Sunshine, Daisies, Butter mellow… I’m sure by the fourth word, you would have started snoring with your mouth wide open.
Historically, humans have been fascinated by long reads. Be it novels, long columns in newspapers, or thousands of script pages.
In the wake of the digital and social media era, we’ve sadly evolved to become less attentive. We don’t want to sit in one place. We also can’t read anything more than two minutes of information. That’s all.
Two minutes is all that is there to you to grab the attention of a viewer. If it doesn’t impress them, they instantly scroll down to the next content.
The new Gen Z of ‘woke,’ meme crazy, intuitive yet attention-lacking people seek informative content.
Content that shortens heaps of data and text into easily understandable content. And what better way is there other than transforming such content into videos?
Once you know the purpose and importance of videos in the last few years, you know what you need to do. The next step is to get your videos to the audience.
When optimizing video content for SEO, we’ve to implement several techniques to rank better for video searches. This also includes pages containing videos.
On-page SEO plays a crucial role in search engine rankings. This long list of on-page SEO checklists will help you optimize your website and surpass your rankings’ competitors.
Today there is hardly any content without videos.
Over the years, Video SEO has gained importance because it is necessary to reach a wider audience and succeed in any online business.
Not convinced?
Here are some more reasons:
Think of videos as the icing on your cake. Without the icing, it feels like something is missing from the cake. Better the icing and frosting, more excellent the taste. The same goes for videos, good SEO, and great content.
Researching video keywords mean finding out the words or phrases that people use to find videos online. It works in the same way as search engine optimization - (SEO), whereby you include keywords into your videos to help people find your video easily.
YouTube is the biggest video search engine in the world. Millions of people log in every day to view video content on this social media platform that has a database of billions of videos.
The user statistics of Youtube are humongous.
So, how do these viewers find the video they are looking for?
The answer is by entering keywords.
Optimizing your videos with keywords is vital to help people find you.
The three most important places for adding the keywords are:
Now, we come to the most critical part, keyword research.
Here we will share three practical and easy-to-use ways for researching keywords for your YouTube videos.
The most helpful and most straightforward tool to use is YouTube itself.
Are you wondering how?
Have you ever noticed how YouTube offers suggestions for keywords when you start typing a keyword?
These are, typically, the queries that users search most.
This feature is known as Autocomplete.
What is so great about this feature is that it suggests keywords with the most search volumes. Hence, when you use the keywords suggested by Autocomplete, your chances of attracting more viewers are higher.
For example, suppose you enter the word ‘beautiful skin.’
Autocomplete will start showing you suggestions that have the keyword you entered.
They can be ‘home remedies for beautiful skin,’ ‘How to achieve beautiful skin in a week,’ and so on.
Choose the keywords that most suit your video, and voila!
Another good thing about the keywords suggested by YouTube Autocomplete is that they are usually long-tail keywords.
Meaning they contain five or more words. The competition for long-tail keywords is relatively low, which increases your odds of ranking higher.
Two of the most important and useful tools you can ever have for researching video keywords are KeywordTool.io and ViDIQ.
Let us find out how each tool can help you find the best keywords for your videos.
This tool scales up what YouTube Autocomplete does.
This tool makes it super easy to research keywords for your videos with good search volumes and helps you get noticed.
Do you want to know the best thing about KeywordTool.io?
It is free to use.
This is another exciting tool and one of its kind.
Why?
Because it is one of the very few tools available online that offers keyword research specifically for YouTube, and it is easy to use.
All you got to do is enter a keyword related to your video, and it will return a list of all related keywords.
It’s a freemium tool that gives a limited number of keywords for a free account.
Like KeywordTool.io, it also provides information like search volumes alongside each keyword.
One of the easiest methods of keyword researching for YouTube videos is checking out competitors’ videos.
How can it help you to research keywords for your YouTube videos?
Simple, follow the steps:
It is not easy to see the tags on just any videos on YouTube.
