YouTube Video Optimization: First page YouTube video ranking in 60 Seconds

YouTube video optimization is different from regular search engine optimization (SEO). Let’s take a closer look at what constitutes the differences.

YouTube has been a breakthrough innovation in the world of the internet, right from its inception.

It might feel weird to see YouTube as a search engine like Google, but today it is one of the best search engine platforms when it comes to video content.

In fact, YouTube videos also appear along with organic Google search results, which is pretty significant.

Because YouTube serves as its own search engine, it has its own set of YouTube SEO best practices.

If you are a business, and you are creating video content, making your videos rank on the first page can be quite challenging. With millions of videos in your niche fighting for the first page of YouTube search, “quality-content” alone cannot help you crack the puzzle.

You need to have some secret tricks under your sleeves!

And guess what, You can make your YouTube videos appear on the first page of YouTube search in less than 60 seconds. 

Read on to know my secret tip to less than 60 sec video ranking!

Apart from my secret 60 sec video ranking tip, I am going to serve you with a comprehensive guide on YouTube ranking tips that will help you get to the first page of Google and YouTube.

1. YouTube video optimization tips for video title

When I say ‘keywords’, I do not imply the ones that come to your mind at first thought.

You need to do thorough keyword research to find out proper long tails (LSI) or YouTube SEO keywords. The long tails need to be further optimized so that they are less competitive.

This YouTube keyword tool can help you do keyword research that is particularly targeted towards YouTube.

Let’s take a look at how we did SEO optimization for YouTube videos. One of our videos is appearing on the first page for the term “security explainer video”, at YouTube.com, and also on the first page of organic search at google.com.

An ideal format to write a YouTube video title for better YouTube keyword ranking would be somewhat like this: – Long tail #1 | Long tail #2.

You can add your brand name to the title if you want to highlight your brand name as well.

Here is an example:-

How to write a blog post | Blog writing tips | Brand name

It’s best to keep the character count within 70 characters because that is what remains visible in your search results.

Now comes the secret tip as I promised.

After you have finished your keyword research and listed them down, head on to a competitor research. On the YouTube home page, search for the keywords one by one. For each of the respective search results served to you, find out how many competitors are using the exact same keywords.

Yes, mostly for the primary keywords and most popular keywords, you will find that the result listing is packed up with video titles with the exact same keyword. However, as you drill down to more LSI keyword phrases, you will eventually find an LSI keyword that does not exactly appear on video titles.

Even if the keyword phrases match exactly for the first two or three, you have the 4th or 5th position waiting for you.

Bingo! that’s your catch. No go and add the chosen keyword to your video title. Wait for 20 mins and hit a ‘search’ again on YouTube home page. Your video should be there.

This happens because YouTube gives the utmost importance to video titles. If the bots find and exact match with your title, they don’t think much before ranking your video (Note:- this would work for low competitive LSI keywords only. For high competitive keywords you have to follow all the tips that I have mentioned here in this blog).

2. Optimizing the description for YouTube video ranking

When you upload your video to YouTube, you are presented with a description box that allows a whopping 5000 characters for you to get creative.

Try to write a minimum of 200 words of content for your description to achieve the best YouTube search ranking.

However, you should note that only about 150 characters will appear in a Google search snippet.

So, the question is how to write a good YouTube video description?

Okay, think it like this. Had this been a simple web page, how would you compose the paragraph content?

Yes, write it the same way you would have composed web page content. Make it sound human. Add the keywords you used in the title along with other complementary keywords.

One common mistake while doing YouTube ranking optimization is, people blindly put the video transcription into the description box. This can be done but the content still needs to be optimized with the following features:

> Make sure that the important keywords are towards the beginning.

> Add your links(Website, Social) to promote your brand

> Add CTA or call to action

> Add a few hash-tags as applicable

3. Rank higher on YouTube with popular video tags

YouTube tags are not as important as they used to be but they still carry some relevance to YouTube SEO optimization that you cannot completely ignore.

Tags are basically words, keywords or phrases that describe your video. Having said that, here are some best practices for using YouTube video tags:

> Make the first tag equal to your target keyword, the keyword or phrase that you are willing to rank for.

> Use both broad and focused keywords

> Use 5 to 6 tags only. Do not go overboard.

4. Use the focus keyword in your video voiceover

You must already be aware that YouTube now holds the capacity of auto transcription and generating subtitles (YouTube closed captions).

Yes, this means that YouTube literally understands the voiceover in your video. Putting your focus keyword in the voiceover helps YouTube further authenticate the content of your video by matching keywords used in your title and description and tags.

5. Add transcript to YouTube video

Wait, isn’t YouTube supposed to do that automatically?

Yes, indeed. YouTube will auto-generate the transcription in the form of subtitles.

But let me tell you this little secret!

You have the opportunity to slightly edit the transcript and add some more keywords for a better YouTube search ranking. Apart from crawling the title and description for relevant keywords, YouTube is going to crawl this transcript too.

To edit the default transcript, follow the steps below:

Step1 – Go to YouTube studio

Step2 – Click on the video you want to edit

Step3- Go to More Options under ‘Video Details’

Step4 – Go to the section that says ‘Original video language, subtitles and CC’

Step5 – Select the video language from the drop down

Step6 – Click the three dots beside “English by YouTube (automatic)”

Step7 – Click ‘Edit on Classic Studio’

Step8 – On the following page click ‘Edit’

There you are; you can now go and edit your transcription that is already auto-generated. You can, of course, upload a fresh transcript file that you created from scratch but the former method saves you a considerable amount of time.

