10 Tips To Improve the SEO of Your YOUTUBE Videos (2018)

YouTube is today a real space for communication and interaction with your customers (prospects) as much as can be a Facebook page or a website. Youtube videos have become a key technique to gain visibility on the web and increase profits as a result.

- The 3rd most visited site in the world after Google and Facebook (source: Alexa)

- The 2nd search engine after Google

- More than 1 billion active users

In October 2006, Google bought YouTube, putting its fingerprint and DNA on the number 1 video hosting sites. If you have finally realized the importance of Youtube, then I'm sure the following tips can help you improve your Youtube video rankings in 2018. 

You must first target the keywords actually searched by users. Google's keyword planning tool (available in the Google Adwords interface) allows you to identify the keywords of your topic that are searched by users. The tool also provides suggestions for related words or synonyms to the keyword you are looking for.

For example, would you like to make a video summarizing a movie? Instead, choose to speak of "synopsis" rather than "summary".

If you create professional videos (tutorials, tips, presentation of your offer ...), you probably put yourself on the stage, or a voice-over accompanies the course of your video. It is important that your keywords are used in the script of your video. So repeatedly use your main keyword, as well as your secondary keywords without forgetting the synonyms and associated keywords.

We will see that the use of these terms is particularly important in point # 6.

Creating interesting, original videos that bring a real plus to the user is the key to improving the quality of your SEO.

- First, because YouTube takes into account the number of interactions (views, comments, number of likes) that people have with your video.

- Then, YouTube takes into account what is called the "retention rate", that is to say, the percentage (duration) of the video that the user has viewed. It is considered that a good retention rate is greater than 40%.

A bit like the natural SEO of websites, YouTube (= Google) also tends to like videos with rich content. I advise you to make videos with a duration of at least 4 minutes. According to some sources, it is better for a user to watch 4 minutes of a 10-minute video rather than 2 minutes of a 3min30 video.

The SEO and YouTube SEO techniques are close. So use your keywords in the title of your video. Beyond simple referencing, the title of your video must be relevant and must encourage users to find out more.

- It is advisable to write a long description of your video. A text of 100 words minimum is recommended, but do not hesitate to write 200 to 400 words.

- Also remember to include your keywords as well as synonyms (or related keywords) in the description.

- Add the URL of your site (or landing page/product page) at the beginning of the description. You increase your chances that the user visits your site following the viewing of your video.

- Finally add the URLs of your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ ...)

This time, unlike natural SEO with meta tag "keywords" which is no longer useful, YouTube gives great importance to tags.

It's not a question here of adding dozens of tags, but rather limiting yourself to 5 or 6 tags, including:

- Your main keyword

- Your secondary keywords

- And the name of your YouTube channel. Interest? When a user views one of your videos, they will see other videos in your YouTube channel in the "Related Videos" section.

YouTube is now offering to add subtitles to your video. To do this, go to your "Video Manager" and click on the "Subtitles" tab.

You then have several possibilities:

- Let YouTube transcribe your own video with its voice recognition technology. But be careful, automatic transcripts in French are generally of average quality and vary from one video to another.

- Or import your own subtitle file. I advise you to import the script of your video (encoding UTF-8). If you've followed my tip # 2, embed keywords in your video script, your subtitles should be perfectly optimized for SEO.

Little parenthesis with this advice that you do not have to follow. You can add clickable annotations to your video. They allow you to make links between your videos or to refer your users to downloadable content. However, be careful not to be too intrusive. Nobody likes a video like this.

The main playlists are to rank the videos in your YouTube channel by theme.

But they also send strong signals to YouTube (Google) for SEO. When creating a playlist, include your main keyword (or associated word/synonyms) in the title of the playlist and make sure that the videos in this section also contain the keywords you are targeting in their titles and descriptions.

The "nerve of war" of SEO whatever it is. A video will be better positioned if many sites link to it. The links are more or less easy to obtain:

- For the "easy" side, share your video on your social media accounts and create an article on your site related to the video. This will allow you to embed the video on your website.