So, use important keywords early in your script. This is potentially relevant for Google Search as well as YouTube Search and other systems.
It’s a good idea to upload your own transcript with videos for YouTube to build the captions, as the AI will make mistakes.
Relevance: If users indicate or the systems determine that your video content is not relevant to your title, then your video is unlikely to perform well.
Similarly, if you use a “clickbait” thumbnail that sets users up to expect something that you don’t deliver on, that disappointment will be reflected in the data.
Remember that there is a dance to your title and thumbnail, and what happens with the user is much more important than your metadata optimization.
If you have high clicks but low watch time, that indicates that users were drawn in but didn’t like the video. If the opposite is true, it could indicate that users aren’t resonating with your title and thumbnail when they see them.
6. Subscribers And Notifications
Subscribers are a critical part of a channel’s success, and they can impact how a new video performs. New videos appear in the “Subscriptions” tab of users subscribed to your channel.
Additionally, if your subscribers have opted in to receive notifications, they will get a notification when your video goes live.
These views are a critical initial source of data, as they can help YouTube build an understanding of how viewers respond to your videos. If your subscribers like a video, YouTube has a lot of information to work with about how to recommend that video to non-subscribers.
In a video for Creator Insider, Todd Beauprè, YouTube’s Growth and Discovery team lead, said that the Subscription feed “offers a bit of a control over other variables” when it comes to diagnosing why a video could be underperforming. If your subscribers don’t like it, other people probably won’t either.
For newer creators, YouTube does have a team and systems in place to assist in finding audiences.
According to Beauprè, there are systems that show videos from new creators to new audiences based on the history and preferences of those users as a sort of test.
Either way, it’s important to look at the initial data coming in about a video to see if it’s satisfying the first audiences who see it. If it isn’t, YouTube may not continue serving that video based on the quality, engagement, and satisfaction signals.
7. Tags Don’t Matter
I feel like this needs to be said multiple times.
Tags don’t matter.
Tags don’t matter.
Anyone who tells you that optimizing tags is important is wrong, and they can come and fight me over it.
Screenshot of the YouTube Help Center, September 2024
If you don’t like to trust what the documentation says at face value – after Google’s shenanigans over the last few months, I don’t blame you – check out these experiments:
YouTube SEO Tips
As a companion to your organic SEO strategy or as its own strategy, YouTube can have a huge payoff.
But you should be careful when treating it like a marketing channel.
Success on YouTube is audience-dependent, and modern audiences are sensitive to marketing campaigns.
If you’re using YouTube as a channel to try and send more traffic to your website or some other off-platform goal, you’re going to have a hard time for a couple of reasons:
If users are on YouTube, it’s because they want to watch videos. If you’re too aggressive with off-platform conversion attempts, it can turn viewers off.
YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes in-platform engagement and activity. A successful video should entice a user to watch the whole thing and then find another video to watch, not end the session and convert.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use YouTube as an organic marketing channel. But you must deliver value to your audiences first and build a community on the platform if that’s the route you’re taking.
If you’re using YouTube to boost your organic search performance, you can consider video more of a supplementary strategy.
But again, you should focus on providing direct value and create videos that are user-friendly and informative, not promotional.
The video should be a companion to your content because it is more user-friendly than text and static images, or a strong alternative for users who prefer it.
Make A Good Video
Nothing else in this article matters unless you make a good video.
This is advice that I find to be missing in a lot of “YouTube SEO advice” type articles.
Sure, many will provide you with guidelines that sort of add up to making a good video, like research and scripting and editing, but the simple statement is missing: Make a good video.
What follows from that is a whole bunch of questions about what “good” and “high-quality” really mean and statements like “that’s vague advice” and “it depends,” but I actually find this to be a very helpful filter statement.
If you don’t know what “a good video” means for your niche and your audience, then I have a question for you:
Why are you considering a video strategy in the first place?
Go and find five videos from other creators that you know for a fact your audience likes. Then, write down all the things that make them good.
If you can’t do that, go back to the drawing board. Go and find out what a good video is, what it does, and why people like it. That isn’t competitor research; it’s understanding the medium in which you plan to work.
Making a good video can overcome poor optimization at any of the points discussed in this article or any other article. Perfect optimization cannot overcome the impact of a bad video or a video that viewers don’t like.
If you’re struggling to get traction for your videos, the first question should never be how well they’re optimized. Your first question should be: “Are the videos good enough?”
Audience Research
Don’t start your keyword research for videos until you’ve done audience research.
YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t take a video and decide who to send it to. It examines the preferences and history of users and then curates a selection of videos for each individual.
You must identify the audience for your videos, which could be a very specific subset of your existing audience or a new audience entirely.
What this audience already watches is of critical importance because YouTube has multiple traffic sources within the platform with their own systems that weigh ranking factors differently.
For many videos, the primary traffic potential comes from the recommendation systems on the homepage or suggested video features.
That makes understanding what your audience is already watching critically important. Build on existing topics on the platform. Watch videos in your niche and find ways to answer questions or provide content that they don’t.
