How To Optimize Your YouTube Channel For Search Engines
Typically, many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts advise businesses to optimize blogs and webpages to improve search engine rankings. While this is crucial for a business that runs a website, SEO best practices should also be applied and carried over to a YouTube channel as well. That is, if your business also maintains one.
Why is this even important? Because your videos also make up your content marketing strategy as well. Just like blogs and social media posts, your YouTube videos will inform, entertain, and even engage your audience. Naturally, you would like that to be visible in searches or search engine results pages, and you will only be successful with that if you know how to optimize your YouTube channel and videos. Here’s how:
1. Optimize Your Title and Video Description (Use Keywords)
Just like content marketing, you still need to utilize keywords to optimize your YouTube channel. Of course, you need to ascertain what kind of keywords you should use for your videos. You can identify these with the help of analytical tools. Once you know what keywords to use, type in a short description for the video and incorporate the keyword in it. Descriptions should be at least 100 words long. This can help YouTube searches and search engines like Google “read” or understand what your video is all about.
2. Use Tags
Once again, your keywords should be also used as tags for your video. Type in as many tags as possible. Like the description, tags tell search engines what your video is all about. However, unlike descriptions that offer a short summary of your video, a tag is just a set of 2 to 4 words that briefly describes the topic of your videos.
3. Upload Your Own Thumbnail
You might have noticed that YouTube automatically generates (or lets you choose) a captured shot of your video and have it used as a thumbnail. While this is fine, it’s actually better for your videos and channel if you upload unique thumbnails.
Digital marketers have observed that YouTube videos with unique thumbnails are ranked better in searches, and it helps solidify a brand image for the uploader too. This is because creating your own thumbnail allows you to add logos, colors, and themes.
4. Organize Your Videos Into A Playlist
Compiling and organizing your videos into a playlist makes it easy for your viewers to binge-watch or skim through your videos. Most importantly, this helps optimize your channel too. Since playlists also need a description, you can put in keywords again to help searches “find” or understand your content.
5. Improve and Optimize Captions
Again, this has something to do with keywords. While captions or transcripts can be automatically generated for your videos, it is best to transcribe and upload your own to ensure accuracy. Most of all, you can make sure that you type in the right keywords in there as well. Search engines can also scan these captions, and therefore help make your videos searchable.
If you know the basics of content marketing and SEO, then it’s easy for you to optimize your YouTube channel. Basically, it just requires knowing the right keywords to use. Like any other online marketing strategy, you have to optimize your videos using textual keywords.
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