April 10 | 2021

YouTube SEO: The Strategy You Must Follow In 2021

YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world where people watch more than a billion hours of video every day. If you can get ranked on the Top 5 listings on YouTube for keywords in your niche, you will get more leads and customers. This is why YouTube SEO is important for any brand. Here are five key steps you can follow for better rankings.

1. Content Ideas and Keyword Research

If you have recently set-up your YouTube channel with no subscribers and videos, the first step is to find content ideas. You want to create videos about topics that people want to watch or understand about your brand. Most marketers have a general idea about topics in their niche.

The easiest way to get started with keyword research is by using the YouTube autocomplete feature. When you type letters or words on the YouTube search tab, you get various suggestions based on the search query. These suggestions are keywords that you can use.

Then, you may alphabetically explore more ideas. Enter a search query with a keyword and alphabets to explore content ideas for

• "your niche + a"
• "your niche + b"
• "your niche + c"
• etc.

This is a great way to explore variations of your keywords, you will ample ideas to get started. Since video continues to grow year after year, you should think of a video marketing strategy. If you don’t have an ‘explainer video’ – Get one. Ideas that revolve around solving a user problem will get you viewers (prospects).

You can also use a keyword tool to generate hundreds of ideas with a few clicks. Premium keyword tools like Ahrefs include metrics that show you traffic and competition, but they cost some money.

2. Optimize Your YouTube Videos For Better Rankings

If a video gets views, it is better to avoid any changes that could harm the rankings. Here are a few other things you can do for your next video:

Add the keyword on title and description: It is common sense that you need a great title- anything that catches the eye and is relevant to search query. But the title needs to include the keyword or a variation of the keyword. This is how YouTube understands the topic and relevance of your video. The same applies to the description of the video. It will help you if the descriptions include the keyword of your videos. There is a great analogy when it comes to keywords – Sprinkle keywords over the content like how you add ‘salt and pepper’ while cooking.. Keep it adequate and natural. If forced and repeated, it impacts content relevance and further impacts ranking.

Create a quality video: The video needs to be on the topic and most importantly it has to address a user query. YouTube has many metrics and ranking factors to figure out the relevancy and quality of a video, like bounce back and average view duration. You can't manipulate these metrics, so create a video which has a great quality to establish higher engagement.

Create Custom thumbnails: If your thumbnails are nice and relevant to the topic, you will get more clicks that will affect your rankings. According to YouTube Creator Academy, 90% of the top-performing videos have custom thumbnails.

Add keywords to the tags: They help YouTube to understand the topic of the videos. You can add keywords and relevant terms.

Rename your video file: You can enter your main keyword on the video file instead of a random file name. If you are a running a food channel, instead of uploading a file DSC00012 rename your file to Best_Vegan_Pasta_Recipe.mp4

Consider adding subtitles: Subtitles improve the user experience in some videos, so they can increase your rankings. It is not always a helpful factor because it depends on the topic. But it can't harm your rankings.

3. Improve Your Engagement Rates

Your engagement rates includes subscribers, views, likes, comments, and other YouTube metrics relevant to your videos. If you check the videos on the first positions in various keywords, you will notice many views and comments. YouTube considers this as an important metrics of engagement and content relevance.

You want to achieve the same thing. It will not be easy, but you can take a few actions to improve your engagement metrics:

• Use a friendly tone and easy to understand language.
• Explain the topics of your videos and add value to your views.
• Publish videos consistently because more videos will bring more views and subscribers.
• Request your viewers to leave comments and subscribe to your channel.
• Add a call to action at the end of the videos and your descriptions.

4. Promote Your Videos

If you publish quality videos consistently, you will start getting more views over time. But you can definitely boost your engagement rates and rankings if you promote your videos. This process is more important for brands who would like to create a campaign which is well integrated with social media strategy. You can consider Google ads to promote your videos to specific audience.

Promote Your Videos On Your Website: Embed your videos to your website or blog post. Website visitors who watch the video count as views, and they may visit your channel. This improves the web-analytics and increases the dwell time of a user on the website.

Promote Your Videos On Social Media: If you have a few social media profiles, share your videos with your followers. You can add a video and request your followers to check and share the video. The more shares you have on social media, the more views you will get.

5. Helpful Tools

You can boost your YouTube SEO efficiently when you have the right tools. They can save you time and effort for various types of tasks. Here are some top options:

VidiQ: It analyzes your YouTube account and gives insights based on your account metrics. VidiQ includes a keyword tool, suggestions about tags and descriptions, and tracks your competitors.

Ahrefs: It is a top keyword research tools for websites and YouTube channels. It analyzes each keyword and gives exact metrics about the potential traffic. Many website owners use Ahrefs, but it's a great resource for YouTube as well.

TubeBuddy: It is a similar tool to VidiQ. TubeBuddy can help with SEO on many levels. It can change titles or descriptions, suggest tags, does A/B testing on thumbnails, and find keywords.

Canva: If you want to create great thumbnails, Canva can help you to design them. It includes pre-made templates you can use for any design. It takes a few minutes to create and download a YouTube thumbnail.

Conclusion

These were the five key steps you can follow for a successful YouTube SEO strategy in 2021. It starts by finding keywords and topics for videos. Then, you need to create, optimize, and promote your videos. If you put them all together and publish videos regularly, you can improve your ranking in 2021.