Video SEO for YouTube: The Ultimate Guide

After hundreds of hours scouring the interwebs I've compiled every single step you can take to optimise the hell out of your YouTube vids for maximum exposure and search engine happiness, into this whopping 2,500+ word article. This is all about getting an optimum workflow for uploading your vids, which you can repeat every time, that sets you up for getting viewers.

Note that this is about VSEO specifically for YouTube - i.e optimising YouTube videos for search engines. It's not about more general VSEO (i.e telling search engines about other videos on your website). My advice on that, is if you're not using YouTube, good luck :-)

Without further ado, compelling.tv's Video SEO for YouTube Guide ....

Preliminary: How Planning Your Next Video Can Change Everything

You're either doing your thang straight into the webcam and hitting upload, or planning, producing and editing vids to some degree with whatever process you've developed.

If you're up for a little more up front work, two things will make a massive different before you generate a single frame of goodness:

1) Align the topic of your next video with relevant keywords

Get Post Ideas from Google's
Keyword tool

You've heard this time and time again, but taking - literally - one minute to slam some keyword ideas into the Google Keyword Tool and/or the YouTube Keyword Tool does a few things for you -

• Video That Meets Demand
  The focus of your video idea will be shaped/modified/guided based on what people are actually looking for (you wanted viewers right?) - you may widen the scope of the idea if no one's going to be interested, or conversely narrow the scope if it's too competitive (meaning you'll never be found in searches)
• Better Ideas
  You'll probably get a few more ideas based on what you find
• YouTube SEO Work 50% Done
  You've done the all important work of finding tags you can use when you upload your vid, and sprinkle in your description and title (sparingly of course) - we'll get to that good stuff later
• Link Building will be Easier
  Since your video is now focused on a real need, it makes getting folks to link with those keywords easier, and will mean viewers (and prying Google eyes) will be more satisfied it's on-topic

2) Script your video

OK, this isn't for everyone, but I do it nearly every time. Here's why (and the main reason is actually number 1)

• Good scripts keep your audience Watching
  Respecting your viewer's time by crafting a script means you cut out the crap, get to the point and produce a tighter, more focused (and ideally shorter) video that will be paid back to you by viewers watching longer - and you need to keep viewers engaged to use video conversion techniques which is the absolute end goal in this whole game. YouTube are measuring viewer engagement, and don't believe for a second those statistics won't affect your search rankings either now (if they're using it already) or in the future.
• All Search Engines can index your video
  Your script functions as a transcript in reverse, which you can firstly use to publish along with the embedded video on your blog, and Googs and everyone else will now index that.
• YouTube can index your video
  YouTube's automated transcripts are laughable to say the least, so don't count on any benefit from them. Upload your script as the actual transcript means YouTube will index it and associate every word with your video. If you dropped a few of those lovely keywords you found in, good times. Additionally, you can paste the entire (up to 5000 chars) script in your description field when you upload.

As I say, script writing isn't for everyone, but if you can work it into your current workflow, it's well worth the investment. I narrate my scripts and don't ever stick to them 100%, I might ad lib parts or change phrases that don't sound natural when spoken, but for the most part at least 90% of my videos are read off a script.

OK, planning rant over, let's get to it.

Pre-Production

Much of what you do after ulpoading your video is about converting YouTube viewers to visitors. Make sure you plan for that outcome into your actual video to maximise conversions -

• URL Watermark
  Include your URL as a watermark as I talk about here
• Shorter videos convert better
  I've covered this before as well, shorter vids mean more engaged viewers, and most importantly, viewers that watch until the end
• Plan for Annotations
  YouTube's annotations feature allows you to overlay colored text boxes and "hot spots" to your video that can link to another video, another channel or direct the viewer to a subscribe link. I show here how annotations work, so watch that to see how they're used. Once you're familiar with what they can do, plan for where you might use them during and at the end of your video
  
  
• Ending = Conversions
  Once you've delivered value, the end of your video is where you convert. It's your one chance, so don't blow it. Again, I cover numerous ways to do this in this video, implement the tips in that video and watch your conversions soar.
• 
  EpicMealTime never shy away
  from asking for Likes
  Ask for Likes, Favorites and Comments
  Where appropriate, use points in your video to ask users to like, favorite or comment on your video (not all at the same time!) All these factors contribute to YouTube's search engine rankings, so the more of each you have, the more likely your videos are to be presented in search results. Many viewers won't even know they can do these things so short screen casts showing users what to do or pointing at the locations of these elements will lead to more, as long as you have delivered value in your video first. It's as simple as "If you're enjoying this video, I'd really appreciate it if you could click Like or Favorite in the toolbar below, that really helps"

Pre-Uploading

At this point, I'm assuming you've got a nice shiny H.264 1080p Video file (or something like that) sitting on your hard drive ready to go yes?

Create a Kick-Ass Title

Along with the thumbnail, your title is pretty much the most important thing for getting views, as I cover here. Based on your keyword research you may already have a title in mind, drop a keyword or two in if you wish, but make the title better for humans than search engines. Once your video does appear in results, humans are what click on it not machines. If you need inspiration, read copyblogger's excellent 10 Sure Fire Headline Formulas That Work. Make your title as short as you can - many places your video appears on YouTube will truncate the title pretty short (see related video sidebar on any video page).

Rename the file

I can't find proof for this, but a few people claim renaming the video file to match the video title will make a difference. Either way it takes 5 seconds so just do it anyway.

Uploading

Now it's time to head over to the tubes, hit upload and fill in the blanks while the video uploads. Paste your title in to begin with.

