YouTube SEO Best Practices

YouTube Assessment

Conduct your Keyword research first as you will need you important keywords for this process. Keywords are valuable in the description and title of each video.
Build a list - look in your YouTube Studio Library to see all your videos. List should include:
1. Title
2. 'share link of the video
3. Runtime
4. Notes
Assess your Videos
1. Meta Data (title and description)
  1. Look at the title, description, and category tags
    1. Mark each video that has a subpar title or description
    2. Does each description have a link that goes somewhere back to your website?
2. Look at the thumbnails of each video, is the image compelling?
3. Check the video for transcripts (the CC) button - make note of videos missing transcripts
4. Assess the most successful videos.
  1. Is there anything valuable that you can learn from these successful videos and apply to the others?
5. Look for videos that are a series: part 1, part 2, etc
  1. These videos are perfect to refer to each other on an end screen so people can start the 'part two' video by clicking the card at the end of the 'part one' video
Go through your list and write out new titles and descriptions - make sure you make use of the keyword research you conducted earlier.
1. Descriptions should be keyword rich (that is words that are frequently searched that would be relevant for this video) and also include a website URL to a relevant page providing more information after someone views this video.

YouTube SEO Procedure

Methodically update the Meta Data: title, description, and categories.
Update the thumbnail for videos that are in need. You may need to upload an image if you want to overlay text.
Update Language settings
Transcriptions - making transcriptions missing on an existing video could be more difficult.
1. YouTube will automatically add transcriptions to new videos that are under 5 minutes.
2. If your older video is under 5 minutes, YouTube will add a transcription after you properly set the language.
3. If YouTube does not add a transcription by the next day, you may need to create a transcription manually, which is beyond the scope of this article.

YouTube Remix

While looking through and watching some of your videos, you might notice interesting 10 to 15 second snippets that you can 'recycle' and convert into a YouTube short. YouTube shorts are a great way to get a surge of views with a link to the main video. These are not sustaining, long term, but helpful epecially if it is highly entertaining content.

On the YouTube app, use the remix feature to extract a short snippet and submit as a short.

References:

Success in Video Content

SEO

SEO: Keyword Research

https://www.reddit.com/r/digital_marketing/comments/1nws0g9/went_from_300_views_to_50k_by_fixing_these_5/

https://backlinko.com/how-to-rank-youtube-videos

https://backlinko.com/hub/youtube/youtube-keyword-research

External Article: YouTube Remix Feature

YouTube SEO Best Practices

YouTube Assessment

Conduct your Keyword research first as you will need you important keywords for this process. Keywords are valuable in the description and title of each video.
Build a list - look in your YouTube Studio Library to see all your videos. List should include:
1. Title
2. 'share link of the video
3. Runtime
4. Notes
Assess your Videos
1. Meta Data (title and description)
  1. Look at the title, description, and category tags
    1. Mark each video that has a subpar title or description
    2. Does each description have a link that goes somewhere back to your website?
2. Look at the thumbnails of each video, is the image compelling?
3. Check the video for transcripts (the CC) button - make note of videos missing transcripts
4. Assess the most successful videos.
  1. Is there anything valuable that you can learn from these successful videos and apply to the others?
5. Look for videos that are a series: part 1, part 2, etc
  1. These videos are perfect to refer to each other on an end screen so people can start the 'part two' video by clicking the card at the end of the 'part one' video
Go through your list and write out new titles and descriptions - make sure you make use of the keyword research you conducted earlier.
1. Descriptions should be keyword rich (that is words that are frequently searched that would be relevant for this video) and also include a website URL to a relevant page providing more information after someone views this video.

YouTube SEO Procedure

Methodically update the Meta Data: title, description, and categories.
Update the thumbnail for videos that are in need. You may need to upload an image if you want to overlay text.
Update Language settings
Transcriptions - making transcriptions missing on an existing video could be more difficult.
1. YouTube will automatically add transcriptions to new videos that are under 5 minutes.
2. If your older video is under 5 minutes, YouTube will add a transcription after you properly set the language.
3. If YouTube does not add a transcription by the next day, you may need to create a transcription manually, which is beyond the scope of this article.