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YouTube has grown over the years to be a powerhouse in the digital space, with billions of users worldwide. It has a vast array of videos covering diverse topics and is also the go-to platform for entertainment, education, and engagement. YouTube offers an unrivaled opportunity for content creators and businesses to reach their target audience.
To make the most of this, you need to master the art of YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to ensure your videos stand out among others. Understanding and implementing effective YouTube SEO strategies helps with increased visibility, enhanced organic traffic, better brand credibility and authority, long-term results, and monetization opportunities.
In this article, we will highlight the key ways to rank your YouTube Video and improve discoverability on search results.
13 Tips to Rank Your YouTube Videos
Here are some of the best YouTube SEO tips to improve your video ranking on the platform:
1. YouTube Keyword Research
The first step toward getting a video ranked on YouTube is ensuring it is in demand. You must pick a topic for your video with a massive search volume on YouTube and search engines. And that is where keyword research comes into play. Searching for the best keywords to embed in videos is essential to YouTube SEO.
The wise use of keywords can help enhance the reach of a video and boost its rank. Therefore, it is a must for you as a creator to learn how keyword research is conducted. This process works in two simple steps.
Narrowing Down Target Keywords
Once you decide on a topic for your video, you need to find a target keyword for it. The criterion for a target keyword is that it must have a high search volume and preferably low competition. Of course, you cannot find a single best keyword right away. You will have to form a list of all the potential keywords first.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Open the YouTube website and navigate to the search bar.
- Now, enter a search term that is relevant to your topic. Let’s say your video is about ‘Motivational speaking; enter this word in the search bar.
- You will instantly see a lot of suggestions in the dropdown. Note down all of them and form a list.
The best thing about getting keywords this way is that all of them are searched by the audience.
Selecting a Final Keyword
Once you have the list, the next step is to find the right keyword. Experts suggest that you pick a keyword with low competition but high search volume. So, go through the list, and if you find such a term, go with it.
Use your target keyword in the video’s title, description, and Meta tags. Doing so will boost the odds of your video’s discovery by the audience and securing a rank.
Utilizing Keyword Research Tools
To improve your video’s ranking, conduct thorough keyword research using SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner. Identify relevant keywords and incorporate them naturally in your video’s title, description, and tags.
2. Post a High Retention Video
The common factor among all the videos ranked on YouTube is that the viewers love them. A video that can engage the audience and hold their attention gets ranked sooner or later. So, you need to focus on creating exciting videos and make the viewers watch till the end.
Another way of ensuring audience retention is to create longer videos that keep a viewer engaged. Doing so will also help increase your channel’s average watch time and other crucial stats. Remember that audience retention is a factor that you must strengthen in your videos. And for that, you need to refine your videos and make them as engaging as possible.
3. Identify the Right Topic(s) for Your Channel
Choosing the right topics for your YouTube channel is a great way to attract and engage your target audience. By aligning your content with a specific niche and understanding your viewers’ interests, you can optimize your video content for better ranking and overall success.
To identify the right topics for your channel, define your niche and research around it to analyze the topics they cover. Be consistent and up-to-date with your trend analysis and develop a deep understanding of your target audience.
Based on your findings, you can brainstorm content ideas and prioritize quality and relevance. This ensures your content is optimized for SEO and resonates with your viewers.
4. YouTube Video Optimization
Video optimization is another crucial factor that can directly influence a video’s odds of ranking. If you successfully optimize a video, it will get discovered by more people and thus get more engagement.
Now, there’s no need to worry if you don’t know much about the search engine optimization of videos. You need to focus on the following three factors to improve your videos’ ranking on YouTube.
5. Categorize Your Video
Categorizing your YouTube videos contributes to improved organization and discoverability for your YouTube Channel. This helps YouTube’s algorithm understand your content better and increases the chances of your videos being shown in relevant search results.
To get an effective result, select the most appropriate category for your video from the list available and ensure it aligns with your channel’s overall niche. You can also research other popular videos in your industry and get insights into the most commonly used categories.
Then, you can monitor the performance and engagement metrics of your videos. Experiment with different categories and use YouTube Analytics to your advantage. This provides valuable data on video performance, categories with the most views, watch time, and audience retention.
Finally, make a habit of periodically reviewing and updating your categories. As your channel evolves and you produce content in different areas, categorize your videos properly. This is to ensure that both new and old videos are noticeable and relevant to your target audience.
6. Use Hashtags for Search Results
Hashtags play a significant role in improving the search results and discoverability of your YouTube videos. You can increase the visibility of your videos and attract a wider audience by simply using relevant and targeted hashtags. To enhance your YouTube ranking, use your hashtags strategically and focus on quality over quantity.
Also, ensure that you choose hashtags that are relevant to your video’s content and target audience. Research popular and trending hashtags within your niche and create a mix with specific hashtags to help you reach a larger audience. You can also include them in video titles and descriptions to maximize their impact.
