Did you know Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine on the web? Pretty crazy, right? As more people consume video, the more important it is to learn SEO to get more YouTube views and rank higher. Below you’ll find out the best practices & video content for 2023.
If you’re to research how to rank higher on YouTube and get more YouTube views – you’ll likely see ton of very polished, male-driven websites pop up. They usually contain long paragraphs and feel overwhelming.
My hope for this post is to offer you simple, actionable tips in a quick and easy format! I want this to be something fun that helps you get your side hustle in front of new people quickly!
How Do I Rank Higher on YouTube?
YouTube videos with a ton of engagement tend to rank higher than those that don’t.
Engagement Rankings on YouTube
- Thumbs Up or Down
- Comments & Replies
- People Subscribing After the Video
- Video Shares
- Click Through Rates
- Audience Retention
Most of these engagement rankings on YouTube are self explanatory, but let’s look at click through rate and audience retention a bit more.
Click Through Rate
This is the rate at which people choose your video over someone else’s. You can encourage someone to choose your video by creating a compelling thumbnail or title. The more people choose your video in their search results, the higher it will rank.
Audience Retention Rate
This is how long someone watches your video. The goal is to get them to watch the whole thing, but most people click away even within the first 10 seconds.
Two tips to improving audience retention are to keep your videos between 5-15 minutes and offer a short summary at the beginning.
Your YouTube Branding
We suggest branding your YouTube profile just as much as you do your videos!
YouTube Branding Checklist
- Profile Picture
- Banner / Cover photo
- Background
- Consistent brand colors & text
- Thumbnails for videos are consistent with your brand
-
Introduction video explaining what your channel is about
YouTube Video Best Practices
Along with the tips given above, there are a few more best practices for YouTube SEO in 2023!
- Keep the video between 5-15 minutes
- Focus on emotional and educational content
- Say your keyword at the beginning of your video in a summary
- Research your topics beforehand (more on keyword research below!)
What YouTube videos get the most views?
-
How-to and Tutorials
-
One of our top videos is how to meal prep on the Whole 30
-
-
Reviews
-
Fitness or Exercise Related Videos
-
An example could be a workout or even explaining a type of exercise like HIIT workouts.
-
-
Funny videos
-
This women in Spanx video has 1.3 million views!
-
How Do I Get More Visibility on YouTube?
Here are a 8 more tips on how to get more views on youtube:
- Research Your Topics and Keywords
- Upload a Transcript
- Use a Strong Title with Keywords [and Brackets]
- Write a Strong Description
- Optimize Your Video’s Tags
- Use Colorful Video Thumbnails
- Optimize Your Playlists
- Use Annotations
Research Your Topics and Keywords
You’ll want to look into keyword research just like you would if you were writing a blog post. YouTube SEO works very similar to blogging. You’ll want to look for a keyword that is being searched between 500-1000 times that has doesn’t have a lot of results already popping up on YouTube. We’ll dig into YouTube keyword research a more below.
Upload a Transcript
Videos with a transcript of the words spoken tend to rank higher on YouTube than those without.
You can create a transcript yourself or hire someone on Fiverr or Viewership to do it for you. You can also try YouTube’s closed captioning option, but it isn’t 100% in transcribing what you’re actually saying.
Use a Strong Title with Keywords [and Brackets]
You’ll want a title of around 5 words with your keyword at the beginning. You can also start typing in your working title into YouTube’s search bar and get ideas from its suggested searches as well.
Titles that use brackets or parentheses seem to do better than those without them – so consider trying them as well.
Example:
Original: YouTube SEO 2023: How to Get More Views on YouTube
Brackets: YouTube SEO: How to Get More View on YouTube [2023 Guide]
Write a Strong Description
You’ll want to write a mini-blog post for your description. It’s suggested to have at least 250 words in your description. You should also mix in your keyword within the first 25 words and again 1-3 times through out the description for maximum results.
Also, pay attention to where the description gets cut off and make sure you’ve included a mini-summary before the “Show More” option.
It can also be helpful to include a URL at the beginning of your description if you have a relevant piece of content.
Optimize Your Video’s Tags
You’ll want to use 10-20 tags per video. It’s suggested to use your keyword as your first tag. Then 2-3 other variations of your keyword. You can also include 1-2 broad phrases.
Not only can tags help you get seen more, but they can also help you pop up as a suggested video for people!
Stumped on what Tags to use? This is getting a little techy, but you can find what other people use in just a few steps.
In Google Chrome, search your keyword, find the top videos, and click on one. From there, right click to see “View Page Source.”
Then, you’ll click Command + F “Keywords” to see what tags they’ve used! You’ll see it highlight the word “keywords” in orange, and the tags will be right after that (see blue highlight).
Use Colorful Video Thumbnails
You can upload a custom thumbnail to each view. We highly recommend doing this to help your click-through rate. Typically bright colors like green, blue, and orange do well. You may want to stay away from red since it’s already used a lot on the platform.
Using text on your thumbnail can be helpful as well, but make sure to keep it simple! 25-35 characters is a great range!
Optimize Your Playlists
Once you have a few videos up, make sure to create playlists and optimize them with keywords and descriptions as well. This will help you keep viewers attention and even possibly rank on Google for that playlist term.
Use Annotations
As you upload your video, you’ll be able to add in different annotations. Using these can help you create call-to-actions and offer more details to your viewers. You should try to find a place to use an annotation at least once per video.
How to Do Keyword Research for YouTube SEO in 2023
There are a few ways to find good keywords for YouTube videos in 2023.
Use a Keyword Tool
You can use a keyword tool link SEMRush to find out how often something is searched and the competition around it. You can just type in a topic in their Keyword Magic Tool, and it will show you the ranges. 500-1000 searches and a low competition is ideal.
Utilize Youtube’s Results Page
You can type in any topic into YouTube’s search bar, and it will give you suggestions. You can click search for your original topic or any of the suggested searches. From there, choose a result that doesn’t have a ton of results answering that topic or question.
Look at What Others Are Doing
If you know of a competitor in your field on YouTube, search them out. Then sort their videos by “Most Popular” to see what is doing well for them.
Then see if that topic is something you could create a video around. Look over the title, description, and video tags to see any potential keywords.
You may also want to use SEMRush or search on YouTube to see how competitive that topic is.
Last Tip: Search the Keyword on Google Too!
Have you ever noticed videos will pop up when you search for something on Google? If you can have your video pop up in Google’s search results, as well as, Youtube’s you’ll get double the exposure without adding in more work.
Not all Google searches have a video though. So if you think you’ve found a good keyword, type it into Google first to see if it pops up. If not, could you tweak it to have it pop up?
It’s not necessary to have it pop up on Google, but it is a nice little bonus!
How to See If Your YouTube SEO is Working
Now that we’ve broken down YouTube SEO 2023, we’d love to know if you saw an increase in Youtube Views!
Get More Simple Life Hacks on Our Podcast!
Wow this was a great post as I’m really trying to bring up my YouTube channel traffic. Thanks so much for these tips, I’m really excited to try them.
This was so helpful. I am glad I learned how to see what tags are working for others.
Thanks so much :).
This was one of the best post that I’ve ready on increasing YouTube views. Thank you so much for the work put in!!
wow, thank you for such a great compliment!!
Great ideas, thank you, I have started a Youtube Channel in the year 2015, I got few thousands of views now I want to restart it again.