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How to do YouTube SEO and optimize your YouTube Videos to rank #1 and grow your channel rankings, views, subscribers and engagement? In the 17th episode of Crawling Mondays I go through the main tools to optimize your videos in YouTube for better search performance.

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Video Transcription

What tools can you use to optimize your YouTube channels and videos to perform better to identify which are the queries, which are the topics that YouTube audience are searching for and how you can optimize your videos to rank well for them as you do with Google search results?

Well, this was the question, the thoughts that I have when I started this YouTube channel at the beginning of the year. I could easily see that many of the SEO tools that I was already using for my own SEO processes didn’t offer any YouTube related functionality. So, in today’s episode, I am going to show which are the tools that I am using to optimize these channels and hopefully you will find them useful as well. Let’s take a look.

So, as with optimization process you want to start by understanding how your audience searches. Then, I found out that although many of the keyword tools that I use already didn’t provide support for YouTube. There was one that did [inaudible 00:01:13] So, for example, if I am going to do or develop videos for SEO, I wanted to take a look at how people were searching for SEO related topics over YouTube. So, you just got to the keyword explorer functionality and select YouTube here, the country for which I was trying to understand the search behavior for over YouTube, and I obtained the metrics over here as if I was researching for Google. So, those terms that have the same terms, the questions, newly discovered term, the phrase match…

So, I want to take a look at all the keyword ideas here to identify potential opportunities here. So, I can see a few of them that might not been as solely as quite related, right? Then, I see others that yes, they definitely are at SEO, for example here, SEO tutorial 2018 for example. We can see with all the type of terms that I had already added here like, keto recipes here: diet recipes, easy, dessert, instant, instant pot keto recipe, keto dinner recipes, vegan keto recipes, vegetarian best keto recipes. I see so many of them that will definitely, if I were making keto friendly recipes for my channel for example, if I had a recipe channel, this is the type of research that I will be doing. We can see here the search volume.

There is also another keyword tool that you may also be using already, which is KeywordTool.io, that provides also keyword metrics, keyword ideas, normally for Google, but also for YouTube, Bing, Amazon, Ebay, the Play Store, Instagram, Twitter even- It allows you to segment between the keyword suggestions again, the questions, the propositions, and even the hashtags that you can use and will be highlighted above your title of your YouTube. So, this might be really a good idea. This not the tool, as you can see here, that I am using at the moment because I use manual keyword tools already for my SEO processes.

Now, I want to show you the keyword research functionality that two of the most popular video optimization for YouTube tools provide. These are video marketing tools [inaudible 00:03:29] on YouTube, vidIQ, and TubeBuddy, that besides providing keyword research functionality for YouTube, they provide a wealth of all the features that we are going got take a look at a little bit later on. Their keyword functionalities and features are great because they don’t only show the suggestions for any queries that you include in their platform as vidIQ provides here. For example, for SEO, or for digital nomads, it will provide me all the related terms, search volume, the competition score, but they will also, both of them as you can see here this screen shot, integrate within your own YouTube channel. You will need to use direct extensions that- the browser extensions actually.

For example here, I have come to this video and you will see that I have all of this additional options, and features, and panels here. This is actually from TubeBuddy. So, I can go keyword explorer functionality, and I will add here the term for which I want to rank for with this video. So, it tells me that the overall score to rank for this term is not necessarily so exciting. All the ideas to rank for, for example, for this particular terms, the most used text for these terms- All the results, we chart- All the videos that are already ranking well for these particular terms and how they are optimizing for this term within the titles and descriptions, et cetera.

So, it’s great. I love it because it gives me so much idea, but it’s the wording that I should use for my titles, et cetera. So, there is no shortage of that to optimize my videos for- and in this all the case as you can see, we can see the integration of vidIQ, what the recommended stats again. So, more keyword data that I can integrate in different ways to optimize my YouTube channel. So, as you can see with your current tools and also what new complete YouTube tools. We have really good keyword data here.

