What good a video is if it’s not optimized? With your YouTube channel up and running, it’s about time that we discuss optimization parameters. Earlier, we mentioned in one of our blogs that YouTube is the second largest search engine, after Google. Being at this position, it’s imperative for the youtubers to come up with unique content. However, creating unique content isn’t the only factor which counts for the overall success of your channel. Here in this blog, you will learn several things which you can do to rank your YouTube videos so they get ranked on both the search engines i.e. YouTube and Google.
Before we get down to mentioning all those points, let’s do some pre-preparation first. As a very first step, you need to create and optimize the metadata for your videos. Every single bit of information about your video is referred to as “Metadata”. It comprises:
- Video title.
- Description.
- Tags.
- Category.
- Thumbnail.
- Subtitles.
- Closed captions.
By putting the right amount of information in your video’s metadata, simply guarantees that that video is being properly indexed by Google & YouTube. It also ensures that your video should be the one to pop up at the top when people are searching for something like it. While filling metadata, bear in mind to input the right information. If your video is caught with unrelated keywords, it’s highly likely to get removed and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Success Parameters for Video Optimization:
Optimizing your YouTube videos is all about filling in the right information in the fields that constitute your metadata. Let’s discuss all the fields one by one:
Title:
In order to make your video rank, the very first thing to do is to optimize the video’s title and it’s description. Make sure the title is catchy and should attract the scrollers to click and watch. Secondly, the title should invoke a sense of curiosity in searchers, probably ending with a question mark or mark of exclamation. While creating a title for your video, don’t forget to do some keyword research. Also, the title should be around 60 characters and not more otherwise the text will cut off in the result pages.
Description:
YouTube only shows the very first three to four lines, making up to almost 100 characters of your video’s description. If someone wants to read the entire description, he will have to click “Show More” in order to see the whole of it. For this very reason, it is strongly suggested to add all important links and CTAs right at the beginning of the description. Don’t make-up an ordinary draft and upload it as your description because it’s not going to work. YouTube welcomes fierce competition and your content should strive for the “Last Man Standing” position every time.
Don’t forget including the video transcript because it’s another effective way to boost your content’s SEO. Also, add a default channel description with links to all your social media channels and video credits as well. Finally, make sparing use of #hashtags in the description and in all of your video’s titles.
Tags:
The next step is as important as the rest, though many of you have been ignoring it till now. Highlighting all the primary keywords in your tags broadens the reach of your video by coupling it up with the likes of it. While tagging the videos, make sure to tag the most important keywords first, then move on to including a blend of common and long-tail keywords.
Category:
Another cool feature offered at YouTube is, once you upload a video, you are asked to pick a category for your video as well. These categories can be accessed by hitting the button labelled as “Advanced Categories”. The reason behind picking a category for your videos is, it groups up your video with all the related videos already there on the platform. To give you a more specific view, here are the categories to choose from:
- Film & Animation.
- Autos & Vehicles.
- Music.
- Pets & Animals.
- Sports.
- Travel & Events.
- Gaming.
- People & Blogs.
- Comedy.
- Entertainment.
- News & Politics.
- How-to & Style.
- Educational.
- Science & Tech.
- Nonprofits & Activism.
Thumbnail:
While scrolling, video thumbnails are the first thing people see. YouTube offers a pretty cool feature which generates some awesome thumbnail images all by itself. But this option will never get you too far. What we are suggesting over here is, you should upload a custom thumbnail since it’ll be a work of art and will clearly projects the idea of what’s in the video. According to YouTube analytics, around 90% of the top performing videos are the ones with customized thumbnails. Guidelines recommend using an image having 1280*720 px dimensions so that it looks good on all screen sizes.
SRT Files:
Subtitles and closed captions are another great opportunity to optimize your videos. Captions leave you with another open window to place in the keywords. Not only the subtitles help the viewers but also let your video stand out from the rest. You can easily add subtitles to your videos by uploading either timed subtitles file or a supported text transcript. There is a third option as well and that is by supplying a complete transcript and let the YouTube time all the subtitles automatically.
Playlists:
Uploading videos in a random fashion, might be a good idea, only if you are a newbie and haven’t yet read this blog. Well, if you have, then avoid piling up videos one upon another. Instead, go for playlists. It’s the best tool for you to curate all the videos around a certain theme, which you may want to share with the viewers. To put it simply, the playlists not only help in keeping your channel organized, but also allows the viewers to keep watching related content.
Final Words:
We are not yet done with walking you through an entirely unexplorable and amazing world of YouTube. There’s a lot more to it and once you get an idea on how to create and monetize a channel the right way, there is no stopping afterwards!
