1. Conduct YouTube Keyword Research
Once you’ve chosen a topic you want to cover, you’ll want to conduct keyword research to find the best keywords to reach your target audience. There are a number of different tools you can use to conduct keyword research, from YouTube’s autosuggestions to Semrush’s Keyword Analytics for YouTube and Ahref’s YouTube Keyword Tool.
As a general rule of thumb, you want to choose keywords with low competition and high search volume. This is because your ranking for high-competition keywords is extremely competitive, particularly for new channels.
2. Use Your Chosen Keyword in Video Title and File
The next step is to add your chosen keyword to your video title and video file. This will help YouTube to see what your video is about so that it can highlight it to other users.
The title should be less than 70 characters and capture the reader’s attention. They should also have keywords as close to the beginning as possible, and use elements such as emojis and capitals sparingly.
You want to avoid clickbait-style titles—if a user clicks through to your video expecting one thing and you deliver another, then they’re going to stop watching, which will hurt your ranking.
3. Optimize Your Video Description
Optimizing your video description with your keyword alongside any other related keywords is also vital to improve your YouTube SEO ranking (Google recommends choosing one to two main words that describe your video). You should aim to include the keyword in the first 25 words, and two to four times in total.
The video description has a 5,000 character limit, and should not only include a summary of the content included within your video, but it should also be engaging to read and avoid keyword stuffing. Use bold and italics to make key points and messages stand out in your writing, and timestamps to help users navigate to particular segments.
It’s also a good idea to round up your description with a call to action (e.g., ask users to like/comment/subscribe, follow your brand on social media or visit your site for more information). You can also add links to promote other videos on your channel that your viewers might enjoy.
4. Choose an Engaging Thumbnail
Selecting the right thumbnail is essential for grabbing the attention of users browsing YouTube search. According to Google, 90% of the best-performing videos have custom thumbnails. For this reason, it’s worth putting time and effort into creating an eye-catching design with a tool such as Canva.
When creating a design, you’ll want to develop a thumbnail with a simple, colorful style that not only captures your target audience’s attention but also accurately reflects the content of the video.
One way to get a feel for the types of thumbnails that resonate with your audience is to look at what thumbnails your competitors are using. If you look at the most popular search results, you’ll see what designs people are gravitating toward.
5. Use Calls to Action
Calls to action (CTAs) are one of the most useful tools you have at your disposal for growing your channel and prompting your audience to engage with your brand.
A well-crafted CTA can give your audience the push they need to subscribe to your channel, like or share your video, or even visit your website. You can place CTAs not just in your video description, but also within the video itself.
For example, if your video has a narrator, they could say “If you enjoyed our content today, like, comment, subscribe or visit our website for more information.”
You can also use CTAs to recommend related videos on your channel. For instance, at the end of a video, the narrator could say “If you want to find out more about this topic, check out our videos on x and x,” (this is particularly effective if you then promote these videos with cards).
6. Add Subtitles and Closed Captions
You’ll want to make sure that all your videos have subtitles and closed captions by uploading an SRT file. This is important not just for improving your SEO ranking, but also increasing the accessibility of your content.
Adding subtitles and captions provides a transcript for your video so that users who can’t hear can still understand what’s going on. It also means that users who don’t speak the native language used in the video can translate it. Search engines can also use these transcripts to rank your content on search.
7. Promote Videos on Social Media
Another great way to improve your SEO ranking is to promote your video on social media. Promoting videos on channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok not only gets your videos in front of your social followers, but also opens the door to other sharing options.
For example, if you post your video on Twitter, then you can add hashtags to increase the potential reach of your video. Linking to your videos on social media also enables other users to repost or share your videos on their social profiles.
8. Respond to User Comments
Building engagement is the key to getting results out of your channel, and one of the ways to engage your users is to actively interact with your audience in the comments.
Simply taking the time to respond to user comments and feedback, either with written replies or likes, shows your audience that you value their participation.
It’s worth noting that you can also add CTAs to comments. For example, if a user says that they enjoyed a video of yours, you can write a short response saying “I’m glad you like it! You can find more articles on this topic on our website.”
You can also use pinned comments to address your audience as a whole and provide another touchpoint where you can encourage them to like, subscribe and share your content.
9. Select a Video Category
When searching for videos, many users opt to search for videos by category, so it’s important to select the right categories to reach these users. It’s also necessary to help YouTube understand what your video is about.
You can choose between one out of 15 categories when you upload your video. Types of categories you can choose from include Animation and Film, Autos and Vehicles, Music Videos, Pets and Animals, Sports, Travel and Events, Gaming, People and Blogs, Comedy, Entertainment, News and Politics, How To and Style, Education, Science and Technology, and Nonprofit and Activism.
10. Use Cards and End Screens
When it comes to your audience’s user experience, adding cards and end screens to your video can be a major plus. With cards, you can include CTAs and links to other videos while your video is playing.
For example, you can add pop-up thumbnail links to other videos and playlists, to subscribe to your channel or, if you’re part of the YouTube Partner Program, a direct link to your website.
In addition, end screens allow you to add a selection of recommended videos to the last five to 20 seconds of a video so that users can click on other videos that look interesting. Using cards and end screens allows you to direct traffic to other videos on your channel and increases your user engagement.
11. Add Timestamps
If you’re creating long-form videos, then adding timestamps is a great way to break your videos down into bite-sized segments. Adding timestamps to your videos enables users to skip to named sections of your videos in the video progress bar.
Timestamps are also useful for SEO because they can be read by search engines such as Google. This means users from Google can be directed to timestamped videos.
12. Build Playlists
Grouping content together in playlists provides users with a much more compelling way to discover content on your channel. Creating a playlist makes your content more visible on search.
It also serves to improve the user experience. For instance, if a user clicks on a playlist, once they finish the first video, the next video will automatically begin to play. This means that users don’t need to navigate back to your channel to choose follow-up videos, and increases the amount of time they spend watching your content.
When creating a playlist, it’s best to begin with the most popular videos first and put them in a logical sequence. For example, if you’re uploading an episodic podcast, it makes sense to create a playlist of these episodes in chronological order.