One of the most effective ways to promote your business, website, products, or just make some ad money is through video marketing. The most obvious choice to get started is YouTube. Today I put together an Ultimate Guide on How To Rank Your YouTube Videos along with some Free YouTube SEO tips.
Creating videos for YouTube has been a very effective method in my business and has helped me drive traffic to my website and create new customers. I honestly should be doing more video marketing because the little time I’ve spent has been very effective.
Today I’ll share my process on uploading a YouTube video and what you should be doing to give your video the best chance to get ranked high in YouTube search and hopefully on the first page of Google’s search results for your keywords.
How To Rank Your YouTube Videos Guide
YouTube Video Keywords
Before you even have your video done, you should be thinking about the keywords you’d like to target. If you’re not familiar with keywords, here’s a guide on exactly what keywords are.
My recommendation is to find keywords with low competition, meaning not many other videos out there targeting those keywords. This makes it easier to rank high.
I use Jaxxy.com to do keyword research, but there’re many other options out there. Some people just use Google Adwords for research, but I recommend Jaxxy because it shows how many YouTube videos are ranked for your keyword.
On this guide, I decided to do an example video of a review for a site called Qmee. It’s one of my highest ranking YouTube videos and here’s the process I went through to find the keywords.
You can see that the traffic isn’t that high, but there’s not much competition which is going to be key. Now that I found my keyword here’s what I’d do when I upload the video to make sure that it gets ranked well.
Create and Upload Your Video
Name Your Video File
The first step, before you even upload your video is naming your video file. I highly recommend putting your keywords in the video files name. For example, when saving my Qmee Video, I called the file Qmee Review: Get Paid To Search The Internet.
Video Title
The next step after uploading your video is creating the title. You must put your keywords in the title. For best results, I’d put your main keywords first. So in this example, I was targeting Qmee Review. So I put Qmee Review as the first words in the title. You can see an example below.
As you can see I added “Make Money Searching The Internet With Qmee” to add more keywords and also make the video title more clickable and intriguing than just “Qmee Review.”
Video Description
This is by far the most important part of the Basic information you’ll fill out. My personal preference is to write 300-500 word description of what the video is about. I treat it as a mini blog post that I can mention my keywords in. You can see an example of my Qmee Review videos description below:
As you can see, I wrote a pretty lengthy description to this video, and I included my keywords at the very beginning of the description. I also gave a detailed overview of what I’ll cover inside the video. You’ll also see some other great keywords that I put in the description that I did not target in the title such as “what is Qmee” “How Does Qmee Work” and so on.
The awesome thing about this is although I didn’t put “How Does Qmee Work” in my title, if you search that term on YouTube I am the 2nd highest ranked video!
Video Tags
The tags you input are pretty overrated, but you might as well fill them out with your keywords. I recommend 3-5 tags and to create your own tags. Do not use the suggested tags, because they are extremely broad.
As you can see, my first tag was my main keyword. I also threw in some other great keywords and keyword variations that people might search. I don’t recommend going overboard with tags. Like I mentioned they aren’t that important, but make sure you input a few keywords.
Advanced Settings
Although these aren’t very important, you might as well fill them out to make your video stand out. Make sure to add a location and fill out the advanced settings completely. Again this isn’t a huge thing, but it’s something most videos won’t have, so it’s an easy way to get a leg up on the competition.
Transcription
I highly recommend submitting a transcription of your video. If you’re not familiar, it’s a script of everything you said in your video. This is important for two reasons. First, it lets YouTube know exactly what you stated in the video, which helps with ranking for keywords because you should have at least said your keyword in your video once. The second advantage is most videos don’t have a transcription. This again helps your video stand out on the YouTube ranking side of things.
You can upload a text document inside the video manager under the subtitles and cc tab!
What To Do After You Publish Your Video
After you publish your video, the works not over. There’re a few things I recommend doing to promote your video and get it out there for as many people to see!