Your URL will be linked
by default

The Gospel Description Rule - URL first

First up is your description for the video, only one thing matters here more than anything else - put a website address in on the first line with the full http:// prefix. By default, this is the only line visible on the video page on YouTube, and they will hotspot it (make it a clicky link) meaning it's primed for stealing visitors from YouTube to your website. This is the end goal.

Always, always do this. This is your pay packet for turning up and working for YouTube. Take advantage of it. With this link you can -

• Link to affiliate products
• Tell people in your video to click on the link to get freebie/whatever you're selling
• Physically point to the link with arrows in your video
• SELL or rent the link space if your video goes supernova.

This is the epicenter of YouTube conversion folks, don't f*ck it up.

Fill out your Description

For the rest of the description field, YouTube give a pretty generous space (5000 chars) for you to keyword-load to your heart's content. But don't do that - use the description for exactly that - to tell people what's in the video. I sometimes post my entire transcript in here, sometimes I write something specific. Make use of it, this will count in search results big time. Hell, some folks slam whole blog posts in here. Along with your first link, any other URL's you put in will be linkified as well.

Quoted and unquoted
tags

Tags

Because you did all that good research earlier, you're ready to put your tags in - you need to separate them with spaces for YouTube, if you want a phrase you need to put it in quotes. YouTube will suggest keywords, I suggest you ignore these completely and stick to the plan. Whatever you do, don't put hundreds of keywords in and don't put unrelated keywords in - YouTube will not like this. There is no problem using keywords based on research because that's what your video is about, so they're relevant.

We're not completely finished with tags yet, but one last tip here - put your channel name in as a tag in every video. This increases the chances that the related/suggested videos sidebar next to your videos is only populated with more of your videos, and no one elses.

Post Upload

Your video should be uploaded and live now, so these steps are post upload.

Pick a Thumbnail

Head to your video’s live URL and click “Edit Thumbnail” – YouTube will have randomly selected 3 frames from your vid you can pick from as a thumbnail – this will show up in search results so pick the most interesting one. If you’re a YouTube partner lucky you – you get to upload your own.

Choose the most interesting thumbnail YouTube provide

Annotate your ending

If you watched my video on how to end your video, you may have parts ready in your video frames for annotations, such as preview thumbnails and subscribe button graphics. Now's the time to annotate your vid where needed.

Annotate your URL watermark

If you put a URL watermark in, you can't link it to your website, but you can make it a channel subscription link which is an acceptable alternative.

Transcript

If you followed my advice and created a script, save it as a .txt file and upload it as a transcript. As well as doing your thing for hearing-impaired YouTubers, you've just got major influence in search results. What amazes me about this feature is how well YouTube synchronise your text with your audio - they've really done a good job with this unlike the automated transcriptions. I seriously doubt they rely too heavily on the automated transcriptions for searches given how inaccurate the results usually are.

Straight from the horses mouth (YouTube) -

If you have a transcript available, make sure to upload it and turn on captions. This can help your discoverability as it will give us more data points to index your video.

Promote

I cover how to get views in a separate article, but these are simple steps that will take 5 minutes total you should do for every video after upload -

Embed the video on your blog

Get the video on your blog as a post first off, whatever traffic you have hitting the embed starts to signal to YouTube/Google that the video has relevancy around your topic. And you start racking up your view count.

Create a Bulletin

Your video will automatically appear to subscribers on their home page, and via email if they've selected that, to increase your exposure, post a bulletin and that may appear as well, and will also appear for anyone in your friends list.

Post as a Video Response

You've got one chance to post your video as a response to another user's video on YouTube and try to siphon off some of their traffic. This won't work if the user has disabled video responses, and equally won't work if they choose to review responses and don't like your work. This flat out won't work if you try and post your video as a response to a more popular video that yours competes with (whoops tried it and failed). If this becomes time consuming (over 30 secs searching) trying to find a video to do this with, stop it - there's more valuable work you can be doing.

After 500 Views

Use Annotations at the most popular parts of your video

Once your video has racked up 500 views YouTube will calculate "HotSpots" as part of the statistics available for your video. This is really cool because it tells you which parts of your video people don't like, and which parts are getting them engaged. For the peak engagement points, it's worth dropping in an annotation for a subscribe, as this is when viewer are (a) paying attention and (b) likely to react. You may find this converts better than subscribe annotations at the end of your videos.

Optimise Your Tags

Also in analytics, the actual searches people made that lead to your video - if these aren't already tags in your video, go back, edit the video and make them tags to fortify your relevancy for those searches.

Will all this work?

Some of this has been discovered through trial and error, most of it as actually based on information YouTube provide directly -

Straight from YouTube -

Have a basic understanding of how we index our search results so you know how we crawl and index your video. Use our tools to your videos’ advantage.

Titles, tags and rich descriptions (all categorized as metadata) will help your discoverability and increase CPMs. Descriptions can include up to 5,000 characters, tags can be 120 characters. Make a goal to use every one of these limits for each of your videos.

The more words you include in your description, the higher your chances of being discovered by searchers, which means the larger your audience can grow, and the more potential revenue you can earn.

How to Apply this information

Now you've got an understanding of why all these steps help, it's easy to boil all the information above down into a simple process you can quickly follow each time you upload.

I've distilled the key points from this article into a worksheet you can use to help check off these steps each time until they're hard wired into you.

This worksheet is only available to subscribers of my newsletter, which you can join here. I send out regular tips and tricks to subscribers, along with plenty of other freebies so sign up here