In this post I’m going to show you EXACTLY how to rank your YouTube videos.
In fact, this is the exact process that I used to grow my channel to 121,519 views per month.
So if you want to get more views, subscribers and traffic from YouTube, then you’ll love this new YouTube SEO tutorial.
Let’s dive right in…
How I Grew My YouTube Channel From “Oh No!” to “Heck Yeah!”
Before we get into today’s video SEO tutorial, a quick backstory:
When I first launched my YouTube channel I struggled to get ANY views.
Fast forward to today, and my videos rank for all sorts of competitive keywords, like “on page SEO”:
“SEO Tutorial”:
Heck, I even rank #1 for “video SEO”:
And because I know how to rank my videos, my channel now generates 129,697 views and 6,774 subscribers every single month.
Now that you can see that I know what I’m talking about, let’s dive into the steps that I used to get these results.
Step #1: YouTube Keyword Research
The YouTube SEO process begins with video keyword research.
Here’s exactly how to find the right keywords for your YouTube videos:
First, generate a list of keywords ideas.
Your first step is to generate a big ol’ list of potential keywords. Then, in the next step, I’ll help you find the best keyword from your list.
Here’s how to find keywords for your YouTube Videos:
One of my favorite strategies is to use the YouTube’s Search Suggest feature.
All you need to do is head over to YouTube and pop in a word or phrase…
… and YouTube will hand you a bunch of keywords related to what you typed in:
These suggested keywords are GREAT.
Why?
Because these are terms that people actually type into YouTube. So there’s no need to wonder if they’re popular or not. If YouTube suggests them to you, they 1000% are.
You can also go to a popular video in your niche… and copy the same keywords that video is optimized around.
As you probably know, keyword optimization is a KEY part of YouTube SEO. So if a video has lots and lots of views, chances are, that video is optimized around a popular keyword.
To execute this step, go to another channel in your niche.
Then, sort their videos by “Most Popular”
This will show you their videos that have generated the most views:
Next, choose a video from the list. Obviously, you want to pick a video that you can create an awesome video around (more on that in step #2).
But in general, if the video is in your niche, it’ll work.
Finally, see which keywords that video is optimized around. This is easy.
Just check out the keywords that video uses in its title, description and video tags:
(To see a video’s tags, I recommend the VidIQ Chrome extension. It shows you a video’s tags right on the page)
You can also find some excellent keywords in your YouTube “Traffic Sources –> YouTube search” report. This report shows you all the keywords that YouTube users have searched for to find your videos.
In many cases, these are keywords that you already know about (because you optimized your videos around them).
But sometimes you’ll find a handful of keywords that you never would have thought of.
For example, here’s an example of a keyword I found in my “Traffic Sources” report:
This is a keyword I would have NEVER found using any other strategy. But I know that people search for it in YouTube, so it makes for a great keyword to add to my list
Second, find the best keyword from your list
OK so now that you’ve generated a big list of keywords, it’s time to choose the best one from your list.
Specifically, you want to target low-competition keywords.
This is ESPECIALLY important if your channel doesn’t have that many subscribers. If you swing for the fences and go after competitive keywords, your video is gonna get buried in the search results.
Instead, you want to find keywords that don’t have a lot of competition.
How do you check?
All you need to do is search for your keyword and check out the “About results”:
This number represents the total number of videos in YouTube about that topic. The higher this number, the more competitive a keyword is. So you want to target keywords that have a low “About results” number.
(How low? Every industry is different. So I can’t give you a specific number to shoot for. Just focus on choosing keywords that have low competition for your niche)
For example, when I search for “YouTube SEO”, there are 5,530,000 results:
That’s a lot.
So if I was just starting out, I’d try a few other keywords, like “YouTube ranking factors”.
Bingo! That keyword only has 390,000 results.
And that means that this keyword MUCH less competitive.
Finally, a bonus tip: search for your keyword in Google.
Here’s the deal:
Most views on YouTube come from within YouTube’s platform.
But don’t stop there. Your video can get 2-5x more views if you can ALSO get it to rank in Google.
How?
The trick is to optimize your videos around keywords that already have video results in Google.
You see, Google only includes videos in the search results for certain keywords.
