YouTube SEO Today: Video Optimization Tips, Tutorial and Tools for YouTube

Welcome to a new edition of Crawling Mondays. In today's episode, we are going to cover all the major aspects to rank well and make the most out of YouTube optimization from an SEO perspective, right? So which are the major ranking factors, traffic drivers, tips and tweaks that you need to do to your YouTube channel in order to maximize your visibility and traffic? And today with me, I have the pleasure to We have Brian Dean. He's the founder and owner of Backlinko. And we have Itamar Bauer, who's a digital video marketer, who's also an expert on video optimisation. So hello, Brian, Itamar. Thank you for joining me today. Which are the top ranking factors, elements, areas that you should really prioritise when optimising your videos?

So yeah, I think in terms of what YouTube have actually told us, right, because YouTube don't really say all that much about how their search works and stuff like that in the past. But it was more recently when they kind of gave out a big document that listed out certain things that they look into. So the 3 main things were the relevancy, engagement, and quality. And so within the relevancy part, we've got all of the metadata. So your video titles, your descriptions, your tags, things like that. The engagement is obviously your things such as watch time, your click-through rate, are people actually watching your videos fully? So that kind of shows to YouTube, well, are these videos really relevant for that particular query? And then we've also got quality, which I think personally is a funny one because they don't really go into too much detail about how they measure the quality of a video. Maybe it could be if this author or this publisher has been featured elsewhere on the web, maybe that's how they kind of judge the quality of videos. But, you know, I think if we're talking about for SEOs and for video marketers, what's the most important thing to focus on. I think personally it has to be engagement. I'd like to obviously hear what yourself and what Brian have to say, but I think there's so many videos out there that try to optimize for the same terms, right? So if they're all relevant, what kind of makes them apart, right? And that's the engagement.

I think you're right.

All of relevant is all about links. Well, not all, but the links are the game changer from an authority and popularity perspective. What I have seen and validated myself with my own video, relevance, engagement, and retention. I think that retention has a little bit to do also with quality because if the video is not relevant, not really a high-quality one, relevant one for the audience, they will stop watching in any case.

It's definitely like you said, it's retention for me because engagement is also important, but at the end of the day, you got to give YouTube what it wants and it wants people to stay on the platform. It's kind of the opposite of Google in that way. Like, if you can give Google a resource where someone can get a quick answer to their question, from Google's point of view, that's quality. Now, of course, there's the difference with YouTube is that there's no links, so they don't have links to go on. But what they do have is they know exactly what videos you watch, how long you watch them for, the order you watch them in, how long you spent on them, whether you skipped around. They put it all together and assess what they would consider quality. And I think I'm with you, Aleyda. Quality is just their way of saying engagement. If you click on a video and you watch it all the way through and you don't hit the thumbs down and you maybe watch another video from that channel, it's a pretty strong signal that that's a quality video because quality is subjective, right? You might love a video and I might hate the same video and vice versa. So what they can do is look at your actual behavior and go on that. It's much more sophisticated than what Google has because when you land on a webpage, It's a black box for them, or it should be. So they don't really know what's going on. But with YouTube, they know everything. So I think if you can optimize for engagement, everything else in terms of SEO becomes a lot easier.

Let's take it from there because as SEOs, we might be a little bit over-obsessed about optimizing for the right terms, right keywords. But realistically, engagement and retention have a little bit more to do with community management and conversion optimization rather than pure SEO type of activity. And then on the other hand, here's another point also to take into consideration from what I have read out there from data that YouTube has disclosed in the past. Most of the traffic generated to video is through their own recommendation engine that as you mentioned is much more sophisticated to follow users' behaviour and engagement to suggest more videos to watch, right? So realistically, from your experience, what would you say that is actually the importance of ranking for this in the first position for your term as a traffic driver? In my case, for my videos, since these tend to be very niche-oriented, for example, structured data and SEO, the search volume for this type of terms is very small. I cannot expect to generate hundreds of thousands of views on my videos. And when I see the share where the actual views come from, the search share is very small in comparison to those views that come from my own, for example, social presence, newsletter, etc. So what would you say, search versus other traffic drivers for your videos? Especially those traffic drivers that can generate much more higher engagement too and better retention because these are people that they already know about you and if it is a link that you're sharing on your newsletter on your group, etc., they will tend to engage much better, right? What are your views on that as an experience?

