MBA913 Guest Teacher: Brian Dean- How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for Higher Rankings (and More Views)

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Hey, what's up, everybody? Brian Dean Here, founder of Backlinko.com As Omar said in this lesson, I'm going to show you a bunch of actionable tips to get high rankings and more views on YouTube. We've got a lot to cover in this episode, so let's dive right in. When I first launched my YouTube channel, I thought it was going to be a smash hit. After all, I had seen the same crazy stats that you've probably seen. Stats like YouTube is the world's second largest search engine. YouTube has over a billion users, which equals one third of total Internet users. And YouTube is the second most visited website online. Yes, even more than Facebook. So I assume that considering how hugely popular YouTube was, all I needed to do was publish great videos and it'd rank number one in no time. Unfortunately, that's not what happened in Instead, the first few videos that I uploaded to YouTube completely bombed. That's when I decided to learn YouTube SEO the same way I learned Google SEO, by running lots and lots of experiments. So I spent the next few months testing everything I could. I tested different keywords, titles, tags, video descriptions, playlists, and more. And I ultimately developed a system for ranking videos that actually worked. Flash forward to today, and my channel now gets over 100,000 views per month. And they rank in the top three in YouTube for keywords, like keyword research, on page, SEO, SEO, tutorial, and more. I even rank number one in YouTube for the keyword YouTube SEO. How meta is that? Right? And now it's time to show you seven of the most effective video SEO strategies that I used to get these results. Let's kick things off with strategy number one, which is to get more comments on your video. I recently teamed up with a developer and data scientist to run a huge YouTube ranking factor study. In that study, we analyzed 1.3 million YouTube search results to help us figure out what makes videos rank in YouTube. And we found that the number of comments a video received correlated with higher rankings. Not only did comments correlate with higher rankings, but it correlated more than any other factor that we measured. What's going on here? Well, YouTube wants to promote videos that keep users engaged and videos that create a sense of community. So if your video gets lots of comments, it tells YouTube people are loving this video. Now, you might be wondering, okay, that's great, but how do I get more comments on my videos? It's actually not as hard as you probably think. All you need to do is ask your viewers to comment on something specific. In other words, make it insanely easy for people to comment on your video. I'll explain. You see, most YouTubers end their videos with something like, if you like this video, comment and subscribe. Instead, I recommend asking your viewers to give their take on something specific. For example, one of my most popular videos is a step by step SEO tutorial. So at the end of that video I say, which one of the strategies from this video are you going to use first? Are you going to improve your site speed or try broken link building? Let me know by leaving a comment below right now. That way all you need to do to leave a comment is answer my simple multiple choice question. With that, let's jump right into strategy number two, which is to upload long form videos. There's this myth out there about YouTube, and the myth is people on YouTube want to watch short one to two minute videos. This is complete BS. In fact, the YouTube Ranking Factor Study that I mentioned earlier found that long videos crush short videos. And this is no accident. One of YouTube's most important ranking factors is known as total watch time. As the name suggests, this is the total amount of time that someone spends watching your video. Total watch time is so important that YouTube has come out and publicly stated that they use it as a ranking factor. To quote YouTube, we focus on those videos that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube. In fact, we found that the average length of a video on the first page of YouTube is 14 minutes, 50 seconds. For example, I have a video on my channel that at the time of recording this, has over 208,000 views and it's almost 14 minutes long, which is significant, significantly longer than most other videos on YouTube. In short, I recommend trying long form videos on your channel. These videos have a better chance to rack up more total watch time, which means they'll rank higher in YouTube's search results. Okay, moving right along to strategy number three, which is to actually say your keyword in your video. You might have noticed that YouTube automatically transcribes your videos. And when I noticed that YouTube started to do this, I decided to run a little experiment. Specifically, I set out to see if YouTube uses the words you say in your video as a recommendation ranking signal. And even though my experiment was done with a small sample size, I found that yes, saying your keyword in your video can help it rank higher in YouTube. And this makes sense if you think about it. If YouTube can hear the content of your video, why wouldn't they take that into account? For example, let's say you had a video optimized around the keyword Paleo Desserts. You include that keyword in your title, your description, and in your video tags. But you never said the term Paleo Desserts in your actual video. Wouldn't that look weird? On the other