Unlike a normal first page with 10 webpage results, for certain keywords Google reserves a good chunk of the first page for video results:
In general, Google tends to use video results for these types of keywords:
- How-to keywords (“how to shave a cat”)
- Reviews (“beats by Dre review”)
- Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)
- Anything fitness or sports related (“Cardio kickboxing”)
- Funny videos (“Cute animals”)
Why is this important?
Well, let’s say you optimize your video around a keyword that doesn’t have any video results in Google. In that case, you’ll ONLY get traffic from people searching on YouTube.
But if you optimize for a video keyword, you’ll also get targeted traffic to your video directly from Google’s first page.
The question is:
How do you find these magical keywords?
All you need to do is search for one of the keywords you found in the last step.
Then see if any of the keywords you searched for have YouTube video results, like this:
Simple, right?
Once you’ve found a Video Keyword, it’s time to see if there’s any search volume for that keyword. Otherwise, you might rank in Google for a keyword that only gets 20 searches per month. That’s not worth it.
So make sure target keyword gets at least 100-1k searches per month in Google (you can find this information using the Google Keyword Planner):
Why 500 searches per month?
If you can get that video to rank in Google, then a lot of those searchers will click on YOUR video in the results.
That means you’ll get more high-quality traffic to your video, and ultimately, your site.
Here’s a real life example:
Because Backlinko is in the SEO niche, I’m going to look for video keywords using searches like “keyword research tips”, “how to build backlinks” and “SEO tutorial”.
Bingo! The keyword “SEO tutorial” bring up a YouTube result in Google:
Sure enough, that keyword exceeds our minimum of 500 monthly searches:
So that would be a great keyword to create a video around.
In fact, I already did 🙂
Speaking of creating your video…
Step #2: Publish a High-Retention Video
Here’s the truth:
If you want your videos to rank, you need to keep people watching.
The amount of your video that people watch is known as Audience Retention.
And YouTube has gone on the record saying: “Audience Retention” is a HUGE ranking factor. To quote YouTube:
In other words:
If your video keeps people on YouTube, YouTube will rank your video higher in the search results.
(After all, YouTube wants people to stay on the platform so they click on ads. And if you help them with that goal, they’ll promote your video).
The question is:
HOW do you create a video that keeps people engaged?
(Also known as a “High-Retention Video”)
Here are 3 simple steps that work GREAT. I had to learn these 3 steps the hard way. But thanks to this short video, you can start pumping out High-Retention Videos right away.
Video tutorial
How to Quickly and Easily Boost Viewer Retention: 3 Simple Steps
As you can see, High-Retention Videos DON’T require a fancy camera or microphone. You really don’t need to sweat production value that much.
As long as your video is valuable and interesting to watch, you’re good to go.
The bottom line?
If your video stinks, it won’t rank…no matter how optimized it is for SEO.
Unlike Google — which can use backlinks and other signals to evaluate the quality of a piece of content — YouTube has no such luxury. So they rely on Audience Retention.
That said, Audience Interaction is one of several ranking signals that YouTube uses in its algorithm.
So let me show you the 5 other important YouTube ranking factors:
Video Comments
If someone leaves a comment, it sends a strong message to YouTube that they probably enjoyed the video (or at least engaged with it).
In fact, when I recently analyzed 1.3 million YouTube search results, I found that comments STRONGLY correlated with ranking highly in the search results:
So make sure to encourage your viewers to comment on your video (and reply to the comments that you get).
“Subscribes”After Watching a Video
If someone subscribes to your channel after watching your video that sends a HUGE signal that you have an amazing video.
The best way to get more YouTube subscribers? Ask people to subscribe. Seriously, I’ve found that asking viewers to subscribe at the end of my videos significantly boosts my monthly subscribers numbers:
Video Shares
How many people share your video on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook?
Think about it this way: people don’t share crappy videos, right? So when YouTube sees that people are spreading the word about your video, they think: “Man this must be an awesome piece of content!”. So they’ll give you a rankings boost.
(Also, social shares being more people FROM those networks to YouTube… which they like).
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
When someone searches for your keyword in YouTube, which result do they click on?
Your video… or the other guy’s?
As it turns out, YouTube pays VERY close attention to this user behavior. The percentage of people that click on your result is known as “click-through-rate” (CTR). Obviously, the higher your CTR, the better.