7. Create an Attractive Thumbnail
Viewers are so obsessed with aesthetic looks that they mostly click on videos with attractive thumbnails. Now, what does that tell you? It implies that you must draw the audience’s attention by equipping your videos with insanely cool thumbnails.
Wake up the artist within you and design creative thumbnails for your videos. You can also hire a professional to make them for you.
Also, here are some pointers about making good thumbnails:
- Make sure that the thumbnail accurately defines a video.
- It should not be misleading or contain any clickbait.
- Try to keep it simple instead of adding too much art to it.
- Always highlight the text in the thumbnail to make it easier to read.
Once you start making thumbnails according to these guidelines, your videos will get more engagement soon.
8. YouTube Caption File
If you want your video to get ranked, you must ensure that people worldwide can understand it. Thus, it is best if you upload caption files with it to provide subtitles in multiple languages. This tactic won’t just help your video get ranked but also increase your channel’s reach in other countries.
It might also lead your videos to get ranked in some foreign countries, which would be an outstanding achievement.
9. Create Backlinks
Creating backlinks for your videos is an excellent way of getting organic traffic to them. However, getting backlinks for your videos can be challenging, unlike other SEO elements. You rely on other people’s corporations for this specific tactic. So, you should establish good connections with other YouTube channels and blog owners.
You can ask them to do you a favor and give your videos a backlink in their blog posts or videos. Surely it will take you some time to get enough backlinks for your videos, but it’s worth it. Enough backlinks will increase your channel’s authority on YouTube, making it more likely for your videos to get ranked.
10. Use Cards
YouTube cards are interactive elements that can significantly improve video interaction, viewer engagement, and video rankings. You can customize and add them to your videos to provide additional information, promote related content, or encourage specific actions from viewers.
YouTube offers several types of cards that serve different purposes, and they include:
Video or Playlist Cards
These cards allow you to promote other videos or playlists from your channel, enticing viewers to continue watching your content and discover related videos.
Channel Cards
These cards encourage viewers to visit your channel and explore more of your content, thereby increasing their exposure to your videos and subscriber potential.
Poll Cards
With Poll cards, you can pose questions to your viewers and gather their responses directly within the video. This fosters engagement and can provide valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and opinions.
Link Cards
Link cards allow you to direct viewers to external websites, merchandise stores, crowdfunding campaigns, or other relevant destinations. You can use this to drive traffic to your website and blog posts or monetize your videos through affiliate marketing.
To effectively implement these cards in your videos, follow these steps:
Step 1: Access YouTube Studio.
Step 2: Select the video you want to add cards to and click on the “cards” tab.
Step 3: Choose the type of card you want to add, as mentioned earlier.
Step 4: Customize it by adding relevant content, such as video or playlist URLs, channel links, poll questions, or external website URLs.
Step 5: Specify the timing of the card’s appearance during the video playback. You can choose when the card should be displayed and for how long.
Step 6: Preview the video to ensure the cards are correctly positioned and timed.
Step 7: Save your changes and publish the video.
If these cards are used strategically in your videos, they will encourage viewer interaction and keep them engaged.
11. Buy YouTube Views
Increasing the visibility of your YouTube videos benefits your channel, as it helps you to rank your channel, attract more viewers, and gain subscribers. However, while there are strategies and techniques for this, the fastest and easiest method is by buying views. You can buy real YouTube views from Media Mister to skyrocket your visibility and get more people to watch your content.
This increases your social proof and automatically gets you more organic views. Media Mister offers a variety of view options tailored to your preferences. You can select from Normal, High Retention, YouTube Premiere Waiting, Google Ads, TrueView Video Discovery Ads, Livestream, or YouTube Shorts views.
Additionally, you can choose your target country and desired quantity. By boosting engagement, you send a strong signal to YouTube, indicating that your video holds value and has the potential to enhance its ranking.
12. Utilize CTA at the End
YouTubers have been using call-to-action statements for a long time to gain audience favor. You can use a catchy CTA to convince the audience to like, share, and subscribe to your YouTube channel. Say something like, “Like, share, and subscribe to my channel for more,” at the end of your videos.
This affirmative statement will charm and convince your viewers to comply. This is one of the easiest tactics in this post, so apply it to every piece of content you post.
13. Examine Search Analytics on YouTube
Analyzing search analytics data on YouTube provides valuable insights into how viewers discover and engage with your videos. Accessing and understanding this data helps you in optimizing YouTube videos and get them ranking higher in search results.
Key metrics to look out for include impressions, click-through rate, average view duration, and traffic source types. Once you have accessed and reviewed your search analytics data, you can utilize the insights to identify key ranking factors to adjust.
This process will help you identify trends, optimize your content based on viewer preferences, and refine your SEO strategies to improve your video rankings.
Conclusion
Mastering YouTube SEO is important today, and you must understand how it works if you want your content to rank higher when specific keywords are searched for. Beyond improving your rankings, it helps boost visibility and ultimately yield long-term success for your account.
You, however, need to implement effective strategies, some of which are explained in this article. For the best results, choose the right topics that align with your channel’s niche and target audience, as well as prioritize viewer engagement and interaction.
