Watch the views rack up with these YouTube SEO tips and other ideas so more people find your videos.
If you’re looking to grow your brand’s reach with more creative content strategies, you’re probably already considering YouTube. And it’s worth a try. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that YouTube is an effective marketing channel for 86% of B2C brands, and for 22% of B2B brands, YouTube is their top-performing channel.
But when you’re spending the time—and, in some cases, the budget—to create compelling video content, you want to get the most out of it. That’s why establishing your YouTube SEO strategy early and checking in often is helpful.
Here’s how to get started.
YouTube is a platform for video content, but it’s important to remember it’s also a search engine. And some might even argue (like in The New York Times) that it’s a better one than Google. Here are tips for approaching your YouTube content creation and promotion with SEO in mind:
Whether it’s the foundation of your content strategy or a step in your brainstorming, keyword research belongs in your content ideation process. This is true for blog posts and guides that you want to rank on the Google SERP. It’s also true for YouTube. These videos could appear on the Google SERP, and you want them to show up on YouTube’s own search results page. Because, after all, YouTube is a search engine.
So when you’re creating YouTube videos, check for keyword opportunities. You can take a look at trending videos on your own account’s homepage to start. Common SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs have the option to focus keyword research on YouTube. This will let you explore many of the same features—keyword term matches, long-tail related keywords, and level of competition to rank.
Google Trends also has a drop-down option to select YouTube Search to explore trending topics. This is another option (especially if you don’t have a subscription to Ahrefs, Semrush, or a similar tool) to look into keyword opportunities. The features aren’t as extensive, but you can check out interest in a certain area and get some ideas for related keywords.
Remember, you can also optimize retroactively. If you have a channel up and running, take a look at the video content on there and follow these steps to see if there’s an opportunity to target your title or description—which brings us to the next tip.
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Once you have your keywords, make sure that your video title and description are optimized for SEO. Here are a few tips:
The first organic result matches the search term exactly.
Tags are keywords that you can add to your video’s metadata. YouTube isn’t clear on how effective tags are for reaching new viewers. The answer on YouTube Help states that “you can add [tags] to your video to help viewers find your content,” and that they ultimately “play a minimal role in your video’s discovery.”
But when you’re uploading your video to YouTube, it takes just a few moments to add tags. So it’s worth adding these, whether or not the impact is “minimal.” On the details section of the video upload screen, after you’ve added your title and description, scroll down and click on the prompt to show more.
Once the tags section appears, write in a few words and phrases to describe the content of your video. For example, if you’re uploading a video on baking a cake, you might include: how to bake a cake, baking a birthday cake, pineapple upside down cake.
Pro tip: If it’s a tutorial for how to use your product or your service, make sure to include your brand name as a tag.
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Below the section to add tags, you’ll have the option to select a category for your YouTube video. It’s unclear whether a category impacts reach—some threads on Reddit say it can improve or tank performance and others question whether it does anything. But like adding tags, selecting a category takes just a moment, so it’s worth adding to your routine. If it does increase your chances to rank, you don’t want to miss the opportunity.
Here are the options that you have to select a category on YouTube:
Because the impact is unclear, don’t spend too much time debating here. Take the two seconds to choose the best fit for your video, then move on to more important factors in your YouTube SEO.
YouTube will automatically select a still frame from your video as a thumbnail when you upload. You do not want to use this. Instead, you want to take the time to create your own. According to YouTube, 90% of the best-performing videos have custom thumbnails. People want to click on a visually appealing video, and a fuzzy still frame isn’t going to cut it.
Customizing your YouTube thumbnail can be a project for a designer, or it can be straightforward editing in Canva or even Google Slides with a screengrab and a title overlay. Take a look at the thumbnails for the budgeting videos below. They’re all different, but they’re all fairly low-production in terms of design elements. Most are still images with titles, screenshots, or logos added.
When you’re creating your custom thumbnail for YouTube, keep these specs in mind:
And while you’re customizing, don’t forget to add your logo as a watermark in the thumbnail, too.
YouTube allows you to create playlists of multiple videos. Once you have a few related videos on your YouTube channel, it’s setting one up.
By setting up a playlist of related videos, you can keep engaged viewers watching your content for longer. This could be multiple videos on a certain topic, like the garden creation or cake baking we talked about earlier. It could also be videos for a specific audience, like a collection of videos with marketing tips or SMBs or yoga classes designed for teachers.