Another fundamental analysis to do besides understanding how your audience searches, is to identify your industry top competitors. The top players. They might not necessarily be your current competitors because as me, right, if you’re just starting you will be well behind. But it will be great to have them as a reference to understand we chart their top videos, we chart those that generate more engagement, more views, who have more subscriptions, right? At the end of the day you want to understand what has worked well in the past and what might work well for you in the future, too. Right? To identify opportunities, to identify trends, to identify gaps also.

There are a couple of tools that actually are really, really useful for this. One of them is [inaudible 00:06:20] Influencer and the other one is Social Blade. Right? So, for example here, we can see the analysis that they provide for a few profiles that are very active and successful in YouTube about SEO related topics, optimization… [inaudible 00:06:34] for example with their YouTube channel, Backlinko, and then also Neil Patel has tons of subscribers as we can see the uploads, the video of views, when they created their channel here, and to better understand what has generated more views for them and take that as a reference for YouTube. For example, you can take a look here in Social Blade, we chart the most view videos for any of these channels, the highest rated ones, the most relevant ones, how many views they are generating… You can identify if these are potential topics that you can cover too.

In a similar way, you can even compare them versus yours if you have already a little bit of activity. But in this particular case I’m comparing them with the [inaudible 00:07:20] channel that also has tons of really good videos. They have a really strong game over YouTube, so I want to understand how they compare based on video, updated frequency, the subscriptions, and channel growth over time, social abundance, interaction rate, video performance, so I can see which of these channels are uploading much more, what it is expected in my industry because of course, there are so many rule of thumbs out there. But not necessarily might apply in your particular case, for your particular topics. So, it’s really, really good to double check, to verify what has actually worked well for those top players in your industry and how they have evolved over time again.

In fact, one of the functionalities that I love the most from [inaudible 00:08:05] Influencer, right, is that you can copy paste any YouTube video and it will provide you this analytics report. For example here, I included this branding about videos SEO, right, his hottest video three. It tells me the views, the views’ ratio, the engagement rate, estimated view value, the comments, the likes’ ratio, and the text that he has used for these particular videos. Which, again, whenever I am creating a video about this particular topics, this might be text that I would like to take into consideration- Keywords that I would like to take into consideration that I know that have worked pretty well for him, for example.

You will tend to track this channels too, versus yours, not only yours over time and [inaudible 00:08:50] they have a social media trackers that includes that YouTube functionality. Besides these two tools, you’re already likely using an SEO. You’re also likely using [inaudible 00:09:00] and if you are they do have this really useful functionality that is the YouTube within the social media tracker tool that you can use to track and check overtime rather easily without very fine, manually, as I showed before. The total engagement, the engagement rates, the like, the dislikes, the comments, the views for the latest video post in this case from the channels that you include here.

Now, you have the topic that you want to have video for. You know what your competition has done in the past or the leaders in your industry, and you know exactly how you want to focus the video, which are the terms that you want to use within your different elements of your video, right? You know that there are certain elements are very important to optimize what those terms, like the titles, descriptions, the text, the use of your hashtags, et cetera. There is actually a good practice to follow and this is for what both vidIQ and in this case, TubeBuddy, are super useful for because they will integrate like this.

So, for whatever video that I load I have them both integrated like this when I am loading the video. They will allow me to create a thumbnail from scratch instead of selecting an image of the video that might not look so well and they will tell me what it is, it mentions not good enough, or big enough, or highest quality as it should be, they recommend me text, and I can see how popular is the text, the term within the text for example.
Again, they integrate tools like this to translate the video information, if there’re any suggested terms, the recommended text here that I can use. If I have already included it, for example, info cards to refer to more information. If I have included already a playlist or assign a playlist to my video. So, here it might be a little bit- because I am not uploading this video at this time. You can see that I followed seven or the ten step that are recommended here, but we can see if we switch to the standalone application of the web application here of TubeBuddy, not the integration within my video channel there. What are the best practices that are validated when you are uploading your video, right? If the caption is me saying, the [inaudible 00:11:28] it suggests that you pin a comment, also an initial comments to incentivize engagement. You heart one of those comments, right? You respond to a comment, that any broken links found in the description, if there’s any end screen missing and they- it’s easily connect and link to create an end screen.