In other words, you want YouTube searchers to click on your result.
If YouTube notices that lots of people are clicking on your result, they think: “We need to give this video a boost!”.
On the other hand, if people are skipping over your result, they’ll drop your rankings.
The best way to boost your CTR? Create compelling thumbnails and titles.
For example, you can see that my title and thumbnail stand out for the other results for this keyword:
Thumbs up/Thumbs down
Self explanatory 🙂
Video Length
Like with text-based articles in Google, longer videos rank better.
I consistently see longer videos outperform shorter videos in YouTube and Google search.
And the data supports this. The YouTube ranking factors study that I mentioned earlier also found that longer videos have an edge over short videos (at least when it comes to YouTube SEO):
For example, if you search in YouTube for the keyword “WordPress”, 2 out of the top 4 videos are an hour long.
How long should your video be?
I wouldn’t sweat this too much. Just focus on creating the best video possible.
If it makes sense for your video to be even longer than that, go for it. Don’t worry about your video being too long. If it’s awesome, people WILL watch it.
The coolest part about all of these stats is that you can track all of them in the new YouTube Studio:
That way, you can see how you’re doing… and improve your videos over time.
OK so you’ve created your High-Retention video, it’s time upload and optimize it for SEO.
Step #3: YouTube Video Optimization
Here’s how to extract the most SEO value from your video:
SAY Your Target Keyword
You’ve probably noticed that YouTube now automatically transcribes your videos. And at least in my experience, they’re pretty darn accurate:
So if YouTube sees that you mention your target keyword in your video, they’ll “hear” it. And because you’re actually SAYING the keyword that your video is optimized around, YouTube will better understand that your video is about that term.
Video Title
The title of your video should be at least 5 words long. That way, you can include your full keyword without keyword-stuffing.
For example, this video title from my channel is 10 words …only 3 of which are my target keyword (“higher Google rankings”):
Power Tip: Like with a blog post, I’ve found that you get a slight video SEO boost by putting your keyword at the beginning of the title.
So if you were trying to rank for “surfing tutorial” you’d want a title like: “Surfing Tutorial: Learn How to Ride a Wave Today”.
Description
Your videos description is super important.
Your video description helps YouTube and Google understand the context of your video. And the better they understand your video , the higher you’ll rank (and the more often you’ll show up in the Suggested Video sidebar).
Here are the basic guidelines for the description:
- Include your keyword in the first 25 words
- Make the description at least 250 words
- Include your keyword 2-4 times
This SEO-optimized description helps tell Google and YouTube what your video is about without being spammy.
Here’s an example of a description for a video of mine that’s optimized around the keyword “On-page SEO”:
Notice how I include my keyword a couple of times… without being spammy? That’s what you want to do.
Tags
Tags aren’t super-important…but they help.
Here’s how I use video tags for my videos:
- My first tag is my exact target keyword (Example: “Google SEO”).
- I also include a few variations of that word or phrase (Example: “Google search engine optimization”)
- Finally, I make a few of my tags other topics that my video covers (Example: “Link building”, “Content marketing”)
In short: just include a few keywords to help YouTube and Google learn what your video is about.
Pro Tip: Targeted tags not only help you rank for your target keyword…
…but get you to you show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube:
So don’t be afraid to use the same tags that your competitors use. In fact, it’s a YouTube marketing best practice that has works for YEARS.
When the video someone’s watching has a similar tag as your video– boom!– you’re added to the sidebar.
And that’s all there is to optimizing your video to rank in YouTube.
With that out of the way, it’s time for a step that many people skip over: video promotion.
Step #4: Promote Your Video
We talked a lot about creating videos that maximize Audience Retention and user experience signals. Which is important.
But for YouTube to measure these signals, you need to get views on your video!
Here are some strategies you can use to get targeted views to your video:
Mention Your Video on Quora and Other Q&A Sites
Quora, forums and other Q&A sites are some of the most popular sites on the web (in fact, Quora is one of the most popular sites online).
But if you try to go in there and spam your blog content, you’re going to get banned in a flash. That’s why you want to link to YouTube videos.
And not only can you get a high quantity of views… but the views you get from Q&A sites are high-quality too.
