13 advanced SEO tips for YouTube

Guest post produced by the team SEMRush .

Even with the expansion of Facebook Videos, YouTube is still the king of video marketing segment. When users want to find a video, the first place they’ll search is YouTube.

Why is this so important to optimize your channel and your videos to ensure they can be easily found among billions of videos and channels currently available.

YouTube channel optimization

1. attractive Banner

A flashy banner to decorate the top of your YouTube page is crucial because your channel should be visually appealing. Make sure that your images and the channel name are in the middle of the banner and not on the sides so that they are still visible on a mobile screen.

At the bottom of your banner, you can put links to your social networks and your page.

2. Check your domain with Google Webmaster Tools

Ask your webmaster to check your domain with Google Search Console. Now, you can now add a link that will appear on your YouTube video and take you to your site. Your domain is in the “associated website” in the “Advanced” settings.

3. Music

Be careful when using commercial music in their videos. YouTube offers royalty-free music that you can use.

4. Advanced Settings

In the settings of your channel, click “Advanced Settings”.

• Go to the “Country” section and choose your country.
• Fill in the “Keywords channel.” Only include keywords relevant to your channel.
• Select the “Ads” box if you want to monetize your channel.
• Then you will see the “AdWords Account Linking” section. If you have a Google AdWords account, it is important to link it to your YouTube account. Click “Link an AdWords account” and enter the account number.
• If you are using Google Analytics, enter your ID into the “Google Analytics tracking ID.” It will provide detailed information about the performance of your YouTube channel on Google Analytics dashboard. Even if you do not use this information tomorrow, it is worth doing it now.

5. Delivery Standards

In the “Channel” menu, select “Upload defaults”. These patterns are settings of your uploads, ie here you can select default settings for tags, privacy videos, comments, languages, etc.

• In the “Privacy” section, select “Public” option.
• The “Category” allows you to select the most relevant area for your videos. We recommend opting for the category “Guides and style” – Google loves video guides and this can help you to rank better.
• Choose “Standard YouTube License” in the “License” option.
• Do not fill the “Title” field, since you will not use the same title for all your videos. Leave the field blank.
• In the “Description” field, you can enter: “Meet me at my website” and then add your links. You can also enter the URL of your Twitter account, Facebook etc.
• In the “Tags” use the relevant tags for your products and business. We recommend choosing a tag that will be used to convert videos, which will be your own.
• In the “Comments and Ratings”, choose the “Allow all comments.” Google loves comments and consider them a sign that people are watching your video.
• If you do not want to monetize all your videos automatically, clear the “Monetization” field. Later, you can manually choose which videos you want to monetize.
• Select the language of your videos.
• In the “Legend of Certification”, choose “This content has never aired on television in the US.”
• Fill in the “Local Video” field.

Now that your channel is already optimized, we will learn to optimize videos.

YouTube videos Optimization

Get a high number of video views may seem difficult, but not impossible, provided you have a plan that works.

Think about it, you will not create a new blog post without planning optimization before. With the videos is exactly the same.

Let’s look at video optimization details

1. vidIQ Vision

To get started, install the extension vidIQ Vision . Once you finish, you will see a small “IQ” icon at the top right of your screen. Now, update the YouTube page and notice that each video appears with a vidIQ panel underneath. The panel provides various information practices, the average number of views, number of views per hour, number of subscribers each video brought etc.  

2. Tags for videos

Always use keywords and phrases relevant as video tags. If you chose a tag in the “Upload defaults” section, they will automatically appear, however, you can always add more tags to manually upload the video.

Incidentally, the vidIQ lets you see what tags other video creators are using.

3. Private mode

By uploading your video, we recommend choosing the private way to ensure that your video will remain unavailable to the public until you finish all the adjustments and corrections. To do this, select the “Private” in the “Info and Settings” menu option.

4. Video Title

Opt for a readable and optimized title for users. To create a good title, you do not need to fill it with keywords because Google is smart and may find that you are trying to fool you. Use natural language and choice phrases that seem natural. Your goal is to achieve a good balance between the keywords and the readability of your content.

5. Video Description

After choosing your title, copy and paste the full sentence in the first line of the description of your video.

Try writing a description of approximately 400 words providing as much information as possible.

A tip to write a great video description:

Think about the user’s point of view: it would not be great if you could skip to the main point of a video of 60 minutes? Believe it is possible.

Let’s assume that your video has three minute presentation, and you start explaining what is SEO for videos after one minute and shows a practical example to 02:32.

In your description, you can write: “1:00: Definition of SEO for videos. 2:32: Practical Example “.

When you publish this video, YouTube will transform their timestamps into clickable links that allow users to move to a specific time of the video.

This way, you can help Google and its users better understand your video.

6. Push Notifications

On the right of the page, under “Video Manager”, you can see symbols of Twitter and Google+ (if you’ve linked your Twitter and Google+ accounts to your channel).

Check both boxes and copy its description in the field above the boxes. Your description will be shared with users of Twitter and Google+ via Push Notification.

7. Captions

All your YouTube videos must be activated subtitles. To do this, go to the “Subtitles and CC” section on the “Video Manager” and click the “Add new subtitles or CC” button.

The tool Rev.com can help you create captions for your audio and video files for USD 1.00 per minute. Once you receive files with subtitles, upload it.

8. Cards

At the moment, this feature is only available for desktop users, but is very useful and allows you to add up to 5 cards per video. The cards can show a specific URL, a custom image, calls-to-action etc.

With the help of cards, you can send your users to your site using their videos. Cards can appear and disappear at any time of the video.

Evaluate the performance of your YouTube videos

Now that your videos are optimized already, it’s time to evaluate the performance of their content and find out which bring more public and which ones failed to draw the attention of users.

To analyze this data, check out the “Analytics” page information.

To start, review the engagement – amount of likes, dislikes, comments and views. These metrics can help you better understand the preferences of their audience.

Another important metric is the number of subscribers. Find out how this figure is changing over time, which brought more subscribers videos and understand what types of videos and themes which have success in your channel.  

Tools

YouTube channel optimization and management can seem complicated, but fortunately there are several tools that can help you with this task. Some of them are:

• vidIQ Vision – a Google Chrome extension that suggests keywords and phrases that can be included in your video to improve your ranqueamentos in the search results.
• Rev.com – a platform that allows you to convert audio or video to text, translate documents and make captions and transcripts.
• OBS.com – an open source tool for video recording and live streaming. It allows you to edit the video before posting it.
• TubeMasterPro.com – an advertising platform that helps design paid promotions on YouTube.
• ScreenFlow (Mac) – a video editing software for Mac It lets you record your screen, creating animated GIFs, edit videos, add images, text, music etc..
• Camtasia – an all-in-one tool for video editing and screen recording. It allows you to insert images, icons, videos, music and texts.
• SEMRush Social Media tool – a powerful tool that helps analyze the social media channels, comparing the size of your audience, activities and engagement metrics with your competitor’s indicators.

And you use some specific hacks to optimize your YouTube videos? Share your experience in the comments!