Optimize Your Videos with Proper Keywords to Get Increased Views
There are other ways of optimizing keywords for your YouTube videos. But the two mentioned above are the most practical and straightforward options.
People tend to get more involved with what they see than what they read. Hence, most businesses are focusing on video marketing as an essential business strategy.
The marketing videos posted on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can make or break your business to a considerable extent. YouTube, specifically, is the go-to social media channel for this purpose.
People watch more than one billion hours of video on YouTube daily. So, you can imagine how vast the reach of YouTube is around the world.
However, YouTube is a popular video platform and a search engine, just like Google. It is the second-largest search engine in the world, right after Google.
YouTube, just like Google, uses an algorithm that helps them in displaying the right kind of video for different types of audiences. This algorithm enables the audience to see the video content that they are interested in.
So, it’s vital to create exciting content that the audience loves and do not ignore when your videos are suggested.
If you wish to tap this vast audience base of YouTube, you need to understand what kind of videos you should be creating. You also need to know how the YouTube algorithm works to target your products' correct audience type. The only way to go about it is to do proper keyword research.
Simply put, to tap the target audience in the field of video marketing, you need to focus on video SEO and keyword research tools.
If you are looking for some keyword research tools that work for video marketing purposes, look no further, as the list is right here in this article.
Here are some of the best keyword research tools that you can use for your product video content:
When you are concerned about the SEO of your video content, you should ideally put keyword research as your priority. And what better place than YouTube itself?
When you enter a keyword to find a video on YouTube, it will suggest some related keywords, and these are the ones you have to note down. The reason is that these are the keywords people use when searching for videos that are relevant to your content.
Thus, using this tool will give you an idea about how the audience is searching for videos online to optimize your videos accordingly.
VidIQ is a free keyword research tool that is somewhat helpful. With this tool, you can access the search volume, keyword score, keyword stats, competition, and tags for the most popular videos.
Apart from the video tags, VidIQ also shows channel tags. This is very useful since your audience will get to know what your video channel covers. It helps you find a niche for your channel based on your video content.
When you upload a video, VidIQ also gives you these tag suggestions.
The Google Search Console is also a free tool that can help you in monitoring your video performance.
With this tool’s help, you can optimize your video content based on the keyword search on Google. You can also do so by submitting the video URLs to Google for crawling. This is an old keyword research tool, but it still works very well.
TubeBuddy is very similar to VidIQ in functionality. This tool is available as a free browser extension as well as in the app format.
This tool can help you find trending topics on YouTube. And, with these available topics, you can then create attractive titles and videos.
Some other features of this tool are:-
TubeBuddy also has free, and three paid versions that can help you generate organic traffic to your videos.
KeywordTool.io is a free keyword research tool. It takes the YouTube auto-suggested keywords and appends the query in various forms. The tool then segregates the keywords into four different formats - keywords suggestions, prepositions, questions, and hashtags.
Such suggestions can help you get at least a few hundred ideas on keywords. This tool is also available in a free and a paid version. But even the free version can suggest up to around 900 keywords at one go.
Using the multitude of features available with them, you can surely get what you need. Only the cost matters here.
Pay attention here. If you think that the right title only works for blogs and content, you’re wrong. You cannot, absolutely, not afford to mess up on the title and description.
Sit down, be patient and take your time in creating the right video title and description.
Do your keyword research and make sure you’re using those in line with what people are searching for. Ask yourself:
We cannot emphasize this more. The better your thumbnail, the more clickable it is. How many times have you clicked on a video just by looking at the thumbnail and not the title?
Here’s just an example.
When the video is indexed, the searcher will look at the video thumbnail image and decide whether to spend time watching the video. So, invest equal time in making the thumbnail image better and better.
Studies have shown that videos with good thumbnails have higher click-through rates. They also rank on the search engine better than the videos without thumbnails. So, quit wasting time and work on it already!
Ideally, you want to conduct keyword research just like in text content. This is because keywords are also crucial for SEO video strategy.
