After Google, YouTube is the second most powerful search engine in the world. Optimising your videos is therefore essential to help viewers find your content and keep them engaged. Here’s our quick guide to help you get the best out of the content you create.
1. Thumbnails, titles and descriptions
To make your videos easier to find and more enticing for viewers to click into try creating attractive and accurate thumbnails, titles and descriptions. This information will not only help YouTube’s systems recommend your videos, but also give viewers a sense of what they are about and why they should watch it.
Thumbnail Images
This is the first thing people will see of any video you upload. Be sure that the thumbnail shows a potential viewer what your video is about and that the image is sharp and not blurry. This image will appear in a variety of sizes, so ensure it is likely to capture attention and encourage people to click on it to watch it.
Video title
When uploading a new video to Youtube you should add keywords into the title of your video. Keywords help YouTube understand the type of content you produce and who your target audience is, so when doing this it’s important to think about how people will find your video, what they may type into the search bar to find you.
Top tip: The more general you are, the less likely your video will rise to the top but targeted videos with specific keywords will be easier to find.
The best way to find keywords for your video is to do a quick search on YouTube and look at the suggested words in the drop-down menu. These are search terms or topics that have been searched for.
Try drill down your title to be specific, however, don’t worry too much about them being short and concise and avoiding the use of dates as this can make your video appear outdated quickly.
Lastly, make sure your video file name matches or is similar to your video title.
Descriptions
Make sure to add a description to every video you upload as this is a great opportunity for SEO. This description should be concise, being no longer than 200 words and act like a blurb for your video content subject.
This is a great place to include any links that may be of interest too, as well as hashtags to help people find your content.
2.Tags
Tags are another powerful tool that help people discover your content. Tags should accurately reflect what people can find in your video - the more relevant the better.
3. Subtitles
Add subtitles to all the videos you upload. This not only helps with accessibility but can additionally improve your watch time & engagement. Subtitles can also improve your SEO ranking which helps people find the content you upload to your channel.
By implementing just a few of these things you will see better engagement on your YouTube videos. If you would like to find out more or speak to one of our knowhow experts, get in touch today.