(In other words, high-retention views)
Think about it:
You’re posting your video in a place where people are desperate for information on a given topic. So the people that watch your video will watch LOTS of your video so they can learn more about that topic.
To execute this step, just search for a keyword that describes your video’s topic. Then, find a question that you can answer.
When you find a question that seems like a good fit, answer the person’s question as best you can. Finally, link to your video at the end of your answer.
Here’s an example:
Link To Your Video In Your Email Signature
People that email you (like your mom) generally like you.
And if you’re like me, you get A TON of emails.
So when you add a link to your latest video in your email signature, that means you get high-retention views like they’re going out of style.
Embed Your Videos in Blog Posts
Whenever you write a blog post (on your site or as a guest post for another site), think to yourself:
“Where can I embed a YouTube video into this post?”
For example, when I mentioned “The Skyscraper Technique” in this guide, I embedded a video to explain how the strategy worked:
This INSTANTLY got my video a few hundred high-quality views.
Use Playlists
Playlists are one of the BEST ways to get more views on your videos. After all, playlists automatically play every video in the playlist… which can lead to thousands of extra views every month.
Here’s how to set them up:
First, look over your videos. And identify 4-5 videos that have a common theme or topic. For example, when I look at the videos I’ve published on my channel, I notice that I have quite a few that cover the topic: “link building”.
Then, create a playlist that includes that set of videos.
Finally, include that playlist on your channel page. Rinse and repeat until you have at least 3 playlists on your channel.
Speaking of your channel page…
Optimize Your Channel Page
An optimized channel can help your videos rank better in two ways:
First, your channel itself can rank in YouTube. Here’s an example:
Second, a great channel page=more subscribers and more views… which can indirectly improve your rankings.
First and foremost, you want your channel page to look nice and professional. In fact, when I recently updated my channel page to look like this…
…I noticed an uptick in views and subs.
Also, include keywords in your channel’s about section. Here’s an example:
See how I use terms like “white hat SEO”, “link building” and “search engine optimization” in my channel description?
These are all keyword that I want to rank for in YouTube.
Obviously, you don’t want to use keyword stuffing or any shady stuff like that. Just naturally sprinkle in words and phrases that you want your videos to rank for.
Here’s What To Do Next…
OK so I hope this guide helped show you how to rank your YouTube videos.
And if you want to take your game to the next level, I’ve got something special for you.
It’s a step-by-step checklist that will show you the exact steps you need to take to get your videos ranking at the top of the search results in YouTube and Google.
Click on the link below to download the PDF checklist:
Dang Brian, another YT strategy out the bag!
It works like a treat although I didn’t know about “Video Keywords” so thanks for the heads up!
Sanj.
My pleasure, Sanj! Let me know how it goes.
Yet another great post. Move over Seomoz your blog has all the info needed to rank a site.
Thanks Dom! I appreciate that 🙂
Very nice article on creating and promoting videos on YouTube. Thanks for share!
Thanks, Shailesh. Let me know how it works for you.
Excellent article! I’ve been looking for legit sites that help get REAL viewers. I had checked out fiverr a while ago and couldn’t had many good resources. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Charise! Let me know how it works for you.
Great post, Brian! I put up a bunch of videos on Youtube that were actually music tracks I produced.. come to find out Youtube banned by account. Why? Probably because I bought views from a website called vingler.com. All the views are from real people, but they are not high retention. I suppose that tripped some kind of red flag and Yotube shut my account down. I still have a personal account, though. I going to try this again!
Glad to hear you liked the post, Casey! Real views FTW!
It’s nice to hear that Google is not as particular about backlinks for videos and they are for web pages but I think I’ll still err on the side of caution. Thanks for the tips!
It’s a smart move to be cautious, Rick. Even for videos I’m varying anchor text and doing some other things to make sure they rank for the long term.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, as a SEO beginner I feel like I just found gold nuggets here 🙂
I like your idea to run on the long term, could you tell us what other things you’re doing for that ?
Many thanks !
You definitely found some golden nuggets, Julien 🙂
That idea permeates every business decision I make, actually.
Hi Brian, I know building backlinks to your channel are quite important for ranking videos and I was wondering if internal backlinks are worth the effort of creating everyday (e.g. comments, likes, subscribes) to other channels. Do they even have any influence now?