The standard SEO tools have a lot of competition. As far as videos are concerned, we haven’t come that far. Make use of this and ensure you utilize keyword research tools to help your videos rank better in search results.
There is a plethora of free and premium tools that you can use as per your requirements and budget.
Get to know what search volume is, research what your competitors are doing and build on your video content to rank it among the top.
Leverage your free options, use them to find keyword suggestions, and sort them based on their volume and potential for your business.
Video transcripts, aka subtitles or captions, are the lifeline to videos.
The text that pairs with your video are known as a video transcript. So many people put their heart and soul into making a video but leave out adding captions.
That’s where they go wrong.
Use transcripts in English for any video you make. You may have thousands of followers from across several countries.
YouTube Studio offers an advanced feature with the Subtitle button that allows you to create automatic subtitles.
If your content is in the native language, your viewers can’t follow it. This is where captions come as a huge advantage. Not just that, good captions can also significantly increase your rankings.
Let’s say you have a great video with the perfect headline, tags, and descriptions. Make sure you rank that first on the page.
There are multiple videos featured on the Google search. You want yours there. The two to three featured videos indicate how well it is in all aspects.
Also, ensure it has an enticing thumbnail.
When you’re scrolling through the page, you get the information you need in the first or second site/video. So, your video and site get engagements only if it is ranked there.
Try to focus on having one video per page so that you don’t confuse the audience. This helps in optimizing the video you have embedded inside the site and increases the viewers for it.
It doesn’t seem like much, but it is now a huge deal.
A few channels disable comments because they do not want to be disrespected or criticized. They play by the safe game, but they don’t realize that comments push the engagement metrics.
For example, see the image below. It doesn’t affect negatively as Apple has created brand value and has a huge customer base. But it won’t be the same for others.
The more the comments are getting registered, the more engagements your video is slowly getting.
Provide a healthy space for users and viewers to like, share and comment. Encourage them to do the same instead of subtly forcing. You could also like good comments and pin them for others to see.
Slowly, you will see positive changes in your video metrics.
After adding strong video titles and descriptions, don’t just stop there. You can also add your blog or website link below it.
If the video doesn’t impress them and they want some more information, they can click on the website link.
But ensure to add the relevant links to the (topic/concept discussed in) video.
Extra video views, extra website views! (It’s called utilizing everything to the maximum).
Additionally, add relevant videos below it. If there’s a part two to your video, add the ‘bitly’ link to it.
Don’t forget to do vice versa because the audience may stumble upon part two first if the algorithm picks up. And if the users don’t have time to search for the first part, they might skip it.
Oh, and we almost forgot the suggestion: Add links to your social media profiles, too.
Sometimes, the video embedded inside the blog or website might be at the bottom of the page. So much that the viewer automatically jumps to the next site without taking a look at the video.
This leads to low views and engagements for the video. Because of this, the ranking for your video can also significantly drop.
Thus it is essential to keep the video as the page’s focus. The pages on which you place the videos must be optimized, too.
For instance, here is Moz’s blog page focused on videos that offer exclusive SEO guides from Rand Fishkin.
Don’t embed the video on multiple sites. It doesn’t make sense and is illogical. Avoid that mistake if you want your video and your site ranked at the top.
Your idea might have been brilliant, and your research must have been splendid.
The content you have drafted might even run for pages. But we hate to break it to you that nobody has the time. The sad reality hits hard when you check the analytics.
People kiss goodbye and say ‘Sayonara’ to the video if they find the duration to be more than 10 minutes. (Even that is long. Yikes!) Make the video shorter. Preferably five to seven minutes.
Interestingly, the stats show the lengthier videos get less engagement than shorter ones. This is why the Tiktok and Instagram reels gained huge traction within a short span.
Unable to cut down?
Break it into shorter videos with different parts. This way, you get to keep the engagement steady and multiply the number of videos you can optimize. It’s a win-win situation.