Yeah, I would say the ironic thing about YouTube SEO is that the SEO part is not very important. Like, it's, it's for most niches and most topics, it's maybe 15 to 20% of views max come from search. And other channels that I've looked at are, some are even lower, like 10 or 5%. And as an example, I recently got addicted to this series on YouTube called Pitch Meeting, and they're basically like parodies of people pitching movies to a producer, and they're hilarious. Like, I've watched— there's 190 of them. I probably watched 100 in the last week. Like, I have been absolutely addicted to these things. I spent like 5 hours watching them, and I've not once searched in YouTube for Pitch Meeting. I didn't search to find them in the first place. I don't search to find them now because I know that when I go on YouTube's homepage, they're going to recommend them to me. And when I watch one of them, they're going to recommend them in the sidebar and the suggested video. So when it comes to YouTube, one of the first lessons that I learned about YouTube SEO is that it's not really SEO in the sense you're searching for a keyword and you show up. That's nice. And for certain keywords, it does bring in a certain, a decent chunk of views. But for most channels, most of your views are going to come from suggested video, which is a sidebar area of YouTube. And browse features, which is kind of a catch-all term that YouTube uses. It's more or less the homepage that's customized for you. That's actually a bigger source of views every year because they're getting better at refining that in people's behavior. They'll just go to YouTube and just see what they recommend, kind of like Netflix. That's what I do too. Like sometimes I go to YouTube, I have no idea what I want to watch. I'm just bored. So I go to YouTube and they suggest stuff and they're really good at it. And I find myself then getting in the rabbit hole of like watching a video, suggested video, another video, suggested video. But a lot of video sessions start with what's called browse features, which is the homepage. So yeah, browse features, suggested video. That's where probably like 70% of the views on YouTube come from. And the rest are a mix of like subscriptions and search and, and stuff like that.

Yeah. So that's, that's quite interesting because from my case, about 30% of my views comes from search. So that's obviously more than the figures that you've mentioned. But I think it also depends on the type of content you produce. So if people go on YouTube looking for tutorials and a lot of what I post really is tutorials about SEO, digital marketing, etc. So these kind of people will actually be searching for the keywords. So I think really it depends on your audience first and foremost, right? The type of content that you want to produce and thinking about what is your audience going to do if they want to find your content. And for a lot of the times, it's not going to be through search. Like you mentioned, you've got the browse features, suggested videos. A lot of mine, I think my second most popular is from external sources on social media. So you do really need to first identify, you know, what your audience is like, where are they going to find you, and also where they hang out so that you can best target them to make sure that they convert and then engage and retention as well. That's really important on your video content.

This is great indeed. And of course it depends a little bit on the nature and the type of content. This fits very well again with my next question that has to do with the potentially less straightforward things to do to improve beyond the relevance, right? The retention and engagement in your videos. So for example, I remember when I started doing Crawling Mondays at the beginning of last year, I started with this intro song that I was very happy with, a happy song, whatever. And then I realized it's like, Why am I not starting right away with the content that people can see super fast, that is super interesting for them to stay and keep watching? So for me it took a little bit, I would say too long from what I would have liked to identify that in order to better improve the pace of how I introduce my videos or how I make the most out of all of the features that YouTube provides to suggest more videos, for example, or at the end of the video to ask the audience to like your videos, to leave a comment, and this type of more community management type of action. Beyond the obvious, right, which are the ones that you have found to be more effective, more useful to improve the video's engagement and retention?

