YouTube SEO guide , Increase rankings and views on YouTube organically

This is a step by step guide for YouTube video search engine optimization. YouTube SEO means that your videos get discovered through searches either on YouTube or on Google. If someone types in a keyword that fits your video, you want to rank as high as possible. 

🔰 What is YouTube SEO? 

Do you increase rankings and views on YouTube organically? Then how can you do it? This process is called YouTube SEO. 

SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It is all about optimizing content for search engines. That works in order to rank high on the internet. This content can be text-images-videos. Here we are talking about YouTube SEO. 

🔴YouTube SEO Ranking Factors : 

How does the YouTube algorithm actually work? Which factors play a role in how high your video will rank? 

The YouTube algorithm constantly changes, but there are a couple of fixed basic rules and we want to take a look at them in this video. Also, the algorithm takes a look at tens of thousands of different data points, and nobody knows all of them. We can definitely say which ones are the most important. And we should focus on. 

🔹️CTR(Click Through Rate): 

First of all, you need to look at your click-through rate and your CTR. This is how many people actually click on your video if they just see the thumbnail and the title somewhere on YouTube. After someone has clicked on your video. 

🔹️ Audience Retention : 

The second factor is how long they actually watch your video, the so-called audience retention? We want to look at both the absolute audience retention. So how many minutes do they watch your video and the relative audience retention, what percentage of the video does a viewer watch on average? 

🔹️ High Watch Time : 

The main point here is high watch time. Watch time is how much all of your viewers watched your video in total if you get high click-through rates and high audience attention. This leads to higher watch times. This is the third major factor, which is not in the video itself. But rather what a person does before and after they watch your video. 

And this is long session times. YouTube wants you to keep the viewers engaged and keep them on YouTube as long as possible. So if a viewer starts watching more and more videos after they watch your video or more and more videos of your channel, even better, it is a very good sign for the YouTube algorithm and it boosts your video. 

🔴YouTube Keywords Research : 

So if we set aside all of those tens of thousands of data points and just look at these three factors, click-through rates, audience retention, and the so-called sessions, we can make sure that a massive number of viewers will see our video. But how do we optimize our video to these three factors? 

Well, we should start before we even shoot the video, before we even have a video idea, because, of course, the topic of the video is very important. It doesn't matter if we rank number one on a topic that no one is looking for. So we should make sure that we shoot a video on a topic that's actually interesting to viewers. This is called Keyword Research. 

The best place to start here is YouTube's or Google's auto-suggest feature. You know, if you start typing something into the YouTube search bar, you will see different suggestions on how you might continue your phrase. These are the things that most people most people continue this term. So what most people are searching for after we've determined our keyword. 

🔴 YouTube Video Title : 

The next step is to write the title of the video. Yes, Correctly, before you start scripting your video, before you start shooting a video, the first thing you should do is write your title. We've discussed that click-through rate is one of the most important factors and only if you write the title this early on in the process, we can make sure that the video is really interesting to someone who finds it on YouTube. You can have the best video ever. 

If your title and your thumbnail sucks, no one will take a look at it because they don't know that your video is great. So make sure to write an amazing title. How can you achieve this? We've talked about this in more detail in this article. 

🔴 Video Script Writing : 

Now, when it comes to writing your video, there are two key moments to look at when talking about YouTube SEO the start of your video and the end of your video in YouTube analytics, you can find your audience retention graph. And most of the time it looks something similar to this. Most people, or at least a lot of people leave the video and the first fifteen to thirty seconds of your video. 

So it is critically important to optimize the start of your video to get as many people as possible to actually watch your video because after this period, most of the people who actually stay on the video to almost the end achieve this. Put three main things into your video introduction. 

🔹️ First of all, make sure that the viewer knows that they will get what they came for. If the viewer has the feeling this video is completely different from what was promised in the title they will click away. So don't start your video with something completely different than what your title and your thumbnail say. 