hand, let's say you had the same video, but this time you said paleo desserts three or four times. This confirms to YouTube that your video is really about Paleo Desserts. Bottom line say your target keyword in your video at least twice per video. This will confirm to YouTube that your video is about that topic. With that, it's time for strategy number four maximize your click through rate. Just like Google, YouTube uses click through rate and as a ranking signal. For example, let's say that you rank number seven in YouTube for your target keyword. The number seven result in YouTube usually gets a tiny percentage of clicks, sometimes less than 1%. But this video is an absolute click magnet. Instead of a 1% click through rate, it's getting a 4% click through rate. Four times above the average. Well, what's YouTube gonna do? They're gonna give you a rankings boost so that your video is easier to find. That said, how do you get more YouTube users to click on your result? Here are two simple strategies. First, optimize your video title for click through rate. How? According to industry research by Conductor, including a number in your title can improve click through rate significantly. And HubSpot found that odd numbers like 3, 5, and 7 get more clicks than even numbers like 6, 8, and 10. In fact, I tend to use numbers in almost all of my video titles. For example, here's a title of one of my videos that now has almost 60,000 views on page SEO9 actionable techniques that Work Next, optimize your description for click through rate. You see, most people put a link to their website or channel in the first few lines of their description and this is a big mistake. After all, the first few sentences of your description appear next to your video in the search results. And if all users see is a link here, they're going to click on another result. Instead, you want to sell your video in the first few lines of your description. For example, the first few lines of one of my videos is want to do keyword research the right way. Then check out this insanely actionable SEO tutorial. And when people see those two lines in the search results, they think this video sounds perfect. I'm going to click on it. Our fifth YouTube SEO strategy is to steal your competitors keywords what if you could see the exact keywords that your competitors optimize their videos around? Well, you can, and it's pretty easy. Here's the step by step process. First, head over to a YouTube video. In your industry, that's done really well. Then right click on the page and choose View Page Source. This will show you that page's HTML code. Then hit Control F or Command F and search the page for keywords. This will bring up the Meta keywords tag. The terms you see here are the video tags that video is optimized around. Needless to say, this is a gold mine. If you want to save some time doing this, I Recommend Checking out two Google Chrome extensions, TubeBuddy or Vidiq. Both of these will reveal a video's tags without you needing to search through the source code. Next up, strategy number six is to promote your video hard in the first 24 hours. I've tested this 10 ways to Tuesday and I can tell you that the first 24 hours of your video's life is key. So make sure to promote your video as much as possible right after you publish it. How? First, share your video with your audience and point them directly to the video on YouTube. You see lots of people embed their YouTube videos in a blog post on their site and send people there. The problem with that approach is that it's impossible to like, comment or subscribe through a video that's embedded in a blog post. And as we learned earlier, comments are super important for YouTube rankings. That's why I send an email out to my email subscribers, tweet the video and share it on Facebook, and have all the links point to my video on YouTube, not embedded in a blog post. So yeah, when your video goes live, don't delay. Get the word out as soon as possible. When YouTube sees that a new video is getting lots of views in the first 24 hours, they'll promote the video, which leads to more views and higher rankings. And now it's time for our last tip, which is to optimize your video the right way. And after you upload it, here's the exact process that I use to optimize every video that I upload to YouTube. First, I include the exact keyword in my title. When it comes to keywords, YouTube is much less sophisticated than Google, which means that you want to include your exact word for word keyword in your video title. If you use a synonym, YouTube might get confused. For example, let's say your target keyword is list building. Google is smart enough to Know that building an email list is essentially the same as list building. So if you use the term building an email list and a blog post title, Google would get the gist. But YouTube isn't as smart. So if your keyword is list building, you want to use the exact keyword list building in your title. Next, write a video description. And I recommend making this at least 200 words. This much content makes it easy for YouTube to understand what your video is all about. You also want to use your exact keyword two to three times here. Finally, optimize your video tags. Here's how make your first title tag your target keyword. So if your keyword is list building, make your first tag list building. Then make the next three to four tags variations of your target keyword. So for list building, these tags would be things like list building strategies, how to build your email list, et cetera. Finally, include one or two tags that describe the broad topic that