Hello TubeBuddies, in this video we’ll teach you how to optimize a video for YouTube!
[Tips & Tricks]
Since YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, it is important to be
sure your videos are properly optimized in order to show up in search results.
This process is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short.
When your content shows up in YouTube’s search results, it helps get your video discovered
so you can earn views, watchtime, and new subscribers.
Remember that it’s the quality of your content that keeps people watching, but it’s SEO
gets people's foot in the door.
We’re going to show you how we optimize videos using some of our favorite TubeBuddy
tools.
Just a heads up - Keyword Explorer, Tag Lists, and Insta Suggest are all accessible in the
free version of TubeBuddy, but for unlimited results you’ll need a Pro license or higher.
When it comes to optimizing a video, the first thing we recommend doing is researching your
topic.
This is an important step to take before you even begin to work on a video so you know
if people are interested in the topic you want to create.
Using our Keyword Explorer, you can discover what people tend to type into the search bar,
which will help you craft your topic around what people are ACTUALLY looking for.
We’re currently working on a tutorial that shows you how to optimize your existing videos,
not just new videos.
So if you want to be alerted when that video drops, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell
notification today!
When determining where to place your video in search results, YouTube looks at 3 main
pieces of metadata.
First it prioritizes a videos title, then looks at its description, and finally, it
looks at its tags.
For our research purposes, we will determine the title and tags together, so we can then
enter those tags or keywords into our video description!
Let’s open keyword explorer and explore a topic.
Your topic can be on a multitude of things.
If you’re a gamer, it could be the game you’re playing.
If you have a review-based channel, it could be the latest product you plan to review.
Or if you’re a travel vlogger, it could be the destination you’re heading to - anything
that will be the key focus of the video you plan to create.
Let’s say you're going to be traveling to the San Diego Zoo.
We’ll type in our key focus of the video into the keyword explorer, in this case San
Diego Zoo.
You’ll see that even as we type, the Keyword Explorer is making suggestions based on what
people are looking for.
This alone can help you find the right targets.
Here you’ll see the terms Overall Score, related topics people are searching for around
this topic, and then the most used tags in the top ranking videos on the subject.
This score here shows you how well this keyword will likely perform.
The Weighted Score takes into consideration your channel's size and avg views per video,
while the Unweighted Score doesn’t account for that information and is a more generalized.
Look at the Weighted Score for the most accurate prediction for YOUR channel specifically.
With a score like this, we probably shouldn’t use this as our video’s main keyword.
Instead, let’s take a look at the related section to find other things people are searching
for.
Here we can see things like “San Diego zoo safari park” and “San Diego Zoo vs Safari
Park.”
We recommend long tail descriptive keyword phrases, because they can help you show up
in search.
Single word tags are too broad, and people don’t usually type things like “San Diego”
“Zoo” “Safari” or “Park” to find information about a subject.
The information we research should help shape the content of our video.
That's because now we can see what people are actually searching for.
In this instance, we know that making a video comparing the two parks would be REALLY---l
great.
We also see that videos about this topic involving kids are something people are looking, so
maybe we should focus on things kids can do at each park.
Again, as creators, it’s OUR job to create the content and find ways to make it searchable.
For our example, let’s say we want to talk about the San Diego Zoo Bus Tour!
Looking at the difference, this term is A LOT easier to go after.
Our score is now 84/100.
Even more important is the color.
A green score is like a green light at a stop light - we are good to go!
Now that we decided to cover the bus tour at the San Diego Zoo, we should create an
appropriate title AND find tags that are relevant, so we’ll create a tag list RIGHT within
Keyword Explorer.
We’ll go over to Action and then select “new tag list” here.
We will call it “San Diego Bus Tour Video”, that way we can save keywords for LATER when
we’re uploading the video.
We will have them ready to go, saving us A LOT of time.
We also have the option to add this to our Video Topic Planner, so if you don’t have
time to research it now, you can have all of the information later.