🔹️ The second point is to show the viewer the benefit of watching your video. If you make a video that explains something, show the viewer the situation after you've solved their problem at the end of the video. Or if you have a video that's entertaining, entertain the viewer from the beginning of the video, or if you have a video that's about something very amazing, a special moment, tease this special moment, but not too much so that you don't spoil it. 

🔹️ The third point is the intro and outro of your YouTube videos. 

🔰 Video intro : 

Third, if you want to rank search, it doesn't hurt to mention your keyword in the first 15 seconds of your video, because YouTube also looks at the transcription and it looks at what you are seeing in the video. If you keep to this simple framework, you should have fewer people leaving a video in the first 15 seconds. 

🔰 Video Outro : 

The next important step is the end of your video because we want to get the viewers to watch more of our videos to get these long sessions. Because if someone notices that the video is coming to an end, they will immediately leave your video. So what you should do is kind of bridge your content into the next topic. In the end, you shouldn't have this complete stop, like, OK, that was it. 

I hope I could help you with this video or something like this, but take your topic and shift to the next topic where you have another video on so you can immediately tell the person on the end cut to click on this other video. 

So they watch your next video and so on. Even better put a playlist there. So they watch more videos of yours and they are more likely to watch multiple videos after each other. This is not only great for the YouTube algorithm, but it also higher the chances of the person subscribing to your YouTube channel and coming for the next video. 

🔴 YouTube Metadata : 

We shoot the video, we edit the video not much SEO stuff going on there. But now when it comes to uploading your video, there are more SEO tricks to take notice of. Of course, I'm describing your keywords in your metadata. We want to make sure that YouTube knows which topic our video is on. So make sure to notice your focus keyword in your title, in your description, and in your text. You can also put in some more different keywords. 

And extremely important the thumbnail of your video we've already talked about click-through rates and how it's important to have a great title, but also make sure that your thumbnail catches the attention of the viewer. 

The thumbnail is there to get the attention and the title is there to actually get someone to click on your video so that something they don't just choose. One of these three automatically chosen thumbnails of YouTube, but actually create your own thumbnail for your video that's captivating to the viewer. How can you achieve this? 

We've talked more about it here after we've put in everything while uploading the video. We need to look at publishing the video because we want to get as many views as possible in the first hours after uploading your video. If we can achieve this, we can higher the chances of more and more people seeing your video organically on YouTube. 

🔴 Best Time to Publish : 

So make sure to publish your video right before most of your viewers are active on YouTube. If you have enough views, you can see when your views are active in the YouTube analytics. Also, if you want to higher your chances of ranking on Google, use YouTube's premiere feature because it pings the Google algorithm. And higher your chances of ranking them to get even more views. 

Share your video with your followers on other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. 

🔴 Promote Your Videos : 

YouTube loves external clicks because it loves so-called sessions. If you can start a session that's also great. Not even get a long session after your video. So get as many people as possible on your video in the first hours after uploading it even from external sources. This is the complete process of uploading a YouTube video and optimizing it for SEO. 

🔴 YouTube Ranking Hacks : 

There are some extra tips and I want to tell you some additional YouTube ranking hacks. 

🔰 First of all, after you've uploaded your videos, you can try to improve your clickthrough rate even further if you use A/B testing. This is a feature that's provided by a lot of YouTube tools and you can test different thumbnail styles against each other and see which one performs better to even higher your click-through rate after you've already uploaded your video. 

🔰 The next step is to really study your audience retention graph. You can find this graph in every video analytics for every video uploaded by you. Look at how many people left the video in the beginning. Which video performs better, and which one is worse. 

What can you learn from that? 

Other points in your video are where a lot of people leave. What can you do better in your next videos if you use these two additional hacks: A/ B testing of your existing videos and looking at the retention graph to learn from it for new videos, you can improve your existing videos and your future videos as well. 

If you want to learn more about YouTube, and SEO, take a look at the other articles. Make sure that you use all of the tips that are given to you in this article. I hope I helped you with this article.