So first of all, Aleyda, don't feel bad about the animated logo thing. I think everyone has done that in their YouTube life. Like my first Videos had like this super crazy 15-second animated logo. It was like da na na da na na, and it was all moving around. I thought it was amazing, but of course I was the only one that thought it was amazing. Everyone who clicked on the videos was like, "What is this?" You know, it's supposed to be about something, and I'm watching this animated logo. No one goes to YouTube to watch animated logos, but I had to learn that the hard way. So don't feel bad about that. I think everyone has made that mistake. The speaking of that, that's actually my number one tip is. To nail that first 15 seconds. So YouTube has said that the first 15 seconds of a video are key. And they basically— that's when people decide whether or not to watch a video. So your video isn't judged by like minute 1. It's really the first 15 seconds. And after testing a lot of different intros, at least for tutorial-style videos, the best way to introduce a video is just to say, in this video, I'm going to do blah. Or in this video, I'm going to show you how to do X. And that just lets people know you're in the right place. Because when I first started making YouTube videos, another mistake I would make, I'd go into this long backstory about why the topic was important. Like, oh, on-page SEO is important because of X, Y, and Z. And pages that are optimized have a higher chance to rank. It's like, they know that if they're watching the video. So I was just telling them what they already know as opposed to just being like, in this video, you're going to learn exactly how to optimize a page. step by step. I'm going to show you X, Y, and Z. So it's like a quick little preview, but I found that that hooks people better than basically anything else.

Yeah, I have to agree with that. I think, you know, you want to give people the right answers. So they want to know, at least when they click on a video, that this video will be sufficient enough for my query, right? And I think the reason when Brian said that, I think it's not only great because people know what they're getting, but it's also good for you because you're saying it, you're actually speaking the kind of keywords that you're getting into right from the bat. So it's not only good for that sense, but it's always good when, you know, the bots are crawling and they kind of see the text that's being mentioned. So the things that you're speaking, if it does include those keywords, you know, is it relevant to that query? So it's also a really good thing. I mean, like personally for my videos, I don't think I don't have really any intros, any flashy, any animated things like that. I just kind of start off saying what we're going to cover and then literally get right into it. But I think also as well, trying to have the audible CTAs. So trying to make them to take an action early on, I feel like is better than later down the line, especially if it's quite a long tutorial. Some people might forget to engage really because they might just click off after they get what they want.

Right.

So at least if you try and attract them to perform an action. So whether to like the video or comment down below something relevant, Then at least you're trying to get that piece of engagement and then you can be happy with that. So you're getting the engagement, they get the right answers, and hopefully if the video is good enough, they'll come back and continue watching your videos.

Yes, indeed. I have actually found that this feature that YouTube has to include a related video that they choose from the behaviour of the user automatically even, and that you can insert at the end of the video so you can directly say, and if you want to keep watching, here's a video that might be also interesting and relevant to you too. To directly endorse and engage and, well, give a little bit of a push or a nudge there to the user to keep watching too, right? From that perspective also, to better recommend the user, identify topics to refine your videos for engagement, which tools do you tend to use or have found particularly useful? When I started doing this, I found that TubeBuddy, vidIQ, Nox Indexer. Like there were so many tools to give you data insights. I found them to be a little bit very basic if you compare them with SEO tools in general. So what are the ones that you have found that are really worthy to invest on that will provide you actual data that you can improve on? So for example, for me it's funny, but actually I found that YouTube Analytics in fact provided you really, really good insights metrics that you can segment pretty well to better understand what works better from an engagement perspective. And they will even give you keyword data unlike Google Analytics, right?

Yeah, I personally like vidIQ, but like you, Aleyda, tools aren't really that helpful for YouTube as much as they are for Google SEO. Because every video on YouTube is the same. It's a video, there's comments underneath, there's a sidebar. There isn't— it's not like a website where there's a million variations. You can have different site structures, you can have e-commerce, you can have a blog. It can be optimized different ways, you can have different design CSS. There's just less for a tool to do, and it basically just looks at the keywords on the page. That's all it does. So there isn't really like— I think you could just do YouTube Analytics and be fine. I personally use vidIQ. I think it helps a little bit, but it's very optional from my point of view. I'd like to hear what Itamar has to say about that though.

Yeah, I 100% agree. I think if we compare the potency of SEO tools, when we compare it Google versus YouTube, Google's gonna win it by, you know, a long mile because there really isn't too much you can do. And I feel like the kind of concept that I always like to get across is people need to stop focusing about the tools and things to get them there, but rather focus on the video content that you're actually making. So focus on things like your production, focus on the content itself. Is it something that people are going to like? Because you can have all the tools in the world, but if your video is just not good enough, people won't watch it. So it's, it's really as simple as that. I mean, personally, I've dabbled with, you know, vidIQ, TubeBuddy, but really eventually I just removed all of them. Like I just have my YouTube page clean. I think Keywords Everywhere is just the only thing I have because it gives me the kind of video tags that other people are using to sometimes give me ideas. But, you know, you've got to use what you can, what you get free. from the actual source, right? So the YouTube auto-suggest results, I found them to be really good when I'm thinking of titles to make. Even Google Trends can be quite nice because you can filter that for YouTube and see what topics are rising. So you kind of know when to capitalize on certain things. But like Brian mentioned, I don't think tools on their own is going to do it for you if you want to succeed.