For this example, we’ll add ‘san diego zoo bus tour route’ to the tags list we
just created.
We selected this tag because how similar it is to our topic.
You want your tags to be similar to your topic and title, and to rephrase what your title
is trying to get across in different ways, while staying as close to the original as
possible.
More examples that will work well for this video are “San Diego Zoo Bus tour first
time” “San Diego Zoo Bus tour vlog” and things of that nature.
Let’s say that now our video is created and it’s time to upload and show you the
power of TubeBuddy’s suggested tags!
First let’s determine our title.
Since the Keyword Explorer showed that people are searching for the phrase ‘San Diego
Zoo Bus Tour’, we want to be sure to incorporate that EXACT phrase, including those same words
in the same order.
If we were to change the order of the words, like ‘My Bus Tour of the San Diego Zoo’,
we would be targeting a completely different search term than the original one we found.
Using the exact term will ensure YouTube connects our video with the phrase we want to target.
The second part of our title should be the compelling element and include something that
entices the viewer to click and that hones in on what our video is about.
We’re going to title this video “San Diego Zoo Bus Tour - What you NEED to know.”
You can separate your title to help make it easier to read using a few different types
of dividers.
You can use a “-”, like we did, or even a vertical bar like this “|”. A tip when
using dividers in your title is that YouTube reads right through it.
For example, a title like “San Diego Zoo | Bus Tour Information” would still be optimized
for “San Diego Zoo Bus Tour.”
The suggested tags are under your YouTube videos on the video edit page, and they are
all based around your title.
We will title this video “San Diego Zoo Bus Tour - What you NEED to know”.
One thing we see too many creators do is get results for something like “San Diego Zoo
Bus Tour” and they try to title their video “My Bus Tour of the San Diego Zoo.”
That’s a completely different search term and target with entirely different ranking
opportunities.
You need to focus on exact words, exact order, that’s what you want to do.
YouTube reads titles like us Westerners read English, left to right in order of importance.
The part of the title we are targeting in search is the first half “San Diego Zoo
Bus Tour” The second half, is to entice the viewer to click and should hone in on
what your video is about, so the “What you NEED to know” speaks to a viewer's curiosity.
Now that we have our title, we can import our tags list.
You’ll see that TubeBuddy’s suggested tags will update based on what we have in
our title and tags list.
Now we can decide which tags to add, as long as they are RELEVANT to our video, and they
are similar to our video’s title.
Once we add the tags, we’re going to build our description using our tags and title.
Remember YouTube gives us 500 characters to use as tags, so try to use as much of the
500 characters as possible for tags, and make sure the tags are RELEVANT to your video!
Remember that YouTube looks first at a video’s title, then its description, and then tags.
Now that we have our tags and title, we can organically include these tags in our video’s
description!
You also want to be sure and focus on the first 200 characters, since that’s where
YouTube looks for searchable data.
Some people place links in the first 200 characters, but they should really go after “The Fold”,
or the line after the first 200 characters.
That way you’re giving YouTube data to work with, and you can also make sure that people
know to click the “read more” on YouTube.
Here is what the description for our example video would look like.
“We do a San Diego Zoo Bus Tour!
What you NEED to know about the San Diego Zoo Bus tour, is that it’s a lot of fun
to see the San Diego Zoo safari park in such a unique new light!” l
You see that the description restates our title, includes our tags, and will therefore,
help us get discovered in YouTube Search.
Now you have some great ways to better optimize your videos to be discovered in YouTube search
results.
In addition to incorporating the right tags in your title and description, with Keyword
Explorer, you can find video topics people are searching for before you ever begin filming.
This way, you can create better content with higher potential for discovery, and most importantly,
serves your ideal audience better
SEO can be challenging, but using tools like TubeBuddy can give you ways to find more accurate
keywords, and can help you in YouTube search and be discovered!
What would you like to know about YouTube search?
Let us know in those comments down below!
Enjoy the content?
Consider subscribing!
I’m Andrew Kan from TubeBuddy and thank you all so much for watching!