Maximize your results on YouTube

In a broad sense, you want your strategy to work with “The Algorithm” and not fight against it.

“Golden rule of attention” YouTube and most online platforms want to keep visitors' attention for as long as possible.

Or in other words…. Make engaging content that keeps viewers engaged and aligns with what they are looking for.  Let’s take a look at some best practices!

First impressions are everything and YouTube is no different.  Give your videos the best chance of being clicked on.

• Video Titles: The title should tell your audience what your video is about and why they should watch it.  Since you’re selling your video to the audience feel free to use impactful powerful language that will grab their attention.  Also be sure to try and use relevant keywords, which we will cover in this blog.

• Terrific Thumbnails: Thumbnail images are a close second to titles when it comes to improving your results on YouTube.  They have already found your video in search results, but this is why they will click on your video over your competitors.  This should be visually attention grabbing and can even include a small amount of text such as “AVOID this failure…” or “We did what???”  BONUS: Much like Facebook and Instagram, images with faces/people tend to be the most appealing to humans!

• Video Description: Here’s your chance to get into more detail about what your video is about.  YouTube will show the viewer the first 125 characters.  The viewer must click show more to reveal the rest of your description, so front load the most important aspects of your description.  Aim for about 250 characters in total.  Aim to write your description geared more towards your target audience rather than optimizing for keywords and the algorithm.  Lastly, this is where you can add in any hyperlinks, resources or supporting information that you might reference in the video.

Behind the Scenes

• Keywords open the door:  Using a Keyword tool is very helpful in understanding which keywords rank the best with your chosen audience and how competitive that keyword is.  The more popular the keyword is, the harder it will be to stand out amongst your competitors.  Try KeywordTool.io or SEMrush to start learning about the keywords that might work for your business.  BONUS: Keywords within your niche are a great place to come up with fresh ideas for future content that people are looking for!

• Tags:  You can add these to your video during the YouTube upload process which are hidden to the viewer or you can make them visible by putting them in the description.  Try to match these up with your description and overall keyword strategy.  There is much debate around how much the algorithm uses these tags, so give it a try but don’t sweat it too much.

• Long-form:  YouTube is the ideal space for long form video content, making it ideal for nuanced information and education.  Users are much more likely to watch a longer video on YouTube than they are on social media or a website.  Remember the “Golden rule of attention”  this certainly applies to long-form content because YouTube can serve up more ads with longer videos.  Certainly prioritize making quality content that holds people's attention.  Don’t just slow down your video and stretch it out to make it longer than needed, viewers will just stop watching anyways.

• Cultivate comments:  Engagement in the comments section tells “The algorithm” that people find the video to be relevant.  Asking the audience for their feedback is helpful and be sure to respond to them in the comment section too!  You can also pin comments to the top of the video to help cultivate engagement. Sometimes comments can even provide insights and inspiration for future videos that you can create.

• Curate your channel:  There’s more to setting up your channel than just uploading videos. Branding your channel with a banner image and featured video is a great start. A featured video automatically plays when a non-subcriber visits your channel.  Using playlists is a great way to categorize videos and help viewers find something relevant to watch.  BONUS: Playlists automatically play from one video to another, keeping viewers on your channel and helping your SEO.

• Captivating captions:  Captions are important and easily overlooked.  They provide info for YouTube SEO and makes your content more user friendly for people watching on smartphones with the sound turned off.  

• Chapters:  Adding chapters to the video is another valuable piece of information for visibility on google search and SEO.  It also makes your videos more user friendly to navigate.

New features

• Shorts: One of the recent additions to YouTube is #shorts. In an effort to chase the popularity of TikTok, Youtube created this bite sized video optimized for smartphone users. As with most social media platforms, you get extra visibility when using the newest features. This is a great place for your catchy clips to be featured and grow your subscriber audience.

  • 60 seconds or less

  • Vertical video format (1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels high)

  • Use #shorts in the video description

  • You can also record shorts directly in the Youtube App

  • You can have all your shorts on your YouTube Channel, not just in the shorts section of the app

• User Handles: This is the latest addition to YouTube. You might have even recieved an email about it from YouTube, asking you to secure your @handle. In a nutshell, this allows you to tag other users on YouTube. This feature makes it easier to collaborate with others and promote sharing. For a full breakdown, check out this blog written by YouTube: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/introducing-handles-a-new-way-to-identify-your-youtube-channel/

*Don’t forget, YouTube videos are often included in Google search results and is much easier for your video to get visiblility than hoping people find your website on the third page of search results.