100%. As in SEO, right? And actually how you use them and what you do with those insights at the end of the day. And thank you very much, Itamar, for mentioning like People obsessing on tools. And also I have to say, yeah, of course, good quality productions, but I have also found in video that people also obsess too much on the quality of my super camera. What type of camera should I buy? And realistically, one of the videos and my most watched video on my YouTube channel, literally I filmed it with my iPhone. And you know why? And the quality is really good. the video quality. The sound is crisp, super clear, because we were in a closed room that had, you know, it didn't have any echo or anything. And the reason why it's my top most watched video is because it was an interview that I did to the whole Google Webmaster team together back in Zurich with John Mueller, with Martin Splitt, with Gary Illyes. So all of them together in a room for the first time, I think, and me asking actionable, specific, relevant questions, right? So it was because of the content at the end of the day. And I think that there's only so much that you can do regarding the quality of production. And once you reach that point, it's not that it's going to make your video much better. Of course, you want good lighting. You want that your face looks well, looks good. And the sound, especially the sound, that the people can hear you well. But spending money right at the beginning, a super expensive camera or mic is something that I think that worries too much too many people and makes people to not do the video right away or as fast as they could because they obsess too much about that. Yeah. Do you think?

I agree. The number one question I get from people that are starting on YouTube is, what camera should I get? Or what mic should I get? And I get it because I think part of it's just because it is kind of scary to get on camera for the first time. So you want a piece of equipment that makes you look your best. So I understand where like people, where they're coming from. And I was the same way. Like, so yeah, when I first started on YouTube, my friend would come over with the DSLR camera because it's not like an amazing camera, but it's much better than what I had because I was self-conscious. I was like, I want to look good. I'm going to be on YouTube, you know? So I get where people are coming from. But like you said earlier, there's like a threshold of quality that once you hit it, it doesn't really matter above that. I've seen a lot of like B2B brands especially go all out production value, hire this like agency, come to the office, the CEO's in his suit, blah, blah, blah, and the videos are horrible. But the production value is amazing. They look great. It looks like TV. But like you said, Aleyda, the best videos are the ones with the best content. And that's one of the cool things about YouTube. A lot of people say, oh, if you produce great content, you'll rank number 1 on Google. But we all know that's not true. On YouTube, it actually can be true. There's still a chance for the best videos to bubble their way up. They still need promotion. They still need to be optimized. But it's not like Google where like if I tomorrow created the best piece of content ever on weight loss, there's 0% chance of me ranking. On YouTube, it's not necessarily likely, but at least it's possible. So the best stuff does have a way of bubbling to the top.

Something that I also wanted to point out, especially mentioning how some YouTube-focused tools are not necessarily still that sophisticated. However, I have to say how you can use SEO-oriented tools, tools that SEOs are already using for YouTube to be on Google Trends. For example, we have rank trackers like for example Rank Ranger. They have a YouTube tracking feature that actually is amazing because for any website that you're tracking, you can integrate or connect your YouTube channel and they will tell you for which, in which position of the Google carousel it is included for the keywords that you already anyway tracking your website for. And it's amazing because you can see the fluctuation going on and see which are your competitors in the carousel. And it seems a little bit trivial, but it actually allows you to better understand a little bit what Google considers to be the best for the user, to better connect with the intent with those keywords that you already want to target with your own website in any case. So I think that that is particularly nice. Another tool that has YouTube rank tracking features is also a cool ranker. So I can see how more and more, and it's understandable, more rank tracking tools and SEO tools are keeping an eye, a closer eye on video optimisation and YouTube. And I do believe that the future of search is also very visual. Also, I have to say more than 80-something percent from Semrush data, the videos included in the search results video carousels in Google are coming from YouTube. So win-win, double-down type of effort there that is very well worthy in many cases to go for. Anyway, to finish with something very actionable, what would you say is something that most of the channels overlook? Most of the SEOs, YouTubers, people producing videos and optimizing videos on YouTube usually tend to overlook and you think that is critical and particularly important?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I think it's more important about what you're saying in your videos. So I think going back to the relevancy, some people might optimize the hell out of their videos for all of the keywords, but the main keywords they're trying to attract, they might only say it twice in like a 7-minute video.

