YOUTUBE SEO BASICS: Beginner's Guide to Rank YouTube Videos in YouTube Search with Video SEO

Have you ever released a video and then crickets, it got zero views.

It leaves you wondering why is nobody watchingmy video? Well, it's probably because you didn't doyour YouTube SEO right, and as a result, YouTube doesn't even know what your video's about.

Well, in today's video, I am movie breakingdown YouTube, SEO basics, everything that you need to do to set your video up for success.

So if you want to know what you need to dofor your YouTube SEO thing, keep on watching.

A lot of people when they're starting outon YouTube, think that they can just make videos, put it on YouTube, and suddenly millionsof people will find it.

Well, unfortunately that is not the case.

You may not know this, but YouTube is actuallythe second largest search engine in the world and it is owned by Google, the largest searchengine in the world.

Essentially YouTube is a search engine andthe reason they continue to be the number one and number two search engines in the worldis because they have proven time and time again that they provide the best answers forthe questions that people are searching for and that actually is what search engine optimizationis all about.

Search engine optimization or SEO for shortis the work that you put into your video to make sure that it can be found by the searchengines and so that the search engines can actually know what your video is about andthen recommend it to people, and this might be obvious, but one thing that Google andYouTube are are they are businesses.

They make money and their main business, oneof the biggest ones is search.

They have gotten so dominant at search andthey want to make sure time and time again that they are your number one place to gowhen you are searching for things online because guess what? When you search for things, they also haveads and that's how Google makes money as they have the ads sprinkled in on the search resultspage.

But then also for YouTube, they have ads onthe videos.

So by creating content that people are searchingfor that they have questions for and it provides answers and they're able to find the absolutebest video that gives the best answer, then you are going to stick around.

You're going to watch the ad, you're goingto watch the video, you're probably going to see another ad and Google makes money.

So you actually might have amazing contentthat provides great answers to people's questions, but because you're not doing the SEO, Google'snot ranking you and no one's finding it.

Now let's be real here.

YouTube is not a human.

It can't really watch your video and knowwhat your video's about.

So SEO is the work that you need to do togive Google a better understanding about what your video's about so that way they can presentit to people who are searching for those key words.

And speaking of keywords.

Let's jump right into that because keywordsare one of the most important things before YouTube.

SEO, because they are the foundation of allthe work that you need to do.

So keywords are words or phrases that yougive to Google, letting them know what your video topic is about.

These can be shorter phrases such as fashiontips or longer phrases such as how to organize a garage or how to grew my own dog.

So before you even make your video, you shoulddo keyword research.

You need to figure out what the competitionis like out there for the different topics that you want to make your video about.

So for example, if you want to do a vlog andyou want to rank for vlog in doing your keyword research, you'll find out that that probablyisn't something that you should target as a brand new YouTuber.

While it does have incredibly high searchvolume, tons of people are searching for blogs.

The problem is it's very, very saturated andvery competitive.

So that means when you put your video, evenif you optimize it the best you can, you're probably not going to stand a chance becausethere are other established videos and content creators that YouTube already trusts for thattopic.

So instead you might want to focus on a longertail keyword, something that not as many people are searching, but it has much lower competition.

For example, how to make a vlog, how to makea blog in 30 minutes, how to edit a blog using I movie.

Now you're going to find that these longertail keywords are going to have lower search volume and hopefully less competition, whichwill give your video a better chance of standing out.

So in doing my keyword research, basicallywhat I started out doing is I just start typing into the YouTube search bar.

I type what I think I want my keyword to be.

And then what I do to validate that and getthe data is I use two really great tools.

One is called TubeBuddy and another VIDIQ.

They each have different pros and cons.

But one thing that they will do is they willgive you a score or a ranking of that keyword based on how competitive it is and the searchvolume.

Now one thing that's really important to noteis you can have multiple keywords that you are trying to target.

Not every video is just going to be strictlyon one topic and there's going to be other keywords that are going to relate to the videothat you are producing.