Share on Social Media
The first thing you should do is share it on all the social media accounts you have. Under the video, there’s a social share tab. It has some easy to use share buttons I recommend, or you can copy the URL and share on your own.
I highly recommend sharing on all social media sites including Reddit and the other social bookmarking sites available.
Ping It
The next step should be letting YouTube and other search engines know that your video is up and running. There’re sites that “ping” your URL and let the important people know that your video is out.
I use pingfarm.com, but some other options include pingomatic and Twingly.
Pinging your URL is very easy. Just grab the video URL and paste it at these sites. It’s a key to getting your videos out there and ranked faster!
Free Ranking YouTube Video Guide Results
This is the method I use for all of my YouTube videos so here’s proof that it works:
As you can see, if you go to YouTube and search the term “Qmee Review,” which was my main keyword, I’m ranked in the #1 spot. As I mentioned before I also rank high for many other keywords that have to do with Qmee in YouTube search.
I also rank as the top video on Google, actually the only video on the first page of results:
If you follow this guide, you can easily get your YouTube videos on the first page of YouTube Results and Google search results.
Free YouTube SEO Tips
Post Consistently
One thing you’ll find out quickly is that posting one video isn’t going to work if you want your videos to rank well on YouTube. YouTube videos will rank and rank higher over time. One key metric for YouTube rankings is having a channel that posts consistently. If you post one video each week, YouTube will recognize it, and your channel will grow in authority.
Just know that it’s not easy or reasonable to think to have one video on your channel will lead to good rankings, views, and whatever you end goal is with your YouTube video.
Custom Thumbnails Are Key
Once your videos get ranked well in search, there’s no guarantee people will watch your videos. Even though you might be the top search results, someone might click on the video ranked lower because the thumbnail was more appealing.
I highly recommend using the custom thumbnails feature when uploading your video. This can help you get more views, even if you’re not the highest ranked video in the search.
Respond To Comments
Being social is a good tip for a few reasons. First off having videos with likes and comments can help your videos rank well. Why would anyone leave a comment on your video if they scroll down and see unanswered questions and comments?
Responding to comments is a great way to engage with viewers, shows people you care and encourages others to leave comments.
Subscribers Are Important
When you first start out, you’ll most likely have 0 subscribers or maybe just a few friends. That’s fine, but as you post videos, it’s important to gain subscribers for a few reasons. The main reason is subscribers are notified every time you upload a new video. This can be an easy way to get views immediately. Another reason is it builds channel authority. If you have many subscribers, YouTube takes notice, and your videos will automatically start to rank higher.
With that being said, it’s still possible to rank your videos over channels that have tons of subscribers, but in the long run, your videos will rank better as your channel grows in authority.
How To Get Started On YouTube
Getting started on YouTube is completely free. Head over to YouTube.com to get started, most of you will already have an account since you’ve probably watched videos already, which means you already have a channel.
Use this guide while creating your first videos and all the videos you upload, it really will help you rank your videos high in YouTube and Google search!
This is a free resource to everyone so I’d appreciate it if you could share with your friends and leave comments with your recommendations, concerns, or experiences.
You can check out my YouTube Channel Here, or see some ways I recommend making money online with these Extra Income Sites or My #1 Recommendation.
What YouTube SEO methods do you use? Have videos that rank well on YouTube? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
This is just what I needed to read right now as I am going to be starting up a YouTube channel very soon.
What is the best keyword tool for finding keywords for YouTube? Could I use the same ones I use to find keywords for Google?
Interesting and very helpful post. I really enjoyed reading!
Hannah.
Hey Hannah, thanks for checking out my guide on how to rank a Youtube video. Personally I just use Jaxxy which is the same one I use for posts on my website, but others use Google Adwords as well.
Really any keyword tool will do the trick. I think there is a few keyword tools dedicated soley to YouTube but I’ve never tried them and had great results without them.
Hope this helps,
Brok