Tiếng ViệtFor those looking to enter the creative playground of YouTube, studying YouTube SEO techniques is essential. Simply having great content is not enough for a video to become popular; you need to know how to reach potential viewers for your video. This is where SEO tools come into play. So, what is YouTube SEO? How should you implement SEO? Let’s explore in the article below!
What is YouTube SEO?
The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing search engines. Typically, SEO techniques are more commonly associated with improving the rankings of websites and articles on search engines like Google, helping your content appear higher up and reach a larger audience. So, is YouTube SEO similar?
Essentially, YouTube SEO serves a similar purpose to website SEO, which is to help your videos rank at the top of search results. However, this is not on Google but rather on the YouTube video-sharing platform. Additionally, YouTube SEO strategies have some significant differences compared to website SEO. We will explore the content of these strategies in the following section.
YouTube SEO Strategies
Effective YouTube SEO requires strategies right from the start; random and unclear SEO efforts will not yield the desired results. So, what are the most common SEO strategies that service providers are applying?
SEO Video Youtube
This is the most basic SEO strategy often employed by novice YouTubers when they first enter the field. Essentially, this strategy is similar to SEO on Google, applied to individual videos. Each video produced and uploaded will be accompanied by related keyword groups, so when users search for relevant content, they can discover your video.
YouTube Suggestion SEO
When you access YouTube, you will see a multitude of videos appearing on the homepage. These are videos with content similar to those you have already watched, as recommended by YouTube. Additionally, while watching a video, if you look to the right side of the screen (for desktops) or scroll down (on mobile), you will also see other recommended videos. The videos appearing in these positions receive a significant number of views, expanding the audience without necessarily relying on YouTube’s search tool.
Therefore, implementing a suggestion SEO strategy is aimed at getting your videos to appear in these positions. The way to do this is by using keyword groups and tags from specific videos that have good engagement and are related to your content. In this way, your video will have a better chance of being ranked below them, which can increase its visibility and traffic, placing it higher on YouTube.
SEO playlist Youtube
A playlist is a collection of videos with similar content. When users are interested in one video, they are likely to watch the others in the same playlist. Therefore, optimizing playlists for SEO is extremely important as it helps quickly boost view counts, improve channel rankings, and increase user engagement. The playlist SEO strategy involves placing optimized playlists at the top of YouTube rankings. Achieving this requires SEO practitioners to have a clear and detailed plan, along with flexibility and creativity to reach the desired effectiveness.
YouTube Channel SEO
This is a relatively challenging strategy that requires the practitioner to have specialized knowledge and extensive experience; however, the effectiveness it brings will last longer than other methods. To achieve this, there are two important goals to keep in mind: optimizing the channel name and optimizing keywords related to the theme. When the channel name has a certain ranking and the keywords you use reach the top, the videos on the channel will be prioritized for display. This, in turn, increases view rates, engagement, and subscriptions, and these factors will also “synergize” to help the channel achieve its development goals.
Comprehensive YouTube SEO
As the name suggests, this strategy is a combination of various methods, designed appropriately to achieve a common goal: channel growth. When implementing this approach, you need to have a certain level of knowledge, persistence, commitment, and a specific plan.
This strategy requires investment in various aspects; however, when successful, it will create a solid foundation that allows your channel to remain securely at the top for a long time. Below is a comprehensive YouTube SEO process consisting of seven steps that you can refer to:
Step 1: Keyword Research for YouTube SEO
Before starting SEO for either a website or YouTube, keyword research is crucial. This will help you chart a correct course without wasting effort. To find “valuable” keywords, you first need ideas about keywords related to your content. Write these keywords down in a specific list, then compare them with the optimized keywords of videos on YouTube, removing any that do not appear.
Step 2: Find the Best YouTube SEO Keywords
After having a filtered list of keywords, you will proceed to select the best and most relevant keywords that align with your current channel goals and strategies. If your channel is new with few subscribers, it’s advisable to choose keywords with low competition to increase your chances of higher visibility. You can use tools like Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, HubSpot, and VidIQ Vision to check the breadth of keywords and their search volumes. For low-competition keywords, ensure that the keyword has at least 100 to 1,000 searches per month on Google.
To find detailed keywords, simply type one of the keywords you identified earlier into Google and see if it appears in the YouTube video results. Once you’ve identified the video keywords, check the Search Volume of those keywords to assess their reach.
Make sure that these keywords have at least 100 to 1,000 searches per month on Google.
Step 3: Increase Audience Retention
For a video to rank high, it needs to not only attract viewers but also retain them for as long as possible. The longer the watch time, the higher YouTube’s algorithm values your video quality. This watch time is referred to as Audience Retention, a metric that every content creator should pay attention to, as it is crucial for optimizing the channel and increasing monetization potential. To achieve this, your video needs to be well-crafted and polished in terms of content and visuals, providing significant value to the audience.
Step 4: Optimize Engagement
When your video receives positive comments, it indicates that viewers are responding well to your content. This will have a significantly positive impact on your video’s ranking. Therefore, before concluding your video, you should encourage viewers to share their thoughts, leave comments, and interact with the content.
Step 5: Effective YouTube Video SEO for Ranking
Incorporating the main keywords into your video is a critical step that helps viewers understand the content you are providing. There are three positions where you should embed the keywords, including:
- Video Titles
- Video Descriptions
- Tags
In addition, you should also place the main keyword in the tags to give your video more opportunities to appear alongside related content.
Step 6: Promote Your Video
To promote your video and maximize views while diversifying your sources of traffic, you need to leverage various tools across different platforms. Here are some methods you can consider:
- Mention your video on popular Q&A sites like Quora and Reddit.
- Implement playlist SEO techniques to boost the ranking of both your videos and channel.
- Utilize the email signature to include a link to your video when sending it to subscribers or those following you on various platforms.
- Optimize your channel in terms of both appearance and content.
- Embed the video in the content of your blog if you have your own blog.
Step 7: Build Backlinks to Your Video/Channel
The final and most important step is to create a quality backlink system for your videos and channel by performing the following tasks:
- Write quality, valuable content and then subtly embed the video link, sharing it on forums, social media, and other platforms.
- If you have your own blog, you can create related content articles and embed links to the YouTube videos you want to optimize for SEO.
- Create backlinks from reputable news sites to obtain high-quality backlinks.
YouTube SEO, like website SEO, requires significant time and effort to achieve the desired results. Throughout this process, you must continuously experiment and adjust your methods to find the right direction. Your project may succeed quickly, slowly, or even fail, but you will gain knowledge and practical experience to carry forward into future projects. The key to success in this field lies in continuously experimenting, changing, and improving your methods.