How to Improve YouTube SEO Performance

Don’t think that search engine optimisation is only effective for content writing. This crucial digital marketing technique is also incredible for reaching your ideal audience through YouTube videos. 

As the video-sharing giant is essentially a massive search engine, many principles of SEO can be applied to this platform as well. From understanding the needs of your channel’s audience to levelling up your descriptions with razor-sharp keywords, it’s possible to drive more traffic to your content.

For brands looking to quickly improve their YouTube channel’s performance, the following methods ensure your optimised videos attract their intended audience and push your business to new heights.

Understand Your Audience

There are plenty of technical aspects of search engine optimisation you can use, but most importantly, you have to cater to what your target market wants to see.

By researching their pain points and tailoring your content strategy to address these needs, you can attract a highly relevant audience that will keep clicking on your videos. But how do you know what they want to watch? 

It’s always a good idea to scope out your rivals to see whether their YouTube channels are producing great numbers. Meanwhile, start a conversation on social media to hear directly from your fans about what they want to see.

Conduct Detailed Keyword Research

Keywords are crucial to a YouTube SEO campaign’s performance. Why? Because if you don’t know which terms your ideal audience uses to search, you face an uphill battle to gain their viewership.

There are countless places to conduct keyword research, but a good place to start is the YouTube search bar. Type in a relevant video topic to discover keyword-driven results that will inform your own content strategy.

Also, dive into your YouTube analytics to see what terms your audience uses to discover your videos. Here, you’ll find effective keywords to add to your titles and descriptions to capture more attention.

Keyword-Driven Titles and Descriptions

Following in-depth keyword research, you must use these terms in your video titles and descriptions to increase your rankings. However, don’t simply add as many keywords as possible, hoping to game the system.

In fact, YouTube might punish you for using underhanded tactics, as the platform has rigorous methods for detecting clickbait and misleading content. Instead, craft short, keyword-driven titles and descriptions that tell a story and deliver on its claims.

With the right approach, you can capture the attention of YouTube’s search algorithm while elevating your channel’s click-through rate (CTR).

Transcribe and Caption Your Content

One of the most underrated YouTube SEO techniques is transcribing and captioning your videos. As YouTube reads and analyses this text-based information, it can identify keywords that ensure your content reaches the right people.

By uploading a comprehensive SRT file to YouTube, you give your videos the best chance of attracting a relevant audience. Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that not everyone in your core target market will speak English as their first language. 

However, detailed transcriptions and captions mean that everyone can consume your content. Plus, the performance of your YouTube search engine optimisation will only improve alongside a broader viewer base.

Spread the Word on Social Media

Growing your audience on YouTube using SEO techniques is a great idea. However, you can speed up the process by constantly cross-promoting fresh content across the rest of your social media channels.

Once you’ve uploaded a new YouTube video, share an attention-grabbing post on your Facebook, Instagram and TikTok profiles. This ensures your existing audience knows that there’s new video content to watch while also convincing them to become a channel subscriber.

As this step is bound to increase your view count and social shares, your videos will reach an expanding audience, as more people get to know your brand and the value it offers.

Maximise Reach with Hashtags

You likely already know the importance of hashtags on other social media platforms, but these clickable snippets also serve a vital role on YouTube. 

This is because hashtags allow users to find related content easily, as your content appears right alongside related videos that attract a similar audience. On YouTube, hashtags are shown above your video title and within the description, while this feature helps the algorithm interpret your video’s topic.

As uploaders can use up to 15 hashtags per video, adding these to your content ensures your rankings improve, plus you invite comparable users to discover your channel.

Use Eye-Catching Thumbnails

Your video’s thumbnail design is perhaps one of the most powerful factors for getting people to click on your videos. Considering how YouTube presents dozens of videos on every user’s homepage, hitting the mark with a thumbnail ensures you stand out.

So what should these thumbnails look like? Naturally, it depends on your existing brand image and channel audience. With a unique colour combination or fascinating use of text and photography, you can drive more viewers to your content.

Meanwhile, themed thumbnails are a great way to ensure your fans instantly recognise your uploads or even help differentiate between different video series you create on your channel.

Review Your Analytics

Understanding YouTube analytics gives you a powerful solution to increase rankings and grow your channel audience. While there are numerous metrics to consider, pay close attention to watch time. 

This highlights how long people spend consuming your content, with channels featuring high watch time proving more engaging than others. Audience retention is another informative metric, as it showcases the percentage of viewers that watch and leave your content at a specific moment.

By delving into your YouTube analytics, you see how you measure up against specific benchmarks. Plus, this invaluable data highlights the success of your content while showing where you need to improve.

Optimised Videos Grow Your Channel

As the second-most visited website on the entire internet, with about 2.1 billion global users, YouTube is incredible for enhancing your brand’s reach. However, a first-class agency ensures your optimised video content is bound for success.

The SEO specialists at First Page Digital are unmatched when it comes to delivering search engine optimisation strategies that achieve outstanding results. With our team working alongside trendsetting companies across virtually every industry, our work speaks for itself.

Ready to learn more? Connect with our experts today to find out how we’ll tailor a fresh YouTube SEO strategy that appeals to your audience and boosts your brand’s reach.