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How to get your Videos ranking high on YouTube

So, you have created an awesome video, maybe spend days in pre and post production, editing it, adding music, choosing a filter or even experimented with some special effects to make it a really special piece of content.

But you actually want people to find it and not be reliant on patient viewers who click through pages and pages of content. It is tempting to put in the effort for the video but leave all the settings be. Believe us, this is the completely wrong direction. Take an active approach and make sure that you are being searched for and found. We have rounded up the essential steps for you to get ranking on YouTube.

The keyword

You have now uploaded your video to YouTube and as always, you are asked to fill out the title, description and tags/keywords. This can be quickly done without much thought. But if you want your videos to rank high in the YouTube and even Google search results, take your time to really optimize them. After all, your fantastic content deserves to be seen.

Before you start typing away, consider what your focus keywords and phrases will be. Once you have an idea, take a look at the competition surrounding these keywords. This can easily be done by using the Adwords Keyword Planner by Google or some of the various free tools and allows you to see the popularity and competition you will be faced with.

Short or long?

There are two basic categories of keywords, the first being short tail and the second being long tail keywords. It might be tempting to just opt for the short tail version. But you will find that short keywords usually have quite a bit of competition. Terms like ‘kitchen hacks’ or ‘make-up tutorial’ are very popular. Long tail keywords can be a good option if your short versions are facing a lot of competition. They allow you to be more specific whilst still using the short, more catchy version in it. This could be ‘kitchen hacks for busy mums’ or ‘kitchen hacks for cooking pasta’. These terms might be searched less often, but they will also have less competition and tell the viewer more about the content and give it a niche.

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Once you have decided on your perfect keyword for YouTube, search it on Google to see if any videos come up on the first page in the search results. If so, your chances to rank high in search results on YouTube and Google are much higher.

If you want to go into even more details on YouTube itself, have a look what your research into these two questions brings and if it is what you are looking for in terms of exposure and popularity.

  1. Are videos with this keyword showing ads? This shows that the search is popular enough to pay for.
  2. Do the top videos have a lot of views? This means that keyword has a high search volume.
Your Title

You have sorted out your keywords and are now moving on to selecting a catchy title for your video. The content of your video should determine your title, it should be related and give an idea of what the content is about. It is important to have your keywords in the first portion of the title. Sometimes it is very easy to do so. If you are uploading a video on how to make the perfect poached egg, ‘How to’ would naturally fall into the beginning as well as being a much searched for keyword. But depending on your keywords this can be a little bit more complicated. Play around and see what works.

Be sure to keep your video titles short and concise. You do not have to include the whole video content in the title, a short teaser that will get viewers to watch your content works best. Everything else belongs in the description box.

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Description

Which brings us straight to the next section. The description box. People may be tempted to overlook it and just not write anything or only a few words. But as search engines can’t actually learn anything about the content from imagery, the description it’s where it’s at. It is worth including long tail keywords in your text, giving a brief overview of what the video is about, some background information on it and to link to sources mentioned as well as any social media pages.

In the beginning, feel free to go to town and write in detail. You may wonder why? Surely people won’t read it anyway? Maybe, but longer descriptions can be beneficial for your video, as it gives more information to YouTube and the viewers and this can affect your ranking positively. Of course, don’t write three paragraphs if there isn’t much to say. Just don’t feel like you need to keep it extremely short.

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If you are struggling with your keywords and how to set up titles and descriptions, drop us a message!