Making a YouTube channel is one thing, but orienting it to become successful YouTuber is a whole other story. There are tons of stories on the web where enthusiastic creators gave up on their passion after facing failure, as they didn’t know how to optimize the YouTube channel.
Most people think that becoming a famous artist on YouTube is all about creating excellent content and capturing the audience’s attention, and while it is true, you still need to understand the importance of channel optimization or commonly known as YouTube SEO.
Learning YouTube SEO is vital because if you post your content without optimizing your channel, people will never be able to find it, and no one will watch your videos. To improve your video rankings, you need to work on your channel’s optimization, or you too will stand among many failed Youtubers complaining about the competition on YouTube.
Now, of course, we can’t see leave you hanging in there, so in this post, we’re going to elaborate on some helpful tips and tricks that will optimize your channel and make it easily searchable for your target audience.
How to optimize your YouTube channel?
The thing about YouTube SEO is that it’s not a hit a run thing where you can just do it once and sit back. You’ll need to keep applying these tactics consistently to keep your channel well optimized for YouTube and Google searches, so keep this fact in mind, and let’s start.
1. Optimize Channel Profile
On YouTube, making a channel isn’t the point; making an optimized channel that your audience finds attractive is the objective. That’s why the first thing you need to do is optimize your channel profile and make sure it looks fantastic enough to hold the viewers’ attention.
To optimize your channel, you just need to make sure that the following elements are set up correctly, and you’ll be good.
Use Keywords in Channel Name
The point of YouTube SEO is to increase the searchability of your channel not only on YouTube but on the largest search engine in the world, Google. To make your channel easily searchable, add one or two highly searched keywords of your niche in its name.
Doing this will increase the chances of your channel appearing in search results against those keywords, which will improve your organic click-through rate, video views, subscribers, etc.
Upload Channel Icon
Your channel icon is what defines the nature of your channel and gives the audience an idea of the content you upload. Therefore, you must come up with an eye-catching logo that gets stuck in viewers’ minds and reminds them of your channel’s name every time they see it.
Use Keywords in Channel Description
For enhanced searchability, add some keywords in the description of your channel as well, and keep changing them from time to time as the trends change. You should also add keywords in your video titles and video descriptions to increase their reach and searchability too.
Upload channel Art
Anesthetic and attractive channel art are vital to hold the audience’s attention and give them the necessary information like you can add your social media ids in there and mention uploading times too. Remember that channel art is like the face of a channel, so it better be eye-catching enough to convince a viewer to stay and check out your content.
Update Channel Trailer
The Channel trailer is a short video that is showcased on your channel’s home page and is used to let viewers know what kind of content they can expect to see on this channel. Experts recommend that you should update your channel trailer and make sure it matches new trends.
Almost 10 to 20% of viewers decide to subscribe to a channel after watching its trailer, which means that it can really affect your channel’s statistics.
2. Keep it Organized with Playlists
To make it easier for the audience to browse through your content, experts recommend organizing the videos as playlists. This tactic comes in pretty handy when you are creating content in multiple genres.
For example, if you make prank videos and every once in a while, you upload some education videos too, then it’s a good idea that you separate them both using playlists. In this way, your subscribers or new viewers will be able to find the videos they are looking for easily.
Also, you must use this tactic if you upload music because people these days prefer listening to music playlists instead of searching for individual tracks, so playlists can be a real game-changer for you artists and music composers out there.
3. Optimize YouTube Videos
One of the most crucial aspects of YouTube SEO is to optimize videos so they can reach more audiences and get more views. Here are a couple of things that play a vital role in the optimization of videos and simply must be done to improve the videos’ reach.
- Add the keywords relevant to your content in the video’s title to increase its searchability.
- Write creative titles that convince the audience to click on the video and improve the click-through rate.
- Embed keywords in the video descriptions as well for additional searchability support.
- Always pay attention to the video tags and add the tags carefully. The best way is to add one main keyword and 2 to 3 variations.
- Focus on coming up with creative and eye-catching video thumbnails that make a person want to click on your video. But avoid using clickbait at all costs.
Once you start focusing on all these elements while uploading your videos, your view count and subscribers will skyrocket in no time.