your video falls under. For list building, these would be terms like email marketing, or even something super broad like marketing. There you have it. Seven tips for ranking videos in YouTube. And you know what, I know I said I'd show you seven tips, but I decided to throw in a quick bonus tip for you. And that bonus tip is to find awesome keywords in your YouTube analytics. So, did you know that YouTube tells you the exact keywords that you already rank for in YouTube? Well, they do. And these terms can be some of the absolute best keywords that you'll ever find. Here's the exact process. First, log into your YouTube analytics, click on Traffic Sources, and then click on YouTube Search and Bada bing, bada boom. You have a list of keywords that you already rank for. Here's what to do with these list of keywords. You'll want to create a new video that's optimized around one of these keywords. For example, let's say that you rank on the first page of YouTube for the keyword Productivity tips. Well, if the video that's ranking for that keyword isn't optimized around that term and you still rank for it, it means that you just found a low competition keyword. After all, you're ranking for it without even trying. So if you create a video that's actually optimized around that term, it should easily rank for that keyword. Okay, to quickly recap the seven tips we covered in this lesson, get more comments, upload long form videos, say your keyword in your video, maximize your click through rate, steal your competitor's keywords. Promote your videos in the first 24 hours. Optimize your videos the right way. And finally, our bonus tip was to find awesome keywords and in your YouTube analytics. Alright guys, this was Brian Dean from Backlinko. If you want to learn more about YouTube, SEO or SEO in general, I recommend subscribing to my YouTube channel right now. Just search for Backlinko, YouTube in Google or YouTube, then subscribe to my channel by clicking on the subscribe button. Thanks for joining me today. And back to Omar Flowers die in three Days.

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What a killer lesson by Brian Dean. Wow. So many insights. And a bonus insight. I love that his experiments prove that our preconceived notions of like, video length are all wrong. YouTube wants you to stay on their platform. They really care about the watch time. So longer videos, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Not a bad idea. They don't have to be these short minute, two, three minute videos. Now one of the things I really noticed in Brian's videos is he keeps it engaging. He keeps changing things around whether they're different edits, whether they're cutaways, whether they're, you know, visual graphics, whether it's him actually changing his clothes and doing a little bit that's a little comedic. The point is, is that he wants to keep people glued to the monitor, to the screen. They want to make sure that, hey, keep watching this video. I'm going to keep you engaged. And it works. But one of the biggest insights is that his stuff is fantastic. The content itself is so valuable you can't help but hit that subscribe button. I also like actually eliciting what they need to do in terms of leaving a comment, giving them options to make it a no brainer for them to leave a comment and again build that SEO for your YouTube video. He gave the example where he gives them some options like which strategy you're going to use first. I also like the strategy of I'm thinking about doing my next video on this or this. Which one do you want? It's just A or B, one or two and it's just an easy choice for them to choose and they comment. So those are awesome, awesome insights. I highly recommend you go to backlinko.com you subscribe to his newsletter to get all of his latest blog posts that are incredible and you subscribe to his YouTube channel. Well, there you have it guys. Brian Dean teaching you how to optimize your YouTube videos and get more views. We got some amazing guest teachers lined up for you in the coming weeks and months, so make sure you hit subscribe so you do not miss a single episode. And remember, we're daily. So every day we give you a way to improve your business with a daily lesson. In tomorrow's lesson, I'm going to be talking about, does giving away free swag work? A few months ago, Nicole and I sponsored a major event and we gave away free swag. So I'm going to share with you our experience, our insights, and what we learned from that experiment. Stay tuned for that tomorrow. But until then, I want to leave you with this. If you see somebody doing well in business, you really need to jump on their recommendations. If you see somebody in your industry who gives a recommendation for somebody that really knows what they're talking about, like right now, I'm recommending Brian Dean jump on that. Because I got to tell you, the masters in certain areas are few and far. They're going to save you a whole lot of time. There's so many people that teach SEO and there's so many people that teach optimizing your YouTube channel and videos. But only a few of them are fantastic and really know how to teach and know how to convey their information. So this is like winning a lottery. In some ways. It's like finding, you know, a gem. Make sure you bookmark it. Make sure you make it a part of your regular reading. When you find somebody that's great in a certain area, make it a point to revisit their site and learn from them. All right, that's it for me today, guys. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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