With YouTube, you can reach millions of people. So, are you wondering how the videos you upload can rank higher, and what SEO work you should do to get there?
Let's first go over some important YouTube statistics:
- According to Statista, there are approximately 2 billion YouTube users in 2020,
- According to YouTube, 1 billion hours of video were watched in 2019 alone,
- 62% of businesses use YouTube to promote their content.
YouTube is a Google product, and depending on the search intent, your videos may appear as a video carousel in the results. Google has access to all the information on YouTube, which makes optimizing your videos much more valuable.
Before moving on to optimization suggestions, let's look at the video results for the term "How to make Lahmacun", which has a very low search volume and potential.
Below you can see how much traffic the first ranked video from the yemek.com channel has earned according to Ahrefs data. The video alone receives approximately 4.7K traffic per month.
As a result of all this information, how does YouTube SEO work? What are the steps you need to take to optimize your YouTube channel for SEO? We have summarized some important tips below to answer questions like these.
What is YouTube SEO?
YouTube SEO refers to the optimization methods used to help your YouTube videos rank higher, both on YouTube itself and in Google and other search engines.
What are the Ranking Factors in YouTube SEO?
Here are some important ranking factors that can affect your YouTube ranking:
Video Name
Uploading a more understandable video title to YouTube is one of the positive signals for ranking. YouTube can read not only your video's content, but even the name of the video while it is still being uploaded, and can use it in ranking.
An example of file name usage that we don't recommend:
With this in mind, you can name the video something like "ZEO YouTube_SEO_ipuclari" instead of "video11-2020".
Video Title
You can think of your video titles just like title tags on websites. It helps to use titles that avoid spam and read naturally. Choose titles that fully describe the video, suit your target audience, and give users the information they need.
You can also use tools such as Ahrefs to help you find volume and relevant keywords when choosing these titles.
Please note that there is a 100 character limit for video titles.
Video Description
In the description section, you can include words that describe your video and are useful to viewers. This section also has a 5,000-character limit.
In this section, you should avoid irrelevant and spam words as much as possible. It is against the guidelines to use repetitive and irrelevant words here. You can also use the Google Trends tool to find popular keywords this way.
Example usage: BBC News Turkish
With YouTube Analytics, you can run ongoing tests to find what works best in your description section.
Video Category
Placing your videos in more relevant categories will help your video rank higher and attract more relevant audiences. For example, producing video content on a topic such as "10 Challenges Referees Face" and categorizing it as "Movies and Animation" would not be the right choice. Instead, you should choose the "Sports" category.
Video Tags
Video tags are another factor that affects your videos' ranking. YouTube also recommends using tags, according to its own resources. Keep in mind that using tags in a spammy or irrelevant way goes against Google's guidelines.
Thumbnails
It would not be wrong to say that videos are one of the most important elements. Users are highly likely to click on video thumbnails, both within YouTube and on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Apart from the title of the video, thumbnails send a signal to the viewer about the content of the video, which can affect the number of clicks and views your video can get. YouTube itself already automatically generates thumbnails from videos, and you can choose one of them, but we always recommend using a custom thumbnail.
Example thumbnail uses (from Tokyo search results)
The Creator Academy reports that "90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails". You can use images that are 1280x720 pixels (representing a 16:9 ratio) and 2MB or smaller, as well as images saved as .jpg, .gif or .bmp.
Please note that your account must be verified in order to verify thumbnails.
Subtitle Usage
One of the critical points in YouTube SEO recommendations is to add subtitles to videos using files with a .SRT extension. Videos with added subtitles look like the one below:
First, upload subtitles in the video's native language in a way that doesn't disrupt its synchronization. Then, if possible, translate them into other languages and add them to your videos.
In some search results, Google pulls parts of a video's subtitles and surfaces them as featured snippets. Users are also taken directly to the relevant part of the video, based on their search.
You can easily add subtitles to your YouTube videos by logging in to the area we show below:
Playlists
Grouping relevant videos into a single playlist makes it more likely that viewers who visit your channel will watch topics that interest them.
You can think of playlists as category structures on a site, and build strategies around them. You can also share playlists more easily than sharing related videos one by one.
Cards
You can see the cards in the top right corner when watching videos. Here you can show your viewers video content that you find relevant. Example usage:
When editing your YouTube videos from the details tab, you can add not only videos but also additional cards such as playlists, links or polls.
End Screens
YouTube End screens help draw viewers to more diverse content, shown on the screen as the video comes to an end.
End screen example.
YouTube may also test these end screens occasionally and show different end screens to better analyze user preferences.
As we wrap up this article, we should note that video watch times are also one of the essential signals. For example, 70% of a 20-minute video can be ranked higher than 100% completion of a 2-minute video. Many other factors, such as the number of subscribers, likes, comments, social shares, user intent, average watch time and many more, can be used in rankings.
Of course, what we mentioned above is only a tiny part of these ranking factors. You can contact our team if you want to do SEO work on YouTube.