It takes a very specific type of video to get traction in YouTube Search. Search is the part of YouTube that weighs metadata most strongly, but user satisfaction remains a critical factor.
The video cited above in “The Recommendation System” section mentions that “learning or how-to videos – they often get more views from search.”
You must understand not only the preferences and needs of your audience, but how they’re most likely to come across your video.
Not every video is built for YouTube Search, and if that’s the case, it won’t take off if you don’t understand the flow of the experience a user might come to your video from.
Resources About Audience Research:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is important for videos that you’re targeting on YouTube or Google Search. It’s still important, but to a much lesser degree, when it comes to YouTube’s discovery systems.
What I mean by that is that the research is still important so that you understand the language users are engaging with, but there’s only so much optimization you can do. It’s much easier to over-optimize and sabotage yourself when it comes to recommendation systems.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. I’m saying you need to understand your audience and traffic source, do your keyword research, and then choose how to approach your metadata based on the traffic sources you expect for your video.
There are automated tools that can assist you with keyword research, and I encourage installing at least the free versions of both of these tools.
There’s a lot of value you can get out of your existing keyword research process, but it’s important to understand platform-specific keyword trends.
Resources About Keyword Research:
Focus On Thumbnails And Titles
Thumbnails and titles are where you spend the majority of your optimization time. These are the hooks, and how you handle them can make or break a video’s performance (second, of course, to whether the video is good).
The primary goal of titling high-quality content is to set an expectation. That expectation should entice users.
Then, you must fully deliver on the expectation. If your title and video are harmonious in this way, and you’ve researched your audience to know that they will respond to the topic, then you have the makings of a successful video.
Titles are your core keyword opportunity for videos, in addition to your description and video content. Thumbnails are your biggest opportunity to entice a response in users.
YouTube is now offering in-platform A/B testing for video thumbnails, which can help you understand what resonates with your audience.
Like the title, your thumbnail should set expectations for the video. Some elements that work well include:
Humans with expressions or poses that match the video’s tone.
Keywords that your audience will understand as integral to the video’s topic.
Artistic and metaphorical representations of a topic.
Adhering to, or standing out from, a common color scheme or design philosophy that other videos use.
Multiple different styles and design philosophies can work.
Here’s a screenshot of a wildly successful video by YouTuber hbomberguy titled, “Plagiarism and You(Tube)” – it’s 4 hours long with 25 million views.
Honestly, it’s a masterclass in overcoming the pervasive narrative of short online attention spans – and it’s a great video (yes, as you can see, I watched the whole thing).
But the thumbnail isn’t very refined, is it? It’s a bit messy. There’s a bunch of people there, and it’s a mix of real photos and a pretty creepy cartoon guy back there in the corner. Hbomberguy himself isn’t making an exaggerated expression; he just looks sort of baffled.
This thumbnail is masterful at evoking tone. This is the sort of thing you should be paying attention to when it comes to aligning the expectations of your presentation with the impact of your video.
Screenshot from YouTube, September 2024
Below are a few video results from the search we did earlier: [how to train a dog].
As you can see, there’s a wide variety of thumbnails that are all effective in their own way while sticking to the common theme of the search. I’ve cut out the sponsored results.
The top result is interesting. I find it loud and visually unappealing, but it’s clearly working.
Now, we can’t say whether the thumbnail has a significant positive impact or whether the video is just so good that the thumbnail doesn’t matter. But to be the first result, we have to assume it gets a lot of clicks. So, the CTR is good, and the thumbnail is a big part of that.
So this search, then, is less about tone and more about how clear and visually striking the image is.
I haven’t watched any of these videos (and I don’t have a dog), so the algorithm doesn’t have a ton of specific personalization to work with. Still, your results may differ.
Screenshot from search for [how to train a dog], YouTube, September 2024
Screenshot from search for [how to train a dog], YouTube, September 2024So, we’re back to audience research and specific query research. Intent could be a deciding factor in how you approach thumbnails.
Don’t Ignore The Comment Section
This will be the last point because I’m becoming long-winded.
Comments sections are more important than you might think. They have a ton of functionality, such as your ability to pin comments, that can supplement a video.
You could pin a comment to highlight a specific call to action for highly engaged users who scroll down to the comments. It’s also commonly used to issue corrections and updates.
Some creators choose to pin comments from users that they find to be particularly insightful, complimentary, or in some cases, inflammatory.
Engaging with commenters is good practice. These users, for one reason or another, are highly engaged. That means:
There’s a lot you can learn about your highest-value audiences from what they have to say.
Engaging with them builds a sense of community and feedback.
The Best YouTube SEO Is A Good Video
I want to come back to this point to end the article.
It really is all about the video and what value it adds to the user’s experience and your content.
You can overcome so many obstacles with a video that comes from a place of genuine understanding of your audience’s needs or excitement for the subject matter.
This should be what drives your video strategy, whether you’re using videos to empower your organic SEO or build a following on YouTube.
More resources:
Featured Image: DestroLove/Shutterstock