YouTube SEO : NEW Strategies to Get YOUR VIDEOS to Rank #1

If you're posting on YouTube, the goal is to get views and lots of them. But it could be hard to stand out Amongst the other 3.7 million videos that were uploaded today. As content floods YouTube optimizing yours for new customer Discoverability is crucial. So in this video I'm going to reveal proven YouTube SEO strategies that propelled our channel to success. What's up? It's Jamal from HubSpot. So how can you rank on YouTube? It's important to understand two things, keyword research and optimizing your video for the platform using these target keywords. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. That's why doing your research ahead of time and identifying which keywords to use is so important as YouTube has a separate set of best practices that video creators need to learn, adopt and implement to determine how it will recommend your videos and where they'll rank in the search results. I would dare say that YouTube keyword research is so important that it's absolutely the cornerstone of your success when creating a great YouTube channel. So let's dive in. The first step in finding the right keywords for your video content is to find a YouTube optimization tool that can help you generate keyword ideas to get your videos ranked and viewed. If you're new to YouTube or not familiar with SEO tools, YouTube's autocomplete feature can be the best free keyword research tool for YouTube and is a great place to start. Autocomplete is a quick and easy way to get ideas around what people are searching for and how it relates relates to your topic. Not only will these suggestions provide some insight around popular search queries, but they'll also give you a quick overview of what your competitors are doing, which of these videos have a large amount of traffic, and which keywords they're using. Add an asterisk in front of your keyword and it will show different variations of searches that contain those keywords. Take note of the ones that make the most sense for your content and target audience. And speaking of competitors, video marketing is a competitive game. To win it, you need to know what you're up against. That's where competitive analysis comes into play. So let's move on to Google Trends. Using Google Trends for YouTube shows you how popular a topic is relative to other topics on the web, and trend data is typically available within hours and sometimes even minutes. To use Google Trends, click on the Explore tab, then switch from the default web search category to YouTube search. Scroll down to Related Topics and Queries to find out what channels are currently popular and what people are searching for. You can also set the category to match your channel theme in the Category tab. For this search, we'll choose Beauty and Fitness Start by looking at the overall trend of your keywords. It looks like interest in working out routines is holding steady with seasonal spikes around the start of the summer and the new year. This data is particularly helpful if you work in an industry where seasonality is a factor. For example, the new year is approaching, you want to know which of your products or services to prioritize promoting online. By using the Comparison feature in Google Trends, you can compare search interests for your topics to learn about which query is more popular with users. To do so, after after you've added one topic, simply click Compare and type in your second topic. By comparing keywords for products or services you offer, you can get a quick and helpful picture of which offerings are in greater demand and likely to have an effect on your sales volume. In the short term. This would be a good time to search the related topics and queries on YouTube to brainstorm ideas for your videos and do additional research to see what kinds of videos these popular channels end up posting. Just remember, similar to YouTube's autocomplete feature, Google Trends measures keyword popularity rather than keyword search volume. Therefore, it's best to validate trend data with keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner. All you need is a Google Ads account to use it. This free tool can help you discover relevant keywords that people are searching for on Google and get ideas for the keywords that you should target in your video optimization efforts. It provides data on the monthly search volume of specific keywords, which can help you prioritize the most popular and relevant keywords to target. It also allows you to filter your keyword results by geographic location, language, and other parameters so you can further hone in on your audience. Go to ads.google.com, click start now and sign in with your Google account. Next, click the switch to Expert mode link down here. Now create an account without a campaign and confirm your info. To open Google Keyword Planner, click Tools and Settings in the top right corner and then from the Dropdown menu, select Keyword Planner listed under Planning. There are two ways to create your keyword plan. If you want to see search volumes and metrics for an existing list of keywords, click Get Search Volume and Forecast. Otherwise, click Discover New Keywords. To find new keyword ideas, enter up to 10 words or phrases related to your products or services, or start with a website, click Get Results you'll see a list of keywords related to what you enter. You can now edit your list with filters and categories to help you find those that make the most sense for your SEO strategy now. Google Keyword Planner is a helpful tool for SEO research, but no single option is going to be the be all end all of content planning. You'll want to supplement your efforts with other research tools that capture additional data to get a well rounded view of the keywords you should target for your videos. Luckily, there are some good ones out there. TubeBuddy and Vidiq are popular SEO tools that give YouTube video creators access to a number of capabilities, including keyword research. They provide far greater Insight into the YouTube algorithm than the basic YouTube Studio program. Both TubeBuddy and Vidiq provide a multitude of features that assist with keyword research and tag management, including recommending and ranking tags for you to use when you upload a video Identifying the tags used on public videos so you can see which tags work for other successful creators, Showing you where a video ranks for all its tags Tracking for all your videos and your competitors and their ranking across both YouTube and Google searches. Here's how they work, starting with TubeBuddy TubeBuddy helps you easily optimize your YouTube videos by providing key analytics on tags and titles so you can improve the searchability of your