Are you a beginner struggling to grow your YouTube channel?
If yes, then we’ve got you.
YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine. It has over 69 million channels and around 2.49 billion active monthly users. With thousands of videos uploaded every day, it’s easy for your content to get lost in the crowd.
For a successful YouTube presence, creating great content alone is not enough. You need to apply strategies that increase your visibility and make your content discoverable.
One of the smartest strategies to reach the right audience and boost views is YouTube SEO.
With our effective SEO strategy, Brandefy has helped many channels stand out in this competitive market. They not only ranked higher on search pages but also gained consistent organic traffic.
In this blog, we’ll share some of our tested YouTube SEO Tips For Beginners. These tips will help your channel rank better, attract more audience and grow faster.
What is YouTube SEO?
YouTube SEO is the process of optimizing your overall content and channel to rank higher on YouTube search pages. It involves using the right keywords, optimizing descriptions, titles and hashtags to reach the right audience.
Top ranked YouTube videos can also appear on Google search results. It will make you easily discoverable beyond a single platform.
Benefits Of YouTube SEO
- Higher raking
- Higher visibility
- Higher organic traffic
- More views and engagement
- Long-term growth on youtube
YouTube SEO Tips To Increase Views
Here are some of the proven YouTube SEO tips that can help beginners in their channel growth.
Keyword Research
The first and foremost SEO tip is finding relevant keywords. These keywords tell YouTube what your content is about.
Since it’s YouTube SEO, it’s better to search for keywords on YouTube itself.
Type your primary keyword (content idea) in the search bar and you will get a list of most searched topics or keywords.
You can also use tools like Ahref, TubeBuddy, VidIQ and RyRob to find the keywords, search volume and competition etc.
Channel Optimization
Channel Optimization is a powerful SEO tip. For a successful YouTube presence, your channel must align with the content type and your targeted audience.
For this purpose, you must:
- Name your channel relevant to your niche so your audience instantly knows what content they can expect.
- Use the most searched and niche relevant keywords in your channel’s description. Try adding the primary keyword at the start of the description.
- Use correct and relevant hashtags. Do not use more than 12-15 as too many hashtags can look spammy.
- Make sure to add complete details like, website, social media links and contact info etc in the information section.
Content Optimization
Content optimization is an important aspect of YouTube SEO. Besides creating amazing content, you must optimize it to direct it to the target audience.
For Content Optimization,
- Add topic related keywords in title and description
- Add relevant hashtags without stuffing.
- Use high-quality videos with minimal loading time
- Optimize videos for mobile users.
- Add timestamps for easy content navigation and improved SEO
Video File Optimization
Optimizing your video file is a great SEO tip. Before uploading, rename your saved video file to your target keyword.
For-example
if your saved video is named as recording.mp4 , change it to keyword rich name like: easy-youtube-seo-tips-for-beginners.mp4
Use your exact keyword and add hyphen (-) between each word.
YouTube algorithm will automatically detect what your content is about and make it visible to the relevant audience.
Use Click-worthy Thumbnails
First impressions matter. Thumbnail is the first thing your audience notices. It makes them decide whether to open the video or not.
Using click -worthy thumbnails is the key behind getting higher CTR ( click through rate).
The YouTube algorithm sees the higher CTR as valuable content. It then promotes it more by suggesting it to a wider audience.
To make click-worthy thumbnails, you can
- Use bright color contrast and bold fonts.
- Highlight the main keyword that delivers value
- Add expressive human faces on thumbnail
- Avoid clickbaits as mismatched content and thumbnail breaks the audience’s trust.
Closed Captions (CC) or Subtitles
Enabling closed captions is an excellent SEO trick. When captions are turned on, your content becomes more understandable. Also, adding subtitles in multiple languages can make it globally accessible.
These texts provide YouTube with extra keywords to crawl and understand the content.
By using closed captions and subtitles, you get
- Higher reach as it becomes accessible worldwide.
- Higher engagement as people watching it without audio can also follow it along.
- Increased watchtime
Either added manually or through the auto-captioning feature of YouTube, make sure they are correct and synced with the video.
Create YouTube Playlist
Creating a YouTube playlist is a smart SEO trick. It organizes your content under a specific keyword. which improves your channel SEO and YouTube sees it as high value content.
Creating YouTube playlist will
- Make your content easy to explore
- Boost engagement and watchtime as users can find all relevant videos at the same place
- Build authority
- Boost SEO
Consistency
Consistency is an important SEO trick. Uploading consistently builds authority. It boosts your visibility and YouTube starts recommending your videos.
Consistency doesn’t mean uploading daily. You can make a content calendar and stick to it.
Schedule your content and always keep a backup to avoid any inconvenience.
Promotion on Social Media
Promote your videos on other social medias as well. Take short clips from the most engaging part of the video or make reels. You can also embed videos in blog posts.
It attracts other platforms’ audience to your video and drives engagement. It signals to YouTube that your content is valuable and deserves more traffic. YouTube then boosts its ranking in search results.
Track Performance
YouTube favors the content that is optimized based on audience behavior. Videos with high performance metrics such as likes, comments and shares tend to rank higher.
For this purpose, keep an eye on your analytics. Look for which video performed better. Which keywords and hashtags drove more traffic. What keeps them watching etc.
Keep record of these analytics to optimize your future content for better SEO.
Conclusion
Amid the rising competition, YouTube SEO is a strategic way to stand out of the competitors. YouTube SEO refers to using accurate keywords and hashtags to rank in the top searches of YouTube.
Doing deep keyword research and adding them naturally in your channel and content is the core of YouTube SEO.
Optimizing your channel, content and video files make your videos keyword-rich. While creating playlists and cross-promoting it improves your content visibility.
Start applying these YouTube SEO tips and it will help in long-term growth of your channel.