Right.

So I think when you're actually speaking in your content, at least from what I've seen, I've seemed to get better results if I'm actively trying to weave in certain keywords when I'm creating my video content. So whatever the topic is, at least try and you know, every time that you can when you do it. So it's not like keyword stuffing in a way, but at least you're kind of having a good flow of your content. But you do need to be mindful. So if you are using a script, for instance, to record your videos, try and think about ways that you can weave in the kind of keywords, especially if you are trying to optimize for search, because that is going to be something that pushes you ahead of more people who, like I mentioned before, you might optimize your video so well for relevancy, but the keywords you're trying to target, you don't really mention them all too much in your video. So I think that, and obviously trying to at least be audible with that in the beginning, like mostly in the beginning, 'cause like we mentioned before and how Brian was saying, like he introduces the video saying what it's gonna cover. That's a moment where it's critical to be mentioning those keywords.

This is interesting. So, but it's important to warn people, right? Like don't start repeating like robots the keyword again and again.

Yeah, don't be a robot. Be human, but you know, You've got to be smart about it in some ways. So, you know, if you are making a script or something, just be wary of the times where you can weave keywords in naturally.

My number 1 would be to give people a reason to subscribe to your channel in your call to action. So I noticed a lot of YouTube channels now, because you asked me specifically like what a lot of YouTube channels do that I think is a mistake. They'll be like, well, that's the video, like, comment, and subscribe. It's like, wait a second, what? You've got to really break it down and hold people's hand and tell them exactly what to do. So if you're like, and in my case, what I've been doing that works well is say, make sure to subscribe to the Backlinko YouTube channel so you don't miss out on any future SEO case studies. If it's a case study or any future SEO tutorials, if it's a tutorial, give people a little bit of a reason to subscribe rather than the throwaway like, comment, and subscribe, because people hear that all the time and it just kind of goes in one ear and out the other. But if you're like, subscribe to my channel because of X, Y, and Z, it actually makes them pause and consider why they would click that subscribe button. And subscribers are important directly and indirectly for SEO because if someone watches a video and then they immediately subscribe after, and a lot of people do that, that's a really strong sign of quality because you're not going to subscribe to a channel if the video is really bad. And also indirectly because later on you have subscribers that see all the videos you put out and then they can view them and get all those engagement signals that's going to help your rank better in search and suggested video and all that good stuff. And it all starts with that clear, strong call to action that makes it clear you should have them subscribe. And then if you want them to like, you should do the same thing. Make sure to like the video. I see a lot of people do this now. It's really smart. Make sure to like the video because it helps with the YouTube algorithm. Just being totally transparent. I've seen a lot of people say that and it's just kind of funny and people kind of get that there's an algorithm going on so they're more likely to do it. So whatever action you want them to take, I would take that extra 5 seconds and just explain why it's important, how it can help them or how it can help you.

So thank you, thank you very much for joining today. It has been super nice to hear your very specific thoughts and actionable advice. And please, if you have any questions, any doubts, make sure to leave below. I'll make sure to tag Itamar and also Bryan so they can answer any questions that you may have. Also, if you want to keep watching videos like this, super interesting, super actionable, there's a reason for you to like the video, subscribe to the channel. See, Brian, a slow learner, but not so much anymore here. To keep watching and to get this type of videos recommended, right? As you can see, it's very well worthy. And thanks again. And of course, of course, last but not least, you can follow Brian at batlinko.com and also in Social media, Twitter, etc., LinkedIn. You're everywhere, Brian. The same with Itamar, right? Itamar, you're particularly also very engaged lately with your own YouTube channel too, and also on Twitter. So make sure to follow them. I will be including here also links so you can take a look at. And thank you very much again. Very looking forward to see you soon and continue watching the channel. Bye-bye.

Chronic Mondays.