March 29, 2024 - Sandy Lam
YouTube is a social platform that houses a large number of videos. As of 2024, it is estimated that there are 800 million videos on YouTube. Despite facing growing competition from TikTok and Instagram with short-form videos, YouTube remains many users’ go-to platform for finding and sharing videos online, with nearly 2.7 billion users worldwide on YouTube Worldwide in January 2023.
With that in mind, it can be beneficial for any business to establish a presence on YouTube, not only for its large audience but also for its growing use as a search engine. When considering whether or not to start a YouTube presence, it is important to first understand the importance of YouTube SEO and how to optimize for YouTube SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some popular search engines are Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. In simple terms, search engine optimization is the process of optimizing one’s website for the purpose of making it user-friendly and search engine-friendly to ultimately increase the website’s visibility on the search engines.
The more SEO-friendly a website is, the more likely it will show up in top search positions on Search Engine Results Pages (aka SERPs) and get clicked on. A study has shown that pages sitting at the no. 1 position on SERPs get 33% of all traffic. Therefore, it’s important to optimize your website so it can receive as much visibility as it can on search engines and ultimately capture the traffic that turns into leads, and potential customers of your business.
Since video is a form of content, YouTube basically serves as a search engine that shows relevant videos related to users’ search terms. Rather than optimizing a website or web page, you would optimize videos to improve their ranking in YouTube search results. This ultimately helps generate more views, gain more subscribers, and drive traffic to your website. This can also serve as a chance to become a thought leader in your industry.
The YouTube algorithm looks at its own set of ranking factors to determine which videos to show in the Search Results, below are some of the factors considered:
With Relevance being one of the key ranking factors, it is essential to understand if you are producing video content that answers your audience’s search queries on YouTube. Here are two ways to do YouTube keyword research:
There are specific keyword research tools that help businesses and video content creators find the most searched keywords on YouTube, generate related search terms, show monthly search volume and competition of keywords & more. Some of these tools offer a free version that anyone can take advantage of. However, the free version might only provide some basic features. Some popular keyword research tools are:
A simpler way to do keyword research on YouTube is to utilize YouTube’s Autosuggest. Here is how to use YouTube Autosuggest:
If you already have content that can answer users’ questions, that’s great! Optimizing the video can further enhance its visibility and bring you more views and potentially more subscribers. Here are some tips on how to optimize your video for YouTube SEO:
Now that you understand what YouTube SEO is about and the importance of creating keyword-driven video content, you are one step closer to providing a useful YouTube channel for your audience. Furthermore, following the aforementioned best practices will allow you to make sure your channel and content are SEO-friendly and user-friendly.
At Solution Agency, our Digital Marketing team has years of experience in strategic planning and campaign formulation utilizing a variety of digital channels to create an omnichannel strategy. Contact us today to learn more about what services we offer, and more importantly how we can help you create a successful campaign on social media platforms like YouTube.