YouTube SEO: How To Do SEO on the Platform

paola November 1, 2021 0 Comments

When you upload YouTube videos, there are some things to keep in mind in order to optimize your SEO efforts.

The first step in this process is of course finding a video topic that will be helpful and relevant for your specific audience.

Then, you have to use researched keywords or key phrases so it ranks high on search engines and people can find your content easily.

It can take time, but uploading high-quality content regularly is proven to generate results.

Keep reading to find out the entire uploading process that will give you the best SEO results!

Uploading YouTube Videos For SEO: Some Things To Keep In Mind

After you’ve created a video for your business or personal brand, the next step is to upload it to YouTube.

This process isn’t too hard on it’s own, but it does require some thought if you want to maximize the results of your SEO efforts.

Every video you create requires some accompanying text, that can be used by potential viewers in order to find what they need or know what they’re going to get when browsing through videos.

Approach uploading and describing a video similarly as you would in making marketing campaigns or promotions.

You need to compose a compelling feature and a “reason to watch”, in order to improve your CTR and views.

For this, you will need to select the best keywords for your specific topic. This isn’t something to do in a rush.

You must think about this text-based material while you’re arranging the video and before uploading it.

With that out of the way, let’s see the items involved in this checklist. The following are four stages to uploading video to YouTube and optimizing it for SEO.

Research, Film, Edit, And Upload Your Video

The first step of SEO begins even before the video is created.

The only way you are going to compel your audience to subscribe to your channel is by creating videos they enjoy in the first place.

To do this, you need to research every topic you want to make content about.

Look at other videos on the same topics and decide if you can do a different (or better!) version in order to have a differentiator factor to leverage later in the promotion phase.

If you are stuck when it comes to finding new video ideas that will appeal to your audience, you can read our detailed blog post with 7 tactics to find proven topics for your YouTube videos.

After deciding on your topics and after filming and editing your video, you need to upload it to YouTube. The platform accepts almost all video formats.

If you do the rest of the uploading process right and if your videos are high-quality, I can assure you that YouTube’s powerful algorithm won’t let your videos get lost in a sea of content!

A good rule of thumb is to make no more than 15 minutes long videos. Longer content will just go unnoticed by viewers -unless you’re PewDiePie!

Add a Title And a Description

Once your video has finished uploading, we can continue and complete those extra required elements that are involved in the uploading process.

In the fields below, YouTube will ask you a title and a description for your video. Both elements have to have essential keywords, that ideally have low competition and high search volume.

Here it’s not the place to discuss the broad topic of keyword research, but if you want to dive deeper, you can check out this excellent video keyword research guide after you finish reading this article.

You will need to provide a short and catchy title for your video, that contains the selected keywords.

Remember this is what people see when they search for videos on Google or YouTube, so it needs to be engaging and appealing!

The description should include some key information about your video and channel, as well as some keywords.

This will help your viewers decide whether or not they want to watch more of these types of content in the future.

The description will also help to position your videos on search engines because of the keywords they will contain.

Add Relevant Tags

After you complete the title and description fields, enter several tags for the video.

A tag is just another name for a keyword and can be as important in making sure people find your content on search engines such as Google or through YouTube’s search bar as the other elements of the checklist!

Tags are like hashtags for your videos. They provide a quick way to identify the content and subject matter to viewers and to search engines.

This helps search engines to classify and rank your videos, and users to find what they’re looking for.

To choose your tags, you can analyze what tags were used in popular videos for your topic with tools like TubeBuddy’s extension.

Make sure to include the essential keywords you used in the title and description as tags as well.

In this article about YouTube SEO, we dive deeper into other aspects of SEO you will benefit from learning, such as how to better optimize your tags choice.

Choose a Thumbnail Image

After you upload your video, YouTube displays random thumbnails if you don’t provide a personalized one.

The platform automatically chooses three snapshots from different points in the clip as thumbnails.

You can choose one of those that you think will catch people’s attention the best, but it’s always best to design and upload a personalized thumbnail.

Thumbnails, along with the video’s title, are the two most important factors that decide whether someone will click on your video or not.

Great thumbnails will give your channel a consistent look and feel and will tell the potential viewers at a glance what they will get from watching your video. Craft a good title and design an awesome thumbnail for every video, and watch your CTR and views skyrocket!

Conclusion

Creating a video is an investment for your future.

The creation and uploading process should be treated as such, putting time and energy into making it awesome to ensure the greatest possible outcome for you!

The goal of all the elements we discussed today -title, description, tags, thumbnails, etc.- is to get people interested enough that they’ll watch what you offer from start to finish without getting bored or distracted along the way.

If done right, then this will maximize your SEO results and will give your channel growth a boost.

If you desire to outsource your thumbnails creation process to a team of professional designers that will craft thumbnails using best practices to improve CTR, we are the right fit for you.

We create awesome, personalized thumbnails specific to your YouTube channel that will be appealing to your target audience.Now let’s share in the comments! Do you use a checklist like this every time you upload a video to YouTube? What other tips could you give us?