Search Engine Optimization And You.

Super Pawsitive

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Right, if you're here. You probably want to be found in Search Results.

This applies to EVERYTHING YouTube and otherwise. Keep in mind you don't have to follow this guide word by word. This is just a general guideline on how to get your videos in Search. Nothing is promised to you, but this WILL at least help.

That being said, lets start with your main channel. (Will be using images for examples!)



Right. What do you see here? Besides being a potential self-promotion stunt, it also serves as a bit of a template. How should your branding look? Consistent. Your branding should look consistent. While this doesn't have any bearing on SEO at the moment, just make sure THIS is nailed before we get into the specifics. Your channel name should match your banner, your social media, your icon, and so forth. Make sure people know you're the real deal, and not AngryBrutalPeanutButterJared.

Right, so what is there to DO on your channel?
Funnily enough, it's the things people overlook the most. It's the "About" tab.


I know this seems unimportant.
Hell, I didn't even care for it a while ago. Though, one day while doing an SEO study on top of a mountain, I realized that if you look for a specific channel name THIS is what you see.

(Pardon YouTube being stupid, that is what my description USED to say. It should update soon.)

That being said, make sure to include keywords in the "About" section of your tab. It's very small, and might not effect you too much in the end, but it will help I'm sure...probably. (There's no way to really be sure unless YouTube flat out tells me.)

Right, we should get into the beef of this article. SEO and how to make it work for you.

I'm writing this from the experience of a Video Game Review Channel on YouTube. While I'm sure any tips I provide will most likely help ANY niche, I don't necessarily know how to do SEO for say, a beauty channel. (Sorry!)

Let's start with your Titles, Description, and Tags.
While I don't want to dwell too much in branding on this article. Keep in mind that your BRANDING will help you stand out. Much like branding a cow, you want to burn an image into your viewers head....just not as painfully.

TITLES!
While titling your video is something that there is no set in stone method for, there are a few ways you can do these titles to make them more Search Engine Friendly.

I use a very specific method of titling my videos. If you'll look on this image, you can see that my titles always follow the format of (Subject) - [Video Type] - {Branding}

I do this purely because of my type of thinking. If I was a viewer, what would I want to see first? Who made the video? Or what the video is about?

My priorities go into the topic of the video first and foremost, since in the search engine, people don't know you, and people aren't searching for you. They're looking for informative and entertaining content. Just be sure you're one of them. This is where I'd recommend doing Evergreen content. Though we'll get into THAT at a later point.

Before I end this segment (cause there isn't much to it) just make sure you incorporate the subject of your video into the title, and make sure that your title eventually turns into tags. (Explained later on.)

DESCRIPTIONS.
This is a portion that really shouldn't need to be explained, but I will explain it anyways because I HAVE TO BE THOROUGH.

This is where you talk about your video, now here's a good tip that you should all learn. When planning to make your video, think of how you'll describe it to people in as few words as possible.

"This is a review of _______" "This is how pigs mate in the spring." "This is how you hide a body"

While one of those things might get you incarcerated, the idea is there. Make sure you can describe your video and what it's about in one sentence, maybe two if it's really that convoluted.

Now take that sentence, and use it as the first line of your description. Reason being? That's the brief description YouTube gives you when you search up a video. Ex:

(I decided to look up "How to Hide A Body" for this since it's relevant. lol.)

What this guy is doing, is not necessarily wrong, but it is pushing his description of the video down. Would you want to subscribe to someone you haven't even watched their content of? No, of course not. You'd probably want to watch his stuff first. Though if his title and thumbnail didn't catch your attention. That description DEFINITELY won't.

Besides making a small and short explanation for your viewers, make sure you also include a bunch of keywords. So, if you were doing a video on "The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning" you would probably want to add some keywords from that. Such as the title of the game (no shame in posting the title of the game in the description as well.) and whatnot. Make sure that if you're doing a review, or a let's play, gameplay, etc, that you use that in your description. "This is a review of The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning."

Albeit, make sure to make that sentence a bit more enticing while being descriptive. SEO is weird.

As for links and such, those are usually fine. Just make sure all of your social media and such can be found easily and without a hitch. Don't want to deter a viewer from following you on twitter cause you linked something incorrectly. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't done it before.

Right, I think we're done with descriptions. I have tacos, so lets go and type about tags while I eat tacos. Om nom.

TAGS! (AND TACOS)
So, for the longest time I've had the mentality that tags should be like this:
The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, Review, Gameplay, HD, High Definiton, Funny, Review, Super Pawsitive, Super Positive, Super, Positive, Pawsitive


This is wrong for a number of reasons. Let's start with the basics. Single word tags are NOT going to get you seen in search results. So, HD, Funny, Review, Super, Positive, Pawsitive, etc. will NOT get me found.

The reasoning for this is, if you ever look up a YouTube video, how do you type it in? If you're looking for a review on Jack in the Box Tacos, you'd type in something along the lines of "Jack in the Box Tacos Review".

See? This guy gets it!

The point is, if you were to just look up the word "taco" or "review" You wouldn't get a lot of results you want to find.


See how vague that is?
This is why you should think of these more as Search Phrases as opposed to Search terms. You get the idea? I hope so, I'm not explaining it again.

Make sure your tags contain key words from your title, description, and even your branding.

So, if you're doing a review on Jack in the Box Tacos, I better see the tags: Jack in the Box Tacos, Jack in the Box Tacos Review, ThisIsMyChannelName, ThisIsMyChannelName Review, etc.

The point is, there is a market for people who want to validate being fat through YouTube videos. I'm one of them, and these tacos are delicious for the price.

I should really go on a diet.

Welp, I think that's all there is to SEOing your videos. If you want old videos to do better, I'd definitely recommend going and changing old tags, titles, and descriptions. A little change can go a long way.

Anything else relies mostly on audience retention and watch time! That's a bit hard to get depending on your content, but I can't really judge all of you at once, so just trust that your content is good until told otherwise and use these tips. You should be at the top of search results in no time! Like me! :D
 

Winger94

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Nice guide indeed! The SEO part is the biggest obstacle between videos and their visibility and a lot of people underestimate this. I'm always willing to learn new ways to improve the visibility and I always aim for the best tags, description and title! Nice work buddy.
 

Super Pawsitive

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If any of you need further elaboration, please let me know! Also, if you have ideas for different topics you'd like me to cover, I can do those as well. Anything to help my fellow YouTube buds.
 
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Jaguar550

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Good title, tags, description ect are of course important but much more important is watch time. You could have good seo but if people click off too early Youtube won't rank your video's well. If you search for ''Fallout 4 Piper Romance'' you see that my video is ranked second. Almost all of the videos in that search term have much higher views but still my video is ranked higher because of better watch time.

 
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Super Pawsitive

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Good title, tags, description ect are of course important but much more important is watch time. You could have good seo but if people click off too early Youtube won't rank your video's well. If you search for ''Fallout 4 Piper Romance'' you see that my video is ranked second. Almost all of the videos in that search term have much higher views but still my video is ranked higher because of better watch time.

I did mention that! Though that's a different article entirely. If any. It's something that you can't really control. Watch Time/Audience rentention will only ever be so high. Making engaging videos is hard. Is mostly what I'm saying.
 
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TheAwkwardFamily

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Okay I knew how to do tags but I never thought of putting phrases in! I'm going to go edit them right now!