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YouTube SEO Tips for Video Rankings

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Creating YouTube videos is one of the best ways to grow your business. Videos allow visitors to really get to know who you are since they can see how you speak and look, the same way that they would in person. Videos are also great for explaining how your products or services work. But how do you make sure that your videos will rank well? In this article, we cover YouTube SEO tips.

How to Use YouTube SEO to Rank Your Videos Higher

Make Sure Your Videos Get Engagement

Getting visitors to engage with your videos will help you to rank higher on YouTube because videos that get comments, subscribers, shares, and likes get ranked higher. This is especially true for videos that get comments. Therefore, encourage visitors to comment as often as you can. Rather than having a basic call to action like “comment below”, ask visitors to comment on something specific such as what they liked the most about the video and what tips they will use from it.

Using Tags in Your Videos

Tags help YouTube to understand what your video is about. Avoid using too many tags because this can make it harder for the system to know what your main focus is. As a result, you may not be ranked for what you want. So it is important to use a few tags that are specific to your video, with your first tag being your main keyword. Use about 3 tags that are closely related to your main keyword, and a couple of additional tags that are broader.

Write Longer Descriptions

Write longer video descriptions, about a hundred to two hundred words, to help YouTube to understand the topic and focus of your video.

Create Engaging Thumbnails

YouTube will reward you by giving you higher rankings if you are getting better than average clicks in search results. To achieve this, make your thumbnails stand out. Here are some tips:

● Use colors that stand out from YouTube’s color scheme, such as green, blue, purple, grey, and orange.

● Thumbnails that include text get more clicks. Use big bold text in the thumbnail.

Make Longer Videos

Another one of our YouTube SEO tips is creating longer videos. Did you know that long videos tend to outrank short ones because YouTube wants videos that keep people watching for a long time? Longer videos help you to accumulate more watch time too. Make your videos about 10 to 15 minutes long at least.

Creating Your Video Title

Put your main keyword at the beginning of your title for as many videos as you can. Use Brackets or parenthesis in your video title because this helps to grab more attention and get a higher click-through rate and more views. Also, if possible, add the current year into your video title. This helps people to know that your video is relevant to the current year. When doing searches, many people search for the keyword they are looking for plus the year in order to find the right information.

Include CTAs at the End of the Video

Make sure to include CTAs (call to actions) at the end of the video. These can include inviting visitors to subscribe to your channel, to like and comment, and to check out more content that you have on your channel or website. You can offer a helpful download such as a template in exchange for the visitor’s email address.

At Mission Web Marketing, we can help you to SEO optimize your YouTube videos so that you will get higher rankings. Get in touch today!

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