We are saving the best for the last. You have the video content all drafted with proper tags, title, and description. And once the process of uploading is over, it is time to spread the word.
Share the video link using the option given to your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles. Do this at the right time when you know that the traffic is high. You could keep track of your audience’s engagement and observe the time they’re visiting your profile.
Once again, allow users to comment, like, and share. If you have a WhatsApp or Telegram broadcast, do share it there, too.
Encourage your employees, colleagues, friends, and family to help get the word out as well.
If your content is less likely to go viral, you could boost the video to a specific audience for a few days, depending on your budget. This would push your video to get the maximum number of views and rank among the top.
The term ‘Rich Snippets’ is used for describing the structured data markup that can be added to the existing HTML of your website or video.
Usually, when a user searches for a query, any search engine page comes up with three-pointers. They are:
A rich snippet adds some extra features to your website or video content. Information like star ratings and reviews etc., gets added that can be useful for navigating the search results.
Google has put coding samples with examples to show you how to add structured data for videos.
Adding rich snippets to your video will allow the search engines to understand the content of your video. It will then place the video on the search engine pages as per user requirements.
A video-rich snippet is a piece of information that comes in the form of a tiny video alongside the search results on Google. Video-rich snippets can have the usual URL, title, meta description, and video upload details. It also mentions the video duration within a thumbnail.
With such a rich snippet, a user can better gauge it is what they are looking for. This is why adding rich snippets with the search results can enhance the click-through-rate (CTR) for any video.
When you add video-rich snippets to your content, there is no guarantee that they will get displayed on the search engine pages.
Why?
This is because it is rather difficult for the search engines to go through the video’s content. However, when it ranks, the video-rich results look like this with mentioned key moments.
It can take several weeks for Google to crawl your video site and index the page on the search engine.
But it is imperative to mention that when the CTR is higher, the page ranking should also improve considerably. So, hold on to your horses.
No. Google takes a few weeks to crawl and index the video content for its search engine pages. Do not expect immediate improvement on the rankings for your video content.
But in the long run, it can start giving you better results by adding video-rich snippets to your video content.
Now you know how rich snippets can improve the ranking of your video on the search engine pages. You must now understand which format of rich snippets is the correct one for your video content.
There are lots of different formats available. Not all formats are suitable for all kinds of video content. The simplest way to decide is to break down the formats into various business types, such as:
If you are running an eCommerce site, you would ideally need to display the product details and the review stars in your video. Thus, the best format in this regard is to use the “product schema."
If you are running a general content site, there are a few choices available to you when it comes to snippets. You can choose the “HowTo schema” or the “FAQ schema.”
For example, this is what you see for the query “how to fly a drone?
You would want to showcase the reviewer’s name and the article’s ratings to show up on the search engine pages for review sites. The ideal format for this type of snippet is the “review schema.” You can also use the “product schema” with “review” as a section.
Similarly, for an event page, you can use the “events schema.” And, for the video-rich snippets, you can add the “VideoObject schema.”
You must be aware of how SEO works for a website or video content to improve the search engine page’s rankings.
You must also know the analytics role to help you decide the content's next topic for your website or video.
Did you know that tracking the social video metrics can give you valuable insights into your next video topic for video content?
It is crucial to track analytics wherever applicable to collect as much data as possible on your videos’ viewership. Get a clearer and better insight into what works and what doesn’t for your video content.
Here is a quick look at the different metrics you should track to measure your video content’s reach online.
Viewing the video is an important metric that can help you understand how successful your video content is.
Viewing count is a performance indicator. But several views are not enough information for analyzing the success of your video content. The reason is that you should analyze the views with the watch time of the video content.
Watch time is the estimated total time spent by a user when viewing your content. If the watch time is low, you need to create more engaging video content for your audience.
Of course, the number of users watching your video is an important metric to determine your video content’s success.
The number of audiences that are interested in your video content is also an important metric. It helps in deciding if your videos are reaching the right audience.
