How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for SEO

Would you like to know how to optimize YouTube videos for SEO?

Let me be very straightforward and say that this is a really, really good strategy. It’s what I’ve been using for many years now—and today, I’m going to teach it to you.

The perfect SEO strategy for YouTube

But before I teach you exactly what to do, let me share with you an interesting tidbit of information:

I actually figured out this SEO strategy by accident.

A good many years ago, I used to own a web design company. After a while, I decided to offer search engine optimization (SEO) for those websites. To put it simply, my SEO strategies back then worked.

To get websites to rank on Google, we would create a page containing a how-to video. The video itself is uploaded on YouTube and we would display that on the page along with a formatted transcription of the video.

Additionally, we would create an infographic, upload it on Pinterest, and display it on the web page, as well.

To top it all off, we would do different types of link building from blogs and other reliable websites. We did article marketing and created content that would link back to the page using relevant keywords. 

Long story short, we did a lot of things just to get these webpages to rank. And while it produced great results, I made an interesting discovery.

The how-to video displayed on the page would get 50 times more traffic and views than the entire SEO page that was ranking on top of Google.

Amazing, isn’t it?

How to optimize videos for SEO

When I saw what happened, it switched something in my brain. And being the master of efficiency that I am, I decided to shift my focus into creating that specific type of YouTube video. I stopped jumping through all the extra hoops that came with creating these elaborate webpages.

In a nutshell, this strategy required less effort and time but produced way better results.

To execute this YouTube SEO strategy, follow these tips.

1. Improve the title.

I’m a big believer in doing keyword research before filming a video. But what if you already have a bunch of filmed content before learning these tips?

At this point, the only thing that you can do that will have any impact is to improve the title. A better title has the potential to make your video perform better.

2. Find the questions your target viewers are asking.

Once you have optimized the titles on your existing videos, it’s time to adopt a new strategy. Before filming content, perform keyword research and find the exact questions that your target viewers are asking. 

This is the best way to get your videos to rank on YouTube on day 1. Once you find them, make one of these questions the title of your video and work from there.

This way, you’re not blindly creating content. Instead, you know exactly what pieces of information your audience is looking for.

Believe it or not, this is the big secret that everyone is missing. Do keyword research before filming. It’s simple, but trust me, it’s very effective.

3. Avoid high-competition phrases.

Now, here’s a common beginner mistake: going after very competitive phrases.

If you’re doing keyword research first but are not seeing results, you need to go after the very, very specific questions that people are asking. For a more detailed explanation of how to find the right questions, check out my video discussing the Tree Analogy SEO Strategy.

This video will teach you how to do keyword research the right way. Right now, people from all over the world are asking questions YOU have the answer for. By finding the right questions and using them as video titles, these people will find you. They will turn to you (and not somebody else!) to get the info they’re looking for.

4. What about other optimization methods?

After optimizing the title of your video, you might be thinking, “What about the video description and keyword tags?”

Well, here’s the awesome reality: YouTube does this all automatically.

I know many of you like to tinker with keyword tags, but YouTube says that they ignore that now. Instead of relying on these tags, YouTube automatically transcribes your video.

By taking note of what you actually talk about in your content, YouTube determines what your video is truly about. So really, you just have to make sure that your title matches the content well. 

5. Uploading video content without an existing following: what to do?

I have a lot of clients that come to me with this question. They say, “I’ve got thousands of videos archived. I’ve got this whole external hard drive full of videos. How can we put this content out there and make millions?”

The sad reality is if you don’t do keyword research first, no one’s going to see your video once you post it on YouTube—unless you already have a tribe or following.

But at the end of the day, you still have a bunch of valuable content. You can try to package it into a course and sell it, or maybe create some sort of a series that is members-only—anything that will let you earn from those videos and build your own tribe.

As a final note…

Let me end this article with a perfect example.

Suppose I made a video teaching you about a sore throat remedy. I could post this video on YouTube and give it a generic title, like “Nate’s Sore Throat Remedy.”

And as you may have already guessed, that video will probably sit there and get zero views.

But if I did keyword research first and find a really specific question that people are asking—like “How to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics,” for example—that query is so specific that it’s a lot more likely to attract traffic.

But here’s the kicker:

This is actually a real example. I did this with a client of mine!

Notice how the keyword we used ticked all the right boxes:

• It is very specific (nine words long).
• It has a consistent search volume every month.
• It’s got low competition.

We filmed a video answering the question and posted that on YouTube. And yep, it’s still getting traffic to this day.

That’s the secret: do keyword research first, find the right questions, and then film your videos with the goal of answering those specific queries.

Simple, but effective.