6. Including YouTube intro animation

This is more related to the content of the video. While this may not apply to all videos, adding a YouTube intro animation will definitely boost up your brand image.

An after effects logo animation works best in this regard.

Your audience will know that you are a professional and they are more likely to watch the later part of the video.

Overlay animations like blinking arrow, funny cartoons, motion graphics, and smiley gestures can help you increase your audience retention rate. Especially during the first 15 seconds.

7. Add YouTube video custom thumbnail

Adding a thoughtful custom thumbnail can make a big difference because it can significantly increase your CTR or click-through rate.

Click through rate is a ratio that defines how often people who see your thumbnail, end up clicking it.

If you have a lot of videos, hiring a professional graphic designer to create the thumbnails, would be a good idea.

8. Encourage your viewers to comment

What signal does your video give to YouTube search bots if it got a lot of comments? It’s pretty simple. Your video is popular.

Just like Google search, YouTube will give priority to content that is popular. Comments are a part of the metrics based on which YouTube decides which videos people like more as compared to other videos.

It’s a good idea to speak some words in the video that encourages commenting. You can ask questions, especially at the end to initiate a discussion.

The thumb rule is that you need to be aware of this while you are at the early stages of scripting the video.

9. Encourage your viewers to subscribe

Just like comments, the number of subscribers to your channel plays a significant role in your YouTube video rankings.

While liking and commenting on a video serves an onetime action, subscribing would mean that your viewers will be regularly notified of updates from your channel.

Ok, so what are the ways you can ask your viewers to subscribe and how do you make it easy for them?

You might not be aware but if you do not insist on your viewers, they are more likely to skip the subscribing part. YouTube’s default subscription button is there but it’s often ignored. People are really lazy when it comes to the internet!

The first thumb rule is “Say it in the voiceover.”

If you want you can also add a subscribe button to all your YouTube videos with the help of a single action. This can help to rank YouTube channel on an overall basis.

However, I would recommend that you add an animated subscribe button individually to all your videos. Animated buttons are proven to generate 50% more subscriptions. You can download and use free subscribe animation for youtube buttons from several royalty-free platforms.

10. Promote to increase YouTube watch time and views

Now that you have created your video content with the right title, description, and tags, the video is going to be indexed inside of YouTube pretty fast.

Indexing inside of YouTube is different from indexing on Google.  While the former can take as less as 10 minutes, the later can take months.

However, your purpose is not solved until you start gaining hundreds of YouTube video views every day. Well, most of the time that does not happen automatically.

So, how to increase watch time on YouTube?

You need to turn some keys here so that YouTube understands that people like your video and they are engaging with it. If a person watches your video for more than half the length, YouTube starts picking up signals that your content is good. If people watch your video until the end, it’s even better.

As the ‘watch-time’ metric is picked up, what happens is, YouTube starts suggesting your video to more and more people. That is how you can auto increase YouTube video views.

Once the ball is rolled, it’s more likely that it will keep rolling until another, better; more relevant content takes you over.

To gain maximum exposure you should know how to market your YouTube video for more views.

If you are launching a product or new business, it would be a good idea to roll out some paid YouTube ads. Note that you cannot run Facebook or Instagram ads with YouTube videos embedded in the ads.

But if you are looking for free YouTube search optimization tips to gain exposure for your videos, here are a few ways that will turn the keys for you.

> Use Quora forum platform for qualitative views from a targeted audience.

Just go and find questions related to your topic and embed your video in the answer along with a few lines of your thoughts.

The audience here is extremely targeted and you can be sure that even if 20% of them click through your video, they are likely to watch the video till the end.

That’s what we call high retention views!

> Share the link to your video on every social channel that is available to you.

Facebook can help you a lot with your organic reach. Consider posting to your timeline as well as any groups you are a member of.

Twitter studies confirm that there are more than 1.2 billion video views every day on twitter ad the numbers are increasing.

So, go and tweet it!

Oh, and don’t forget LinkedIn. If your video is about a business it’s better but if it’s not, there’s nothing to worry about. Over the last few years, I have witnessed a ton of personal, non-business related videos gather noteworthy engagement.

> If you have an email list you should remember that it is still one of the most promising forms of marketing.

If you have a large list then you can instantly gain thousands of views to your video.

> If you happen to be part of any Private Blog networks (PBN), you can use those channels too.

Other blogging sites like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr can also help.

>There are several Social bookmarking sites where you can go and bookmark your video.

>This is a bit time consuming but what you do is write a Guest post and embed your video there, as a resource.

>That way, the publishers will allow your video inside your article and you would obviously gain more views on your video.

>Write a blog post on your own blog and embed the video there. The video will drive user engagement to your blog and the video will gain views.

>Blog commenting works especially well if your video is resourceful.

Most blog comments go through admin moderation and spam looking comments can be refused. However, if you could write a thoughtful comment that helps by adding your video link as a resource, it will definitely be published.

11. Do not ignore playlists

If you are creating multiple videos, you can categorize them and use the power of playlists.

Creating keyword-rich playlists can improve your YouTube SEO and bring additional search traffic.

Concluding lines

Well, YouTube can really help you turn stones if you follow some of the YouTube video optimization tips I have discussed above.

The fun fact is that you can literally apply all these by yourself without investing any money. All you need is hard work and patience.

So, what are you waiting for? Give your YouTube video ranking the right boost it deserves.

If you have an additional tip that would help our friends here, do let me know. I will make sure to add the same to this list of mine.