content. After you've installed their Chrome extension, click on the TB menu icon, then Keyword Explorer. Next, search for seed keywords. These are words or phrases that your customers might use to search what you have to offer. Your overall score here is split up into unweighted the overall score for every single YouTube channel and weighted specific to your channel. Let's stick with weighted as the closer your weighted score is to the green, the greater the chance you have of ranking high for that keyword and getting views. Here, under the score Analysis section, you'll find a breakdown of your search volume, competition and optimization strength for your keyword search. Search volume shows you if your keyword has way too much competition and if you shouldn't target it, or if you've got a good chance of competing against other videos currently ranked in search. And if you can get your video ranked high in search for that keyword, the competition metric lets you know if there's already a lot of content out there that your video is competing against and how high your chances are of competing against that content. And optimization strength tells you if all other videos currently ranked in search are well optimized for your keywords. If the videos are not well Optimized for Search here's the opportunity you have to break in and rank for keyword by properly optimizing your videos. This is done by having a searchable and compelling title and having relevant keywords in your title description and tags, but more on that in just a bit. You can also click on the Video Topics tab to come up with additional keyword ideas. Vidiq has a similar set of features that assist with creating SEO friendly titles, descriptions and tags. Log into your Vidiq account, then click on keywords in the menu. Like before, you'll type in a seed keyword and run the search. Here you'll see their automated analysis of scoring metrics, including search volume estimations, related terms, your Vidiq keyword scores, related YouTube videos, and general interest over time, which can be really useful for identifying whether a keyword or keyword phrase is still trending. This trending videos feature is a small but significant difference between TubeBuddy and Vidiq, specifically for YouTube channels. What this allows you to do is see any competing channel's top videos by view, velocity or average views per hour. This information is valuable because newly published videos tend to get the most of their traction in the first 48 hours, which is when YouTube promotes the video to subscribers. All in all, most of the functionality between Vidiq and TubeBuddy is so similar that it mostly comes down to personal preference, but they cost money if you want to get the full use of their features. Another widely used tool worth mentioning here is Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. Ahrefs has the same features for keywords and tags as other tools we've covered, but is considered to have the strongest data mining out of all of them. It's not a free service, but comes with a robust set of features to analyze competitors websites, audit and optimize your own website, and jump on marketing trends. If your goal is only YouTube SEO, the other tools may be better value. If the full suite of Ahrefs is useful for your brand, it's the premier program for SEO. Now that you've got the relevant terms and phrases needed to rank your videos on YouTube, you'll also want to consider your channel's analytics. Through YouTube's channel analytics page, you can identify top performing videos, understand audience demographics, analyze traffic sources and the keywords people are searching for. To find your content and monitor engagement metrics like audience retention and watch Time, log into your YouTube account and click on your profile icon in the top right corner, select YouTube Studio, then click on the analytics icon on the menu. You can Access an overview of your analytics here or dive into areas like content, audience and research. Select Advanced mode in the upper right corner if you'd like to see a detailed breakdown of your channel metrics, metrics for individual videos and other analytics okay, so heavy lifting is behind you, but there's still another crucial step before checking this off your to do list. Optimizing your video this means including your keywords in your file name, title, description and tags. This title needs to be concise, descriptive and attention grabbing, like a headline. For example, make sure your file name and video title are the same. Include keywords from your title in the first two lines of your description and add these keywords in your tags. YouTube will have a much better understanding of your topic and will be better able to serve your video and its search results if you follow these steps. In addition to keyword research and video optimization, there are some general best practices you should follow to improve your chances of ranking highly on YouTube. These include creating a strong thumbnail using contrasting colors and high quality images that accurately represents your video title and brand and helps with high click through rate. According to YouTube, 90% of the best performing videos have custom thumbnails like this. Extending viewer watch time is also an important factor in YouTube's ranking algorithm. This boils down to the quality of your content. Is it engaging enough to capture the viewer's attention and keep them watching through to the end? Take a look into your audience retention analytics in YouTube Studio to see where viewers are dropping off. Cross promoting your videos on other social media platforms to increase your reach and attract more views and adding CTA to encourage viewers to like, comment and subscribe to your channel. On that note, you made it this far into the video. Might as well hit that like button and subscribe to the channel and drop a comment letting us know what other topics you want us to cover. And while you're down there, check out our free download to discover customizable templates to create your own YouTube channel art like thumbnails and banner images. We've also included SEO necessities and a YouTube channel growth strategy to help you gain more subscribers. Basically, the better you can target and tailor your videos for your intended audience, the more likely your videos will show up in their YouTube searches. So you'd better start training your SEO muscle if you want to get your share of views and engagement. Now if you'll excuse me, these muscles aren't going to build themselves, you know what I'm saying? Got some heavy lifting of my own to do. Until then, I'll see you next time. I can find this client info.

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