What is the best way to get your YouTube Video to rank? There are a thousand sites that are out there to try and convince you there is an exact science to this, but there is only one way to truly make your video rank, which is to pay for it…Which we don’t want to do, so here are a few quick and easy optimizations to give your video the best shot at ranking on YouTube
1) Do your keyword research for your video title
- Don’t just title your video something random, make sure you use relevant keywords to that are about the video
- Check your keyword tool to make sure that the keywords in your title will generate traffic
i. A great video is a great video, but is it really that great if no one can find it?
- Make sure you check-out the autocomplete function for YouTube video search for video title ideas
i. This is the easiest way to do keyword research for your video, just start typing in adjectives about your video and let the autocomplete function guide you
- When creating the title, add keywords to the front of the title as they are deemed more important by the engines
- Keep your title under 60 characters, titles are truncated around this number
2) Add a transcript to your video
- Always add a transcript to your video for closed captioning purposes
i. Transcripts are crawlable by the search engines and therefore with transcripts for the videos, there is more content on the page/channel
ii. The link contains the specific guidelines for how to format your videos transcript (http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=166810)
3) Only use the top ten most important tags for your videos and keep under 120 characters
- Don’t spam your tags with irrelevant keywords, tags should be what your video is about
- Match keywords in your title and relate to the video content
- Include opportunities to add in keywords that are not in your video title or description
- Don’t use stop words (or, and, the, etc.) they are a waste of character space
4) Use your main keywords from your video’s title in your description
- A video’s description should contain your main keyword more than once and should use related keywords while avoiding keyword stuffing
- The Description should be kept under 1000 Characters
Other things to take into consideration for helping your videos rank:
- The more views the video has, the better opportunity it has to rank for searches
- Promote your video to your consumers, if your video is good, they should want to see it
- The more activity for your video (comments, postings, likes, etc.) the more likely your video is to rank for keyword searches
- Encourage viewers to comment on your video or spark conversations within the comments section
With a little encouragement from your users to interact with your videos, some simple optimizations, and keyword research from you, your video should be ranking in no time!
