So there are 7 things you’ll need to do to optimize your videos. And these include your video file name, your video title, tags, description, thumbnail, closed captions, and cards and end screens. It sounds like a lot, but some of these take no longer than five seconds.
So, first, you’ve to change your video filename to your target keyword. For Example, if your video is about “YouTube SEO” then this video’s file is called youtube-seo.mp4. Easy.
The second is the title. And there are a few things you’ll want to do here.
#1. Include your target keyword in it.
#2. Try and keep your title under 60 characters to avoid truncation
and #3. Create a title that’ll complement your thumbnail.
And we’ll get to the thumbnail in a bit.
The third thing is to fill in your tags.
Now, I don’t really think tags do that much for YouTube SEO, but it only takes a few minutes to do so here’s how we do it. Our first tag is almost always our target keyword. Then we add a few more related keywords. Then we’ll continue to go broader. Both Tubebuddy and VidIQ are great for generating tags. They show you suggestions in YouTube studio and you can also research your competitor’s tags by visiting one of their videos.
The fourth thing is the description.
Here, you’ll want to write a summary of what you’ll talk about in the video. And while I doubt this is a big ranking factor, we include some of the tagged keywords if it makes sense in context.
Another thing worth doing is to add timecodes to different parts of your video. And this helps with video SEO so you can capture a key moment in Google search.
The fifth optimization tip is for the thumbnail.
I’m going to tell you two high-level tips to create great thumbnails.
Tip #1. Your thumbnail should complement your title.
And these two things alone will play the greatest role in your click-through rate, which is insanely important to get views from any organic YouTube traffic source.
The second tip is to try and draw curiosity with a few words in your thumbnail.
The sixth optimization you should make is to add closed captions.
These are files that you can upload to YouTube to caption the audio in your video. And we do this for all of our videos because as I already mentioned in my previous article, YouTube uses the words we speak to understand the video’s content. Plus, for non-native speakers, it’s helpful to better understand the content as reading is sometimes easier than listening. This can help to improve your average view duration metric too. YouTube has a built-in tool for adding closed captions, and because you’ve scripted your content, it’s super-easy to do.
And the last YouTube SEO tip for optimizing your video is to add relevant cards and end screens to your videos. YouTube wants people to stay on its platform for as long as possible. And if your content is responsible for fulfilling their objective, then they’re going to promote your video to more people.
By successfully executing these 7 YouTube SEO tips, you’ve covered all of the essentials to optimize your videos for YouTube search.
