How to Rank YouTube Videos on Google?
Ranking YouTube Videos on Google
Getting YouTube videos indexed and ranking in Google search is, essentially, extremely straightforward. There are two steps you need to take. Step 1 is uploading your videos to YouTube and step 2 is setting the visibility to public.
– You get consistent traffic, meaning that you will get views regularly.
– To rank and get clicked on Google is often easier done with a video than with a traditional website.
– Some keywords have higher search volumes on Google than on YouTube
So how do you do it? How do you rank on Google with a YouTube video? Let’s dive into this topic.
How to rank YouTube videos in Google search?
Optimize the video details on YouTube
Once you’ve uploaded your video, the first step is to optimize the controllable metadata. You want to match the searcher intent of the keyword you are trying to rank for.
Title
YouTube titles don’t need to be heavily keyword-orientated in order to rank for specific terms in Google search. Nevertheless, they should clearly match the searcher intent and provide a promise of an answer to the query you are trying to optimize for.
Think about the title like an article H1. Its main job is to hook the user in and get them to read on, written with an editorial lens. If your target keyword doesn’t neatly fit into the title from an editorial standpoint, don’t worry too much. Just make sure that the title is succinct and captures the user intent in the most compelling way possible.
Description
YouTube descriptions can include a lot more detail than meta descriptions on websites. They have a 5000 character limit, which you can fill without any negative consequences. While they should be direct and matter of fact, similar to meta descriptions, they can go into more detail and be somewhat more prosaic if necessary.
Use this space to include editorial detail about the video in question. Make clear the context and the content being covered.
Tags
YouTube tags are a slightly old-fashioned way you can give YouTube more information about the context of a video. They don’t appear to make a significant impact on rankings (if any). But given the small effort involved in adding tags for each video, it’s a worthwhile use of time to include them.
Include key moments (chaptering)
Key moments are additional links that appear in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) underneath your video listing. These act as ‘chapters”, directing users to different sections of your video.
This feature is incredibly valuable for ranking and video SEO more broadly, because it allows you to take up more screen real-estate in the results pages. It also provides more links to your marketing video, enabling you to generate many more clicks from search.
Upload subtitles
YouTube’s automatic subtitle generator is pretty good these days. However, particularly if you’re covering a technical topic with lots of unusual and esoteric words, it’s absolutely worth including a human translated set of subtitles as well. This way you can be sure YouTube has the right terms, and Google is then able to associate your marketing content with the appropriate entities and topics within Google search.
You can upload subtitles in multiple languages, which is definitely worth doing if you have a multinational audience.
Create a great thumbnail
The thumbnail, as much as the title, is the element that attracts clicks from Google search, so put your best foot forward! Rather than relying on the default thumbnail YouTube selects from a frame in the video, create something unique and striking that stands out from the mix.
The best performing thumbnails tend to have bright colors and high contrast, with text overlays and faces, where appropriate. Note that for Google search and text overlays need to be legible at 160×90 pixels, so keep things very simple!
Links & shares
The last area to optimize is the off-page SEO factors, for either the video on YouTube.com, or the digital page which houses the embedded video on your website.
Best practice for building authority in SEO more broadly applies here. Think about how you can get natural links to the page/video in question. You can do this either through other assets you own, or partners that have a good reason to embed it. From there, consider promotional campaigns you can run around your content to generate more shares across the digital web.