How to Rank on Youtube Search (Guide)

Srt file to add subtitles and closed Captions and Step 8 Add cards and end screens to increase your YouTube channel's viewership. Step 1 Rename your video file using a target keyword Just like you would when optimizing a blog post, you'll use an SEO tool to first identify keywords you'd like your video to focus on. Make sure you identify keywords that receive high search volume. This indicates that more people are looking for a particular topic, giving your video more potential traffic As a result. With a keyword identified, the first place you should put it is your video file name before you even upload your video to YouTube. Why YouTube can't actually watch your video to see how relevant it is to your target keyword. And as you'll learn in this video, there are only so many places you can safely insert this keyword on your video's viewing page once the video is published. But YouTube can read your video's file name. That's why it's important that your keyword is placed here. Therefore, replace the business video final MOV filename with your desired keyword. If your keyword is House Painting Tips, for example, your video's file name could be House Painting Tips, followed by your preferred video file type. MOV, MP4, and WMV are some of the most common that are compatible with YouTube. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title when we search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That's often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video. The title should not only be compelling, but also clear and concise. Although your keyword plays a big part in your video title, it also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for. Research by Backlinko found that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have only a slight advantage over those that don't. With this in mind, optimize your title for your target keyword, as long as it fits naturally into a title that tells viewers exactly what they're about to see. In addition, make sure to keep your title fairly short. Specifically, limiting it to 60 characters can help it from getting cut off in results pages. STEP 3 Optimize your video description Now According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it's okay to use all of that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not read an essay. If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text. That amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click Show More to see the full description. That's why we suggest front loading the description with the most important information information like calls to action or important links to related details. As for optimizing the video itself, it doesn't hurt to add a transcript of the video in your description, especially for viewers who are watching without sound. Although this transcript doesn't directly increase your rank for your target keyword, an optimized description helps your video appear in the Suggested Videos sidebar, which can be a big source of viewer traffic for your YouTube channel. STEP 4 Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic YouTube's official Creator Academy advises using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But with these tags, you're not just informing your viewers, you're also helping YouTube understand the topic of your video and that topic's context. If you're publishing a video about how to bake a cake, for example, your tags might be birthday bakeries, gluten free or chocolate, depending on your cake's purpose, ingredients, and audience. Tags help YouTube figure out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content's reach. But choose your tags wisely. Don't use an irrelevant tag because you think it'll get more views. In fact, Google might penalize you for that and, similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common interest and more long tail, as in those that answer a question like how do I do something? Step 5 Categorize your video Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under your video's advanced settings. Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube, so it winds up in different playlists and gains exposure to more viewers who identify with your audience. It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube's Creator Academy suggests marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. When choosing a category for your video, it's helpful to answer questions like who are the top creators in that category, what are they known for, and what do they do well? Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within that category? Do all the videos in a category share qualities like production, value, length, or format? Step 6 Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video's result link. To generate any engagement for your video, you first need to attract people's attention. One of the best ways to do that is by creating a vibrant thumbnail for your video. This goes for every video you publish to YouTube. Thumbnails are the small, clickable snapshots that viewers see when they search for videos on YouTube, and they're just as important as your video's title. Thumbnails preview your video and entice viewers to click through to watch the video itself. To create a striking thumbnail that previews your video, consider including a talking head. Talking heads are focused on one or more people talking directly to the camera, like I'm doing right now. People are naturally drawn to human faces because they help us connect with content on an emotional level. How does the thumbnail contribute to YouTube SEO? Along with the video's title, your video thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about what they're about to see. This increases the number of views your video gets and can signal YouTube to rank your content more highly. As a result, although you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. The Creator Academy reports that 90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails. Your thumbnail image should be a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. This represents a 16.9 ratio. It should also have a file size no larger than 2 megabytes and use a JPEG, GIF, bitmap, or PNG file type. It's important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified in order to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit YouTube.com verify and follow the instructions listed there. Step 7 Use an SRT file to add subtitles and closed captions Subtitles and closed captions can Further boost your YouTube search ranking by highlighting the video's most important keywords. In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you'll have to upload a supported text, transcript or Time subtitles file. You can also manually enter transcript text for a video so that it automatically synchronizes with your video's audio. Adding subtitles follows a similar process. The difference is that you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. To add either subtitles or closed Captions to a YouTube video, navigate to your channel and then click YouTube Studio. Select the Videos tab on the left. Next, find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to and click on it. Toggle over to the Advanced tab. Select the language in the caption certification. If you have one. You can use YouTube's automatically generated subtitles or you can upload your own file. Step 8 Add cards and end screens to increase your YouTube channel's viewership when you're watching a video, have you ever seen a small white circular icon with an I in the center appear in the corner? Or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are cards, which YouTube's Creator Academy describes as pre formatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile, which you can set up to promote your brand in other videos on your channel. You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six different types you can choose from. For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow the official steps from Google Linked in this video's description End screens display similar information as cards, but as you might have guessed, they don't display it until the video is over and they're a bit more visually detailed. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on this video. It's important to note that YouTube is always testing end screens to try to optimize the viewer experience, so there are times when the end screen you created might not appear. Take these factors into account as you decide between using either cards or end screens. These eight steps may seem a bit complicated and time consuming, but remember, the time people spend watching YouTube on their TV has more than doubled year over year. There's an audience to be discovered there, and when you optimize for YouTube, your chances of being discovered increase. Looking for even more help with your YouTube strategy? Click the link above to learn more. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and subscribe. Let me know how you're doing in the comments below.