So you can create a ton of different keywordsthat you will then use when you're optimizing your video and your fields.

But you want to make sure that you have afocus keyword, what is the number one keyword that you're targeting and you want to makesure that that focus keyword is everywhere and gets prominent placement when you aredoing the SEO for your video.

So that's just to give you a high level overviewon why keywords are important and why keyword research is important even before you startfilming your video.

If you want me to do a full video on my keywordresearch process and how I do that, let me know in the comments below because I wouldlove to do that for you if you guys want.

All right, now that we have our keywords established, the next thing that we want to do is we want to start optimizing the fields that Googlelooks at in determining whether it should rank a video or not.

And the first one is your title.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see newcontent creators make is that their title literally has none of their keywords in itand it has nothing to do with their video.

They're doing something that's very clickbaity or it has a hook or they're trying to be funny.

And while this may work for very established, prominent brands and YouTube, others who they have an audience that's just going to clickon their video no matter what, for smaller content creators just getting started, thatis not to serve you.

And it's especially not going to help becauseGoogle doesn't trust you already and they're going to see this video.

And there's no keywords in it and they haveno idea what this video is about.

And then your description is just smiley face.

The description isn't helpful either.

And so Google's going to say, ah heck no.

Google is going to have no idea what yourvideo is about and it's not going to put it in front of its users.

So if Google does that and they put a randomvideo for some search terms, they're going to lose trust with their users.

And then less people are going to start usingGoogle or YouTube when they are looking for an answer because they're like, well, YouTubejust gives me crap Dow.

They don't actually give me the answers thatI'm looking for.

All right? So the very first thing that you need to dowhen you had your keyword and your focus keywords is then you want to put that focus keywordin your title.

So let's say I'm doing a video and I wantmy focus keyword to be how to groom a poodle.

So in my title, that phrase, how to grow apoodle should be there, but you don't want to stop there.

You have 100 characters to fill, so you mightas well put some of your secondary or tertiary keywords in there as well.

So how to do it on a budget, blah, blah, blah, whatever your video is about, you want to put them in there.

Now note, while you do have a hundred charactersin the search results, Google is only going to show the first 70 so you want to make surethat your focus keyword is at the very beginning of your title.

Don't put it at the end because there's achance that depending on how long your title is, it could be cut off and it won't showup in the search results.

All right, next up is your description.

Ah, this is so good because this is whereyou have a whole entire space, a dedicated space to just talk about your video and whatit's about.

I see so many people who don't even botherto fill this out or they'll put just a little blurb and that is a huge missed opportunitybecause it's basically blank space that Google has given you to say, Hey, what is your videoabout? Tell me in a long form, a few paragraphs evenlet me know and people still choose not to fill it out and then wonder why they're notgetting ranked.

So this is where you will write out a bigdescription about all the things that you cover in your video.

I typically do two to three paragraphs whereI'm talking about my video.

I'm including different keywords, key phrasesin there.

Some key phrases may be more or less the samebut written differently.

And that's because two different people mighttype the same question out differently.

So you want to make sure that you includethat in here in those two different ways.

Now it's really important when you're doingthis, you want to include the exact keyword or keyword phrase match in your descriptionand also in your title and try the best that you can.

Not to break it up because again, that iswhat people are searching for, that exact phrase in that exact order.

So you want to make sure that you copy andpaste that into your description.

So another thing that's really important whenyou are doing your description is links.

You want to have links to other videos ormaybe have a section that says watch more videos on this topic because YouTube wantsto keep people on the platform as much as possible.

They want people to just sit on YouTube allday long because the more they do that, the more ads they watch and the more money YouTubemakes.

So you want to make that easy for you to haveand make it easy for people who are watching your videos.

So make sure to include links to other videosin your YouTube description because that will help increase the total watch time for yourchannel.

And it will let you to know that, Hey, peopleare watching a ton of this person's videos.

Maybe I should take another look and rankthese videos more.

