How to improve your video SEO on YouTube

You have great video content up on YouTube, have shared it across social media but still can’t get enough views? Well, the answer might be – a non-existent or a flawed Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. For the uninitiated- Video SEO is a technique that can help optimize video content for search engine traffic.

To get views on YouTube, your video should be easily searchable. And to make sure that your video is search aligned, you should follow some of the best practices that I share here in this blog.

5 Best practices to improve your Video SEO:

1. Keep the filename meaningful
The filename of the video should resonate with the content within it. It should be easy on the eyes and not too long.

For instance: A video on How to get more YouTube views can be named like this – Get_more_youtube_views.flv

2. Use relevant keywords in your Title 
Titles help audiences and YouTube’s search algorithm make sense of your content. Ensure that you only include relevant keywords that correlate with the content.

For example, if you’re trying to rank for the Phrase “Vanilla Pudding Preparation”, you would write something like “Learn How to Prepare Vanilla Pudding”, to make the title attractive & more SEO friendly.

3. Video Description 
Video description is where you can put more relevant text about your video along with the important keywords. Remember that only the first 125 characters are shown as snippets during search results. Hence, ensure that the content within this is space is self-expressing.

4. Tags and Metadata increase discoverability
Metadata is the information that surrounds your video: Title, Tags, Description and Thumbnail. This set of data inform the YouTube algorithm of a video's content, indexing it for search, features, related videos, and ad-serving.

Write optimized Titles, Tags, and Descriptions for your content. Use optimized keywords and format to improve the YouTube algorithm's indexing of the video.

5. Video Thumbnails
Video thumbnails let people see a quick snapshot of your video. Make sure that the thumbnail used actually resonates with your video content. Don't post suggestive, violent or graphic images just to increase the clickability of the video. Ensure that the thumbnail is of good quality and if possible, add text cues on it.

Getting more YouTube views is the primary goal of most video creators, and rightfully so. But while chasing this goal, most lose focus and forget that it is actually the content that decides the long term success. So, never ever forget that despite great SEO, it is the content that actually matters.