Good question, Lewis. You don’t need to go nuts with a site like YouTube to send some PR to your channel. I’d just comment/follow/subscribe to the top 50-100 of the top PR pages and leave it at that. That’s probably good enough.
Thanks for the reply Brian, I’d just like to clarify, by pages do you mean videos? … also would you recommend commenting on the “discussion” page on high PR channels? Just a thought.
P.S. I’ve been following this blog since you launched and the quality is continuously outstanding, not to mention the information you give away via email, it’s absolute gold!!!
Sure thing Lewis. And thanks for your support 🙂
Yes, I meant videos, but you can comment on any page that passes PR (as you pointed out, discussion pages work really well).
Hey Brian,
Great post. I just recently got into ranking youtube videos (it’s WAY easier than personal web pages!). Do you usually start link building right away, or do you let your video sit for a bit before hitting it with links? I’ve got a video for a big buyer term that’s just about to start showing up on the first page of G. Keeping my fingers crossed!
Sure thing Pat. You’re right: it’s much, MUCH easier than ranking pages on your own site. To answer your question: I usually start building links within the first few days after launching it.
I think you can just delete comments on your own, correct? If you sign in and hover over the comment a little arrow should pop up in the upper right corner. If you click on it it should say “remove”.
I didn’t know I could do that. I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the heads up!
Hi, is it possible to rank on page one for a long tail keyword without building backlink
It’s possible for VERY non-competitive keywords. But they’re usually not worth creating videos for because the search volume is so low.
Hi Brian,
I just want to say that I am blown away with the information you provided here on ranking youtube vids. I have a ton of online products that I want to start making tutorials for and your post answered my question about how to get some eyes on my stuff. Thanks again, I’m definitely bookmarking this for future reference.
Thanks for checking it out, Hermine! Let me know how my system works out for you 🙂
Hey Brian.
Thanks for the post. I found you through a G search for how to rank a YouTube video. I honestly think with the recent G update, they are trying to force their adwords and YT and everything else they own to the user. So I think that the new “niche site” is going to be YT videos. I lost a ton of rankings to my niche site over the weekend. My entire website went from average 800 UV a day to 10… Really made my heart sink. Just as I was starting to do well with SEO ha ha.
Anyway, I’m going to try some ClickBank + YT methods and hopefully get a few more affiliate sales back. No doubt I’ll have more questions as I go along, but I just wanted to say thanks for the post.
Cheers!
– James 🙂
I like the way you put that: YT videos are the new niche site. And they’ll be more durable to updates because Google doesn’t want to penalize their own property. Thanks for stopping by, James 🙂
Hey again Brian,
You’re probably sick of seeing my name by now, haha.
Anyway… I’ve been pulling out all the stop to get my Youtube videos ranked, but NOTHING is working. I have just realised though that all of my purchased, drip-fed, high-retention views are from mobile devices. Is this why I’m nowhere to be seen on Google’s SERPs? Also, do you have an e-mail address I could contact you at? I don’t want to take over your comments section single-handedly lol.
Regards,
Chris
It can take quite a while (up for a month depending on your keyword) for Google to rank your video. Not sure about the mobile device views, but that might be a sign of fake views within YT’s algorithm. Just keep building views and you’ll eventually show up.
Hi Brian,
I was wondering, if you had 10 high quality backlinks to use, how many of those would go towards individual video URLs and how many would you use on your channel URL. I am just trying to gauge how important it is to get links pointing to your channel vs each video.
Thank you!
-Lewis.
I’d put 9 to my videos. I haven’t done much link building to channel pages.
Hi Brian,
Do I have to write a fresh content for the description?
Or copying content from my website is ok?
Thank you
Jojo
Good question, Jojo. I always write a unique description and that seems to work well.
Hi Brian,
Great post, which explained why some of my videos rank page one and other don’t….likely the “Video keyword” theory that you suggested.
I’m at the top of Youtube but page 4 for a keyword in the travel niche.
It is frustrating because I am offering this as a service for offline clients as it is selling like hotcakes.
The only issue is getting to page one every time. I will try buying more views, the software links and also try blog networks. Great tips!
Perhaps we can create some sort of mastermind around this strategy??
