewer views from people who watch a large portion of your video. the reason I say this is because it seems to me from my experience that linking to external sites (e.g., reddit, facebook, google plus, and so on) consistently leads to lower audience retention than relying on youtube search traffic -- have you seen that in any of the analytics you've seen? So, for me, I've reconsidered the value of sharing externally, because in the long run, I want to optimize for the right kind of traffic.

 

[u_v]

I think that this is a great post to bring a lot of the basics in one place! However, I do have one question -- what sort of data do you have that the video's file name matters? I have heard some people suggesting that it is taken into consideration, but I thought the consensus was that this ultimately does not matter.

Also, I would think that there should be some commentary on the importance of watch time/audience retention over sheer traffic/views. In other words, getting several views from people who only watch a small portion of your video could be harmful in contrast to getting fewer views from people who watch a large portion of your video. the reason I say this is because it seems to me from my experience that linking to external sites (e.g., reddit, facebook, google plus, and so on) consistently leads to lower audience retention than relying on youtube search traffic -- have you seen that in any of the analytics you've seen? So, for me, I've reconsidered the value of sharing externally, because in the long run, I want to optimize for the right kind of traffic.

While I cannot claim to have knowledge of the exact algorithm behind the file name. I have spoken to SEO experts and expert-level engineers about this - they all have different opinions though. For example, a good resource I use - ReelSEO - considers it to be a myth, however, there are plenty of other sources that have also claimed to have seen noticeable differences with the file name having their preferred keys. I have had views with the file name having the keyword in but again, it could be the supporting efforts as well. By the most part, I have noticed the ones with the keys in the file name do perform better than the ones that did not.

I absolutely agree with you on that point - the reason watch time/retention metrics were not considered in this post was because I simply wanted to focus on specific, actionable basics that any YouTuber can apply straightaway with their videos. I did talk a little about this on the "How to get not just subs, BUT FANS" post here on YTTalk (can't link since I'm new on the board). It all comes down to your content, and the level at which you engage with your audience. The average watch time per video does go towards helping Google determine your channel/content quality and hence listening to your audience, and engaging with them even when they are not watching your videos (Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram for example) is important. And of course, have good content, that goes without saying.

^uv​

 

[PocketPaul]

Dude just wanna say thank you! Really informative and im sure will help me in the future!

 

[u_v]

Dude just wanna say thank you! Really informative and im sure will help me in the future!

Pleasure's mine, man. Let me know if there's any other aspects of marketing your channel you'd like to know about. I'm going to set up a YouTube channel and a podcast to cover these things as well - will share the links here soon.