Are you utilizing YouTube as one of your SEO tools, if so, are you doing everything right to reach your target audience? This blog post covers the main elements that you should focus on when dealing with YouTube SEO.
Main Factors That Affect Video Rankings:
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Views and watch time
The total number of views and how much of it people watch is both correlated and causes better rankings. If your video is competing with another video and you have more views with a higher average watch time per view, you will rank higher that your competitors.
You need to have more people watching a greater part of your video.
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Video Length
According to research, YouTube videos that are about 10 to 16 minutes long tend to rank better, videos that are four to six minutes long get the most number of views, and videos that are shorter than two minutes get the most number of dislikes.
The length of your video ultimately depends on what you are optimizing for. But our video marketing team at Maxeemize recommends keeping informational videos between 10 and 16 minutes long, and keeping product promotional videos anywhere from four to six minutes long, to get the as many views as possible.
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Short titles
Another important element of a good ranking Youtube video is having a title that is less than 50 characters. But it is also important to keep in mind that this short title has to have a keyword-rich description that’s about 200 to 350 words long.
This is normally the best practice when trying to figure out how long your title and description should be. Going a little over will not affect your video’s ranking too much, but staying around that area will help you perform best.
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Keywords to match search queries
Matching specific keywords is just as important on YouTube than it is on Google search. Exact match keywords, that precisely matches your video’s title, will tend to outperform partial matching marginally, and partial matching typically outperforms some or no match by a significant amount.
This means, if you are trying to rank higher for the best sushi in Miami, your video “Best Sushi in Miami” is going to rank much higher than videos like “Good Japanese Food in Miami” or “Best Sushi in Florida.” Make sure you describe your video, name your video in a way that people are searching.
When deciding what keywords to use, you can utilize data results from Google keyword searches, especially if videos show up on top of Google searches, which almost certainly means that there is a lot of demand for those keywords on YouTube as well.
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Tags
Keyword tags affect video rankings minimally, but they matter a lot when it comes to recommended videos. These are the videos that show up on the right side of the video player on YouTube when using a desktop computer and below, if you’re using a mobile device.
Recommended videos typically automatically play next when you keep watching a video, which can help you earn more views to boost your rankings. The key is using two or three-word phrase tags and having about 30 to 40 unique tags.
So for your “Best Sushi in Miami” video, make sure you add tags using words that people are probably using when searching for similar videos, like sushi, Japanese food, sashimi, asian food Miami and 30 other tags, for you show up as a recommended video for other similar videos.
At Maxeemize, we ensure that your video marketing and YouTube SEO investments are maximized for better ROI. We have the expertise, knowledge, experience, as well as creativity to deliver unique solutions that produce better results for your digital marketing strategy! Contact Us for a free video marketing and YouTube SEO consultation.