4. Add Channel Keywords Tags using Advanced Settings
You need to define the category of your channel so the YouTube algorithm can recommend it to the appropriate audience, and for that, you need to add keywords for your channel.
Open the YouTube Studio, go to settings, click on the channel option, and under the basic info, you’ll see the keywords option. Add all the keywords you think define the genre of your channel, and then click “save” to finish the process.
5. Maximize Watch Time by Uploading Long Videos
As you might know, to generate revenue on YouTube, you need to have a thousand subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time on your videos. Now, getting subscribers is something that most people manage to achieve, but boosting watch hours is hard.
To solve this problem, experts suggest uploading longer videos. Obviously, when you upload longer videos, people will spend more time watching them, and your watch time will improve. It will also force you to push your creative boundaries and come up with better content.
Enhancing watch time is an important part of YouTube SEO is it affects other important stats like subscribers count and views etc., so it would be a good idea to apply this tactic on priority.
6. Use Cards and End Screens
Cards and end screens are an excellent way of cross video marketing and suggesting to your viewers a new video as soon as they reach the end of their current one. There are many creative templates for end screens and cards, so try to use the most aesthetic ones in order to convince the viewer to click on your next video.
Also, make sure to put your most well-performing video as a suggestion on the end screen for a better viewer experience. Through this tactic, you’ll be able to increase your views without putting in any effort in marketing, and it will even improve the odds of random viewers becoming your subscribers.
7. Upload Closed Subtitles and Captions
Try to facilitate your audience by adding closed subtitles and captions for your videos. It will make it easier for your international fans (who don’t know your language) to enjoy your content and become your dedicated follower.
This tactic is also good as the YouTube algorithm favors videos that have a proper transcript and closed subtitles, which means if you ensure these elements in your videos, they will perform better and improve your channel’s ranking.
8. Strengthen Your User Interaction Signals
You need to constantly engage with your audience if you want to keep your channel relatable for them. Reply to their comments, encourage them to comment, hold live sessions and talk to them; in short, utilize any method that comes to your mind to interact with your audience.
This strategy is vital for YouTube SEO is it helps keep the view count stable and helps drive more traffic to the channel, so pay attention to your audience and never let your channel fade away from their memory.
9. Do Live YouTube Videos
Live YouTube sessions are an excellent way to engage with your audience and talk to them. Experts recommend using the live feature as it will help you understand your audience better, and you can take suggestions from them for your upcoming content.
Also, you can hold live Q&A sessions during a YouTube live or encourage your audience to subscribe to your channel by using a simple call to action. Statistics show that many YouTubers gain tons of new followers after their live sessions; therefore, it’s good to use them.
10. Create Impactful Thumbnails
Bold, extravagant, and bright thumbnails are what make a viewer stop scrolling and tap on your video to check it out. That’s why it’s crucial that you wake up the artist within you and design aesthetic custom thumbnails for your videos that increase your click-through rate.
Keep in mind that the trends for thumbnails keep changing, so make sure you adjust your designs with the trends to capture the audience’s attention effectively.
11. Add Transcription in the Description Field
Making transcription of a video sure sounds heck of a long task, but it’s a YouTube SEO element that can affect the ranking of your video. The YouTube algorithm favors videos that have a proper transcription of their content and recommends them to the relevant audience.
So don’t hesitate and spend some time adding the transcript of your video to the description field. It will give your content an edge over your competition and will increase its potential of gaining views, likes and comments.
12. Promote Videos to Your Audience
The main goal of YouTube SEO is to optimize your channel and content to drive more traffic, and one way to do that is through promotion. You need to promote your videos in front of your audience to get more views and interactions with them.
You can achieve this goal by sharing the link to your videos on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., or by asking your friends and colleagues to check out your video. Either way, your goal will be fulfilled, and your videos will start getting more engagement.
Conclusion
Every year, millions of creators try to establish themselves on YouTube, but since they don’t know the tricks of the trade, they fail to achieve their goal. In today’s article, we’ve tried our best to warn you about rookie mistakes and give you tips to be successful on YouTube.
We hope that you found these tips useful and you’ll apply them in order to become a professional Youtuber. For more YouTube-related content, please subscribe to our newsletter and follow our blog and social media channels.
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