It is now well known that SEO strategies can improve the ranking of your own website or online stores. But what about SEO for YouTube? Can you optimize your videos for search engines at all? Absolutely! And we’ll show you how to do it here.
As with anything you produce, you should always have an eye on your keyword. Your keyword essentially describes what your page or video is about.
If you’ve produced or want to produce a video, it’s worth taking a look at YouTube’s Search Suggest feature.
Here you enter the word your video is about in the YouTube search bar. YouTube will then suggest other keywords. You can use these as inspiration for your video. After all, these are words that users are really looking for.
The best way is to filter the suggested videos by “Most popular”. Then you will get the best ideas for the keyword of your video through the titles.
When you have produced your video and want to upload it, make sure that you give the file a meaningful name. Search engines work text-based. This means that YouTube can do very little with a file named “20900-nh.MP4”. The name “tipps-for-baking-muffins.MP4” is much more meaningful for the search engine. And make sure that your main keyword is in the file name! Also, try to include your keyword in the headline in a way that makes sense and sounds natural. Neither search engines nor users like keyword stuffing.
Of course, a good video also needs a strong description. According to Google, the maximum number of characters in the description box is 1000 characters. However, you should work with only 100 characters if possible. Because that’s the snippet that YouTube will display. For everything else you have to unfold the text and only very few do that.
From an SEO perspective, it makes sense to pay attention to the following in your video description on YouTube::
→ have keyword(s) in the description
→ bundle the most important information
→ formulate a call-to-action (such as “buy here”)
→ add an important link
But there’s another trick to organically push your video. And that’s through subtitles!
Subtitles (also called transcripts) help YouTube understand what your video is about. After all, the better the search engine understands the content behind your video, the better you can rank.
Adding subtitles is helpful for the deaf as well as for users who watch the video without sound. It is best to add your own transcript. Because the automatically generated subtitles from YouTube are often incorrect.
Working with tags is highly recommended. This way you show users and YouTube what the video is about. We recommend setting between four and eight tags relevant to your video, with the main keyword best set as the first tag. This also helps YouTube to associate the video with similar videos.
They are not an official ranking factor, but they generate views: the thumbnails. Thumbnails are the images you see when your video is previewed.
Make sure to upload your own image as a thumbnail. This way you can make sure it’s appealing and, most importantly, makes you want to see more.
To upload your thumbnail, you still need to have your YouTube account verified beforehand.
Another important point is categorization. If you categorize your video under “Advanced Settings”, YouTube can better classify the video and it will reach even more users who fit your target group.
To make your YouTube video even better from an SEO point of view, you should try to collect as many comments and subscriptions as possible. Many solve this problem by asking people to comment on the video and subscribe to the channel at the end.
Because subscriptions and comments are an important indication for YouTube. This tells the search engine how popular the video is and places it more or less prominently accordingly.
The Call-to-Action
You may have noticed the white circular icon with the “i” in some videos, a classic call-to-action button. Here, viewers are indirectly asked to click on the icon to get more information.
Behind the icon you can put all the information that is important to you. Of course, this also includes a link to your store. It’s also popular to put links to new videos that match the content at the end – or a link to your social media profile.
Last but not least..
Content
The best SEO in the world won’t help you much good if the video doesn’t have good content. Keep in mind: the video is still made for people, not for search engines.
They are the ones who watch it – or not. That’s why it’s important to produce good, rich content. To improve the quality of your videos, it’s also worth investing in a microphone, good lighting and good technical equipment..
SEO is also quite possible in the video area. If you follow the points described above, you are already ahead of many videos and rank better. However, you should always remember that the video stands and falls with the content and the implementation.
We hope we could give you some helpful impressions into the SEO world of videos! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