I am guilty of downloading files and never adjusting the name. This is frustrating at the moment when I have 16 files named “screenshot” on my desktop. It’s also more than a missed organizational opportunity.
When it comes to your YouTube videos, take the time to rename the files with your keyword, or even your full title that might include “how to.” This is another opportunity to signal the content of the video to YouTube’s search engine in the video’s metadata.
Your YouTube SEO strategy will include a lot of front-end optimization to give your videos the best chance of reaching your audience. But it’s important to check in on performance.
From the sidebar of your YouTube Studio page, head to the Analytics section.
Here, you’ll see overall views, watch time, and channel subscribers. You can also dig into the performance of specific videos and details of your audience, including a breakdown of new and returning viewers. This will help you create new content, or even find ways to optimize existing content with new keywords, based on your audience’s interest. Plus, it’s a good way to see what isn’t working and save your time.
After all, YouTube has 2.7 billion users. And these users spend an average of 48 minutes each day interacting with content. Your audience is online, so it’s a matter of creating the content that they’re interested in viewing and getting that content in front of them.
YouTube SEO can help serve your video content to more interested viewers on YouTube and on the Google SERP, so it’s worth taking the extra time. But it isn’t the only way to get found on YouTube, so we have a few more tactics to grow your YouTube channel.
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SEO is an important lever to improve your and get in front of more people on YouTube. But it isn’t the only way to get your channel and your video content out there. Here are a few more quick tips to try and increase your views.
This is one of my favorite tips because I wish there were more YouTube channel trailers. These brief videos can:
This last one is particularly helpful. If your content strategy leans heavily to posting videos of podcast interviews or how to series or confessional, chatty USG content, this is good to know upfront.
Plus, you don’t have to create much net-new content for this, as featuring highlights from your existing content is key. If you’re looking for more tips on putting this together, check out this guide to creating a YouTube channel trailer.
SEO is an excellent lever for reaching new audiences on YouTube. But if your business has followers on other platforms, there’s a good chance at least some of them are already using YouTube. They need to know about your content, there.
So promote your YouTube content in your other marketing channels. Embed relevant YouTube videos in your blog posts. If you have a newsletter, you can add a section featuring your YouTube channel and include links to new videos in follow-up communications. If you have a following on LinkedIn or Instagram, post about your YouTube videos and include CTAs to subscribe to your channel there.
YouTuber Zoe Sugg promotes her videos on her Instagram Stories.
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Regular content is an excellent way to keep your regular viewers tuning in and attracting a new audience. Your series could be a long-standing series, like product release round-ups or a video recording of your brand’s podcast.
But you can also experiment with a time box. For instance, try out some summer-themed content related to your brand, whether it’s a series of lawn care videos throughout June or a weekly rating of new ice cream shops in your area. (Who isn’t searching for the best cookie dough scoop around?)
And be sure to add the series videos to a playlist for your viewers to navigate easily, even after it’s complete.
Yoga With Adriene has been running 30 days of yoga series for years—and now has tons of playlists for new viewers.
YouTube’s short-form video content, aptly titled YouTube Shorts, has a huge audience. In the US alone, there were 152 million monthly users engaging with YouTube Shorts on the platform. And this user base is expected to keep growing.
YouTube Shorts are vertically oriented for better viewing (and swiping through) on a smartphone. These videos range in length, but they’re limited to 60 seconds. Your YouTube shorts will be featured on your channel page, and they’ll also be served in YouTube’s search engine in addition to the main video content.
YouTube Shorts are also quickly becoming a major advertising opportunity. Last year, ad buyers reported that 43% of their clients were advertising on YouTube Shorts, alongside TikTok and Instagram Reels. Something to keep in mind if you’re running ads on YouTube, too, which brings us to our final tip here.
The best way to ensure that your video content gets in front of your desired audience on YouTube is to run ads. YouTube’s advertising options include brief bumper ads, skippable and non-skippable instream, infeed ads, and more. When it comes to content for your ad, you’ll want a clear CTA and you can even use snippets of existing videos.
For more tips for trialing paid promotion to grow your audience, check out this guide to advertising on YouTube.
YouTube is a huge marketing opportunity for internet personalities, small business brands, and major corporations. The key to success is finding your audience on the platform, and a strong YouTube SEO strategy can help.
Here’s an overview of our YouTube SEO essentials, plus our bonus tips to get found:
Now, go get more views on YouTube!