Thanks again,
Chris
Glad you enjoyed that one, Chris. I never thought of offering this as a service. Great idea! As you said, if you start buying some real human views and building serious links to the video it WILL rank for those video keywords.
thanks for the useful information. I know about keywords, but you opened my eyes on other important elements.
My pleasure, Pascale.
Awesome post ! I’m gonna try to do some blast on my videos via fiverr and will let you know how it’s work. What about linking youtube channel together ?
Thanks Simon! I’ve actually never tried linking youtube channels together but I think it could work really well 🙂
I have found that these links building tactics are the best (for me)
– PAD submission (software submission)
– RSS submission
– Private blog networks
– Social bookmarking
I know most of you probably have heard that some of these don’t work for SEO.I don’t know about SEO, but for Youtube SEO they are GREAT !!!
Here is a proof
youtube.com/watch?v=UR_mycV8Tj8
Check this video for these keywords:
surveys
surveys for money
online surveys
And notice that I have so little views and likes, but I rank so high because of my backlinks.I also rank on Google for many related keywords…
Thanks for your insights, John. Glad to hear that you’re crushing it with YouTube SEO (even without any views and likes). It looks like it’s all about backlinks for videos too 🙂
Great article Brian. Question, what type of microphone do you suggest for making videos that won’t break the bank?
Thanks Sam. I’m in love with my Samson Go Mic. It’s cheap, portable and podcast-quality.
Thanks Brian. Another question for you. How much time and money did you invest in this video and since it looks like almost 5 months since you published this post, can you update us on your total earnings?
No problem. I didn’t keep close track of how much I invested in the video. Between the views and links, it set me back about $150. The video has made over $1500 to date.
Excellent post Brian! I have a question for you if you don’t mind.
I’ve heard that YouTube embeds help you rank in YouTube’s internal search, but do embeds also count as backlinks, therefore increasing your ranking in Google as well? I’ve been searching the net and asking around and haven’t been able to get a good answer.
I was looking at the iframe embed code that youtube uses, and it uses a different url than the typical watch?v= url. It uses an url like: youtube.com/embed/. However, if you view the source of the /embed/ page, there is a rel=canonical that lists the typical watch?v= url. But does the link juice pass through?
If embeds do count as backlinks, that would be fantastic, as it would increase my youtube ranking and my google ranking at the same time!
Glad you liked the post, John!
Good question. I do think that embeds help increase your videos’ rank within youtube. I actually never thought to look to see if an embed passed juice. But considering that the embed URL cites the original video page on youtube in their rel-canonical, I’d say that’s a backlink :-).
Thanks for the information. I have a question, For a video how much back link are sufficient for #1?
My pleasure, Adi. It’s hard to give an exact number because depends on the competition, your videos’ on-page SEO etc.
Brian what an article this is a WSO in itself full of quality content. I’d expect to pay good money for something like this. I signed up and you have proven content is king if you want to get people on your mailing list. I look forward to your other posts. Cheers and Thanks Bro!
My pleasure, Kirk! You’re right: this is a system I could have definitely charged for. But I prefer to give it away to help the most people (and to build my list :-))
Brian,
When building your backlinks via social bookmarks and other methods etc. would you use 1 keyword anchor text?
Cheers 🙂
Good question. I actually mix it up. But I definitely use more exact match anchors than I would for my money site.
Cheers Brian,
I thought it would be a little safer to use more exact match anchors, on a YouTube video – end of the day you can always knock up a new video if all goes wrong!
I agree: you don’t need to go nuts with anchor text diversity. I just mix it up to increase the odds my video ranks over the long-term. But as you said, it’s no biggie if the video gets slapped: you can just make another one!
Just like to say Brian I’ve stumbled on to your blog through Google organic results a few times now and I always end up reading the whole article because its awesome and the fact you provide evidence is a huge +1 in the industry IMO. Keep up the excellent work!
Glad to hear that, Li! I always try to provide real world examples so everyone can see that this stuff really works!
Brian,
Great post! You just gave me an idea for another passive income stream. I haven’t had any experience with building backlinks in to YouTube vids, but I think that the sheer authority of YT that the internal links alone makes it easier to rank for moderately competitive keywords compared to websites, the farthest I’d go is share it in social media. The key is getting it indexed.