They instantly advise you to actually optimize your video, not only by including relevant terms in your title on description and text, but by optimizing as much as possible and making your video attractive as much as possible by adding all of the- So, make the most out of all of the features that you do provide. This is why these tools are so strong because they are only suggested terms in the beginning, but also make sure that you don’t miss any of the features and the opportunities provided by YouTube to optimize your video and make your video attractive, and make the most out of your video.

One you have uploaded your video by following all of the previously shared checklist and make sure that it’s as optimized as possible, the next step is to understand how it performs, right? The most full way, and the full way to do is by following up with the YouTube studio analytics, which is actually pretty good and official way and the direct way to understand the views, the watch time, subscribers that you have earned overtime, your top videos, real time activity… So, it’s actually pretty good. I was actually very impressed when I took a look at it. Which are the different traffic sources of traffic, if there are any external, even not only internal, that any of your videos being suggested and bringing traffic to your channel, or to the playlist too.

This all pretty, pretty good and nice to have, but I understand that you will have it anyway this by default and you will be able to take a look at this [inaudible 00:13:18] ones that you start with it. You better understand your audience also. A little bit of demographic data here from where they come, their age, their gender, et cetera et cetera, right? So, definitely they can look a it. However, I have to say that in order to better understand especially the keyword research or how you are optimizing in terms to rank for certain terms. You definitely want to take a step further. Again, videoIQ and TubeBuddy they both provide rapid reports. In this particular case, I have to say that the type of reports that they provide, TubeBuddy for example here, you need to run them manually.

For example here, I have the keywords to track as you can see. They, I have the reports and when I have run these reports, right? You may generate a new report every 24 hours. The thing is, right, I don’t want to be generating this report manually, but it’s great in case that you don’t want to be including the URL if the video that you want to rank to track again and again because they will tell you whatever of the videos they are actually ranking for this term and how do they rank. In not only YouTube, but also in Google. It’s quite nice in this particular case, but of course I want something that is actually automatic.

This is what I have with Rank Ranger. Rank Ranger is also SEO rank tracker that you will also use usually in SEO to rank you relevant terms, those money making term for your client, right? But they also have the YouTube run tracking functionality that I find super useful because the con is that you need to include specifically each one of the YouTube videos that you want to track for each particular term. Then, it will automatically track the rankings daily of these terms like this and it will tell you where you’re ranking within the YouTube search for these videos and how it has evolved overtime like this. So, it’s quite nice. It’s actually very support and what I’m use also to get in the SEO world.

Then, there’s also some additionally analytics information that you can obtain from vidIQ, but I have to say that regarding run tracking the one that I have liked the most until now, and I found to be more in line to the type of functionality that I am more used to within the YouTube search results or even the Google search results. So, you can track them both, both of them. So, it’s a win-win type of combination.

Last but not least, one of the functionalities that I like the most related to monitoring is the brand, Alerts, that you can get with TubeBuddy for example. TubeBuddy send me emails alerts like this for example. Whenever my name is mentioned and I could have included whatever brand or term I wanted to monitor, practical ideas, whatever- It is mentioning whatever video or YouTube channel, right? So, for example I get here the history of my mentions and this a great opportunity if you’re also want to engage and well a bit of community management over YouTube. Also, referring to your own channel whenever it’s relevant and useful for…

So, I hope that with all of this you have got more ideas of what tools are actually useful for you or that you can start to use to optimize your YouTube channels, and to make the most out of your YouTube presence, YouTube videos. I have to say that there’s actually much more here that I haven’t had a chance because there’s limited time here, but take a look at also TubeBuddy, A/B testings- They provide a wealth of metrics and information.

So, let’s definitely take a look at TubeBuddy and vidIQ because they are the platforms to use for video YouTube marketing and optimization in this particular case. But I wanted also to show you a few additional options and opportunities and what you can expect from them whenever you are starting as I did a few months ago. So, hope that this is useful. As usual, if you have any question, if you have any doubts, if you want to recommend any other tools that you have also found useful for YouTube optimization, please leave it in the comments and I look forward to see you the next Monday. If you have any idea for any other video too that you will like me to do, just let me know. Have a good Monday. Bye.