YouTube SEO three Steps to Rank Number One on YouTube I will teach you how to rank number one on YouTube in three steps. And who doesn’t want to rank on YouTube? It’s the second largest search engine in the world, right after Google, and nearly 2.3 billion people access YouTube one once a month. Funny enough, Google also owns YouTube, so technically they own the first and second most popular search engine. That means if you’re able to rank a video on YouTube for keywords that people care about, it will be seen by thousands of people and it’ll also rank well on Google over time.
All of that sounds great, but YouTube is becoming more and more competitive. Thousands of creators in every niche are competing for attention and a lot of them are probably targeting the same audience as you. But the good news is that YouTube is nowhere near as competitive as Google. And even if you’re just starting, you can rank videos on YouTube. Back in 2017, when I started my YouTube channel, things were tough.
I’ve always been great at writing content, but it’s an entirely different game when it comes to video. I also knew how to do SEO and get millions of visits to my website. But all that knowledge was hard to use on YouTube and it didn’t translate directly. So in other words, what worked for Google didn’t really work for YouTube. Some of it sure did overlap, but it was a different algorithm.
So I decided to crack the code and understand YouTube’s algorithm and share it with you. And in order to do that, I had to create lots of content, and I mean lots of content. I started pushing out videos every single day. When I started my YouTube channel, I was doing at least one video a day. I wanted to learn a few things, so I needed data on what worked and what did it.
A lot of what I learned back then no longer applies to YouTube in this day and age. But I found out there are three steps that you need to take in order to rank on YouTube that worked back then and still works today, and they’re super effective.
Come Up With Great Topics
The first thing that you need to do in Youtube SEO is come up with great topics for videos. How I found this out I used to focus on keywords, but it’s not much about the keywords. You need to figure out what are the broader topics that people care about in your audience.
But in order to do that, you need to explore many different topics and see which one resonates the most with your audience. In my case, I focus on marketing. So there are quite a few things that I could be approaching paid ads, social media, SEO, conversion, rate optimization, and the list goes on and on. I had to spend quite a bit of time publishing videos on lots of different marketing topics until I was able to find the main areas that people in my audience were interested in. Once you’ve found those main topics, you need to come up with more unique angles to approach keyword themes inside that topic.
Here’s an example. If you want to talk about Facebook Ads, you don’t want to just create a video called Facebook Ads. I’ve done videos like Facebook Ads versus Google Ads and I got lots of engagement from that. So it’s not about putting out a video just on Facebook Ads. It’s finding the angle that’s in that topic that people are interested in watching.
Because a lot of people are like, yes, Facebook Ads or Google Ads. Which one’s better? Well, I’m going to break down both. And here’s how you can map out some initial topics. Use ubersuggest keyword ideas report.
Right. Go to Ubers, and type in a keyword. It’ll give you all these other keywords that are popular that people are wondering about. You can also use Google search operators. You can also use the command sitecolinquora.com plus the keyword or sitecolonred.com plus the keyword.
Now you can also check out a tool called Answer the Public. That’s a great tool to get you the data as well as what people are really interested in. Now, I just want to emphasize that the video title is very important. It needs to be catchy. Give the reason for viewers to click and watch the rest of the video.
Your topics need to be articulated in a way that’s attractive in your titles.
Good Thumbnail
The second step in YouTube SEO is coming up with a good thumbnail. Thumbnails will dictate how attractive your video is. And if people want to click through and watch your content alongside your title, this is where you need to spend time and energy to try to come up with something that’s compelling for viewers. Don’t create thumbnails that are just still like this.
If you do that, who’s going to want to click? I wouldn’t click. Heck, I wouldn’t click on myself if I was like that in my own thumbnail. That’s what you got to have crazy emotions like and you’ll see that in my thumbnails and that drives clicks. Here are some tips over time that work for me.
Give a glimpse of what’s going to happen in your thumbnail. Your videos are about increasing traffic, maybe show a snapshot of your Google Analytics in your thumbnail. If your videos improve conversions, show a before and after snapshot of your conversion rates before and after applying the tip, use photos of yourself reacting like I just showed you earlier. The video has something alarming to it, use a photo of yourself that’s really like not the best actor, but you get the point. If the video is good news, show a photo of yourself racking positive like, ah, you get the point.
You just need to be congruent with the core message of your video. And also consider using contrasting colors. Avoid using red because that’s the color of YouTube’s brand identity use colors that will draw attention and make your video stand up when people see it in the middle of other suggestions on YouTube search Results.
SEO Optimization
Now for the third step for YouTube SEO. It’s all about doing SEO optimization. You want to optimize your title using the focus keyword that you’re targeting.
Optimize your video descriptions with those keywords including the primary and secondary keywords that you’re getting from tools like Ubersuggest that you’d also like to rank for in the first paragraph of the description and pin a comment with engaging questions so that way it creates more virality from your video because the comments really help drive views for YouTube and ask something that would be relevant to your audience and relevant to your video’s content. This will invite people to leave more comments on your videos. For example, have you tried out any of these three tips within your own YouTube videos? If you have, leave a comment below and tell me how it works. If you haven’t, let me know and try one of these tips and I’ll help you through it.
Look, the big takeaway is there’s a lot of YouTube advice out there that is quite technical and hard to understand. But this stuff that I just broke down to you is easy and it works. It’s the fundamentals. Use it. You’ll like the results.