And that is how you will end up getting pickedup and recommended in the YouTube algorithm, but that is for another day.

All right, next up our tags and these arereally, really important.

Some people say you don't need them, but againit's another opportunity that Google is giving you to say, Hey, what's your video about? At this point you can literally copy and pasteall of the keywords that you are targeting or wants to target for this video into thatsection.

Again, it's really important to include theexact match.

A big mistake that I see a new content creatorsdoing is that they will just go for the broad keywords log, grooming poodle, so rememberthe smaller, the key phrase, usually the more competitive it is and harder to rank for.

So you're showing Google in the tags, Hey, I want to rank for poodle and I want to rank for grooming.

So Google being a computer isn't going toknow any better and it's going to put you on those search result page.

But again, since they are more competitive, you're going to be all the way down.

You're going to be on page six seven ten onehundred who knows? And so no one's going to find you and it'snot going to help.

So it's really important that when you aredoing this that you have long tail key phrases that people are searching for.

So again, remember to do those exact matchand long tail key phrases because that is going to be your friend when you are doingyour YouTube SEO and give your video a better chance of ranking.

The next YouTube SEO basics that you needto do is your transcript.

The transcript is word for word what you saidin the video.

It's basically the script for your YouTubevideo and you would be surprised the number of people who don't even bother with thisstep.

They think, Oh, you can have an automated transcript.

I don't need that because they already didit for me.

Let's stop right there.

Because the automated transcript that YouTubeputs out is usually really crappy.

It's really bad.

The AI that they use is good but not great.

And so you'll find a lot of errors in thetranscript.

But this transcript is gold because it's literallyall of the words that you said in the video YouTube count.

Watch your video and understand what you'retalking about, but your transcript is you handing Google your script and saying, here, this is what the video is about.

Now go rank me.

I actually use a service called rev.

com forthis.

They are amazing, their prices are so goodand the quality is just perfect.

You can have a transcript done by a personwhich is going to be so polished and perfect.

It's going to have spelling, capitalization, punctuation, all of the good things that you need.

Or you can do more of an automated one butwhich is basically will get you 80 or 90% there and you can just scan it and fix a fewlittle things here and I've used both and I'm very, very impressed, but I would definitelyrecommend using a transcription service or a VA or even if you have to take the transcriptthat YouTube puts out yourself and edit it, but whatever you do, please do this and don'tskip over it because it is a huge indicator to YouTube about the topic of your video andby doing this in correlation with all of the other things, it's going to give your videoa higher chance of getting ranked.

All right, next up is file name.

This is pretty obvious, but again, Googlehas given us lots of opportunities to say, what's your video about, what's your videoabout, what's your video about? And your file name is one of those opportunities.

Most of the time when you export a video, it's going to be a bunch of random garbly goop or random numbers or maybe the file nameof the initial video that you use.

But again, Google is going to look at thatand think, uh, I don't know what that means and so I don't know what this video is about.

So the thing that I do is I just take thetitle of my video and I just make that the file name for my video and it's really importantthat you do this before you upload your video to YouTube because you can't change the filename after you upload it.

All right.

The last part of the YouTube SEO basics whenit comes to uploading your video is your thumbnail.

You want to make sure that your thumbnailis very eye-catching.

Maybe it has very bold graphics or pictures, but maybe has a few words that include your keywords or the focus of your video becausepeople are going to look at the thumbnail and they're going to look at your title andmaybe a little bit of description when they're in the search and those things are going tobe whether they are going to click or not.

And having a really captivating thumbnailis going to help your video get clicked in search.

And if people then watch your whole video, it's going to make your video rank even higher in search because it's proven, Hey, this issomething that people want to watch.

I should rank it more.

I don't see a lot of people doing this, butanother thing that I like to do is I like to make the file name of my video, which hasall of my keywords.

I like to make that the file name of my thumbnailimage as well.

So I'll usually just take the title and makethat the file name and then at the end I'll write thumbnail.

Again, it's another opportunity for me totell Google what this thumbnail is about, what this video's about.