In YouTube Analytics, there is a section that showcases the audience demographics.
You also need to determine how your target audience is discovering your video content.
Is your target audience searching it via various search engine pages like Google, Bing, or searching on YouTube?
You can determine this by checking the playback locations page. When you have clarity on where most of the audience is coming from, you will optimize your videos accordingly.
It is crucial to monitor the number of views of your video content regularly. It will also help you in evaluating the quality of your content.
By checking the audience retention page, you will clearly understand how long you can engage the audience with the video and when they left. This will also show you which part of the videos are more popular with your audience.
If you find your videos are above or below the average retention time, you can work on optimizing them to garner audience attention.
Check out the unique number of viewers with the rate of subscribers. This will help you in determining whether there is any fluctuation in the subscriber base for your videos.
It gives a clearer picture of your audience.
The more subscribers to your channel, the more people will browse through your channel’s video content. Thus, more is the exposure for your brand and product in the long run.
Being popular on social media platforms can give your videos a boost in every way. Social media holds a key role in promoting videos and products to the audience around the world.
So, it is a smart move to check out who is sharing your videos and how. In YouTube analytics, you can check the number of shares that your videos have received over a given period and on which social media platforms.
When you can track how your videos are shared, you can incorporate efficient social media strategies. They will help you in boosting social media shares and enhance the traffic on your videos.
Monitor the comments received on your video channel
Comments left on the videos by the users are a way of measuring audience engagement.
Use this section to interact with your audience and highlight your products. This is also a great way to showcase your brand as an affordable and approachable one.
It is important to also measure the video performance metrics with the lifetime value of the video content.
Once you have all the other metrics info, it will be easy for you to create a viewership trajectory.
Next, you can work out how many conversions your videos have generated and the overall value of your product’s video. If the value is high, you can use it to reach out to more audiences.
The videos that you share online are they generating leads for your business?
Depending on the opportunities available in your videos, leads can get converted to earn revenue for the company.
This is a rather tricky metrics to track, but Google Analytics can help you with it.
You can enhance the conversion rate to a considerable extent when-
Video contents are great opportunities that you can tap for your business and convert leads for revenue generation.
You can also measure your videos' impact on your users’ minds and lives with the feedback received.
You can track the feedback by checking how the viewers react to your videos and whether they are commenting on them. If they are commenting on your videos, you can also measure the impact that these videos have on them by the comments they write.
Feedback is more of qualitative nature and hence cannot be improved with time. But you can always use the feedback to create more video content in the future that can better impact the right kind of audiences.
Various metrics can help you in measuring the success of the videos that you post online.
But the metrics are not the only ones that can measure the success of the videos. You must pay attention to all the data that you collect for your metrics analysis.
However, do not rush to any conclusion with the data. Instead, check what things changed and why. Are they for overall betterment or worse? And don’t forget to plan further down the line.
You should always make it a point to improve the metrics score with each new video posting. Only then will you gain a solid online presence that will provide you with a profitable business soon.
Are you looking to optimize your video for search rankings? Drop your details here to get started.
Mariyah is an Internet marketing professional and she has more than 7 years of expertise in digital advertising, SEO & Marketing analytics. She holds a Master's degree from Kent State University in Business Management Technology.
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Mariyah is an Internet marketing professional and she has more than 7 years of expertise in digital advertising, SEO & Marketing analytics. She holds a Master's degree from Kent State University in Business Management Technology.
Best Wordpress SEO Plugins And Benefits
Measure The Performance Of Your SEO
Keyword Research Mistakes In SEO
Bad SEO On Business Reputation
Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost SEO
Voice Search Optimization Tips
Artificial Intelligence And SEO
All In One SEO Plugin Features
Web Design Mistakes That Affect SEO
SEO Before After Website Launch
How To Get Google Ads Certifications
SEO Friendly Website Design Strategies
How To Get Google Analytics Certification