This might seem really redundant and likewe are hitting Google over the head with it, but that's how SEO works and that's what ittakes.

All right, so those are all the things thatyou need to do when you are uploading your video before you publish.

So that's my next tip is that you need todo all of the SEO optimization before you hit publish.

It's so important that you have all your ducksin a row because as soon as that video goes live, YouTube is going to send its crawlersto look at the video, look at the title, description tags, all of those things to see what is thisvideo about? Because Google is always trying to make itssearch results better.

So if a new video appears, it wants to makesure, Hey, is this a good video or a bad video? And if you don't have any of those thingsthere when you upload, Google's going to be like garbage video.

I don't know this about, I'm not going torank this thing.

And that's why you get zero views.

So don't think, Oh, I just need to get thisvideo out.

I can do those things later.

Please, please, please wait and do all ofthe optimizations before you hit publish please.

So one of the most important things for YouTubeSEO is watch time.

If people click on your video and then theydrop off or they close out or they go away after 30 seconds, Google is going to use thatas an indicator that, uh, maybe this isn't a good video or maybe this isn't helping peoplefor that search term and so you're not going to rank.

So you want to make sure that your video isengaging, that it's really high quality, that it really does answer the question for thosekeywords.

So while you can't really force people tosit there and watch your video, it's kind of hard to control this, but the one thingthat you can control is the quality of your video and making sure that it does the bestjob to answer those questions.

All right.

Another really important thing that goes alongwith watch time is engagement.

You want to have calls to action that peoplecan do.

That will be indicators or cues to Googlethings like, like this video.

If you found it helpful, subscribe, you wantmore amazing tips or watch this video or right here by you having these calls to action inyour video and people then doing them.

These are going to be indicators to Googlethat this is a good channel and they should recommend your videos more seriously.

Just like this video of another tip when you'rerecording your video is to make sure that it is long.

Shorter is not better when it comes to YouTube.

YouTube wants to keep people on their platformso it's going to tend to favor longer videos.

Now that doesn't mean you need to extend andmake this overly long, boring video, but you don't want to do a video that's 30 to 60 secondslong because YouTube isn't going to like that.

Google not only loves videos that get to thepoint and provide an answer, but it also loves videos that elaborate on the answer.

So you want to make sure that you really havea jam packed video with so many tips and tricks or whatever your video is about so that waypeople find it really helpful and they sit and they watch the whole thing.

All right, my next tip for YouTube SEO isplaylists.

This is so under utilized.

Did you know that playlists show up in YouTuberesults? You not only want to create videos on certaintopics, but you should also create playlists on certain topics.

These can be playlists of your own videosor it could be a mix of your videos and someone else's videos, and then when you create thatplaylist, you need to optimize the title and the description so that way people know whenthey click on that playlist what it's about and more importantly, you let YouTube knowwhat that video is all about.

All right.

My very last tip when it comes to YouTube, SEO is consistency, consistency, consistency.

If YouTube is going to continue to recommendyour videos and your channels, it wants to see that you're contributing to the platform, that you have a consistent upload schedule that it can rely on.

Google likes to see its users continuallyputting out fresh content.

That doesn't mean that it's not going to recommendold content, but if you just do one video and you're done, it's not going to see youas a credible source and it's going to take that into account when it's determining whetherto rank your video or not.

So make sure that when you upload, whetherit's once a week, twice a week, every Friday, whatever, that you consistently do it andstick to it.

All right guys, that is YouTube SEO basics.

If you found this helpful, give it a light.

You see what I did there? Seriously? Give it a like.

You should.

It's awesome and let me know in the commentsbelow what SEO tip you found helpful and that you are going to start doing in your own YouTubevideos.

If you really enjoyed this video, subscribe.

I would because each week on my channel, Ihave new videos on how to use online marketing and social media to grow your business.

And of course, we want more YouTube tips.

Check out these videos right here.

That's all I have for now and I'll see younext time.

.