Thanks Garrick. You’re right: you don’t need to do so much backlinking to YouTube videos. But depending on how competitive the keyword is, you may want to build some cheap links to give your video a boost.
You’ve done a good job by pulling your high competitive video on 1st position by this method, and for less competitive low search volume based videos, few back links are enough I think. What you say?
That’s right: Tiffanly. You won’t need nearly as many backlinks for a less competitive keyword.
are you sure that google panda does not hurt youtube videos ?
Considering that there are so many low-quality YouTube videos out there, it makes sense that they would. But I can’t see Google hitting it’s own web property with a penalty. So I’d say they’re safe from Panda.
thanks for you share Brian,btw i want to ask…
any fiverr service to get subscriber for increase youtube video page on youtube search?thx before for your answer…!
No problem. There are some, but I’ve never tried them. I like to play it safe. It doesn’t look natural to suddenly go from 0 to 5000 subscribers.
hello…
I want to ask you what is the criterion by which you think it is best to choose a keyword that you be on the first page in Google with youtube!?
Leo, the most important thing is to look for keywords that already show video results. That’s half the battle right there 🙂
Thanks for the article. Brian, tell a different purpose you are using a different YouTube channels?
No problem, Michael. Glad you got some value from the post. That was a different YouTube channel because I wanted to test that video independently from an established Channel.
I heard that video backlinks are the strongest backlinks you can get. Have you heard of the concept of video linkwheels?
Ps . Thanks for PAD info. One question do i have to get a PAD created then get somebody yo submit it or dovthey do it all for $5?
Video links can be pretty good, but they’re usually nofollow so not very powerful. I’ve heard of linkwheels, but not video linkwheels. You can sometimes find someone on Fiverr who will do both for you.
Hello Brian
It seems to me that if you post a link to another video on your youtube channel (special window on the bottom, to place a link to recommended video) , this link is dofollow.
If you post a link to another movie in the content of post or comment, it has a nofollow status. But I could be wrong 🙂
Best regards, Kris
Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t realize that. Thanks Kris!
Im going to test it I seen sone pretty impressive results from a couple other internet marketers using that technique, but they also were trying to sell something as well. I just bought 30 pva accounts so ill let you know my results in a few weeks.
Sounds good. Let me know how it goes 🙂
Hi Brian
Awesome post!! Vagex.com has reached its max limit. What would the cost per view be at microworkers & mechanical turk? or do you think it makes sense to advertise on youtube? any difference between paid ads & organic views? help pls!
Thanks Ahmed! I’m honestly not sure what those other services (including YT ads) tend to cost/work because I’ve only used Vagex for this purpose. So I’d give them a shot as long as you’re sure you’re getting high-retention views.
great post Brian! I’m actually running my own test as we speak. is this Vagex.com service real people that watch your videos? how does it work?
Thanks Maki! Yes, Vagex is real people watching your videos for a small fee. Unfortunately, they’re not accepting new people at the moment. I’d recommend using Amazon MTurk in the meantime.
Hey Brian,
You know there are very few cases when you actually manage to find some valuable search results when looking for something.
This is just a wow and deserve to be tried out. I will surely give my feedback of how is it going.
Subscribed myself to your everything 🙂
Thanks,
Farhan
Thanks for your kind words, Farhan! Definitely keep me posted on how it goes for you.
Great post Brian,
I read it and tried to apply some of your recommendations. I think the steps you covered here are really important to get higher YouTube rankings.
Just a heads up though, the views exchange site you mentioned on this post is not accepting new members… do you have another site to recommend?
Thanks Lipe! I actually don’t know of any similar service. But you can always use Amazon Mechanical TURK to get some cheap views (although not as cheap as Vagex).
Hi Brian,
Nice Tips, I agree that we can build links like old times for YouTube..they are still working and help a lot in terms of ranking the videos.
Video marketing is a good way to divert income stream and able to generate some extra passive income….
Glad you liked it, Sanjeev. You’re right: you can definitely go crazy with link building to YouTube and get away with it.
Hello Brian
A few words about choosing a category – I noticed that if I select a category “News & Politics”, then my video appears in the SERP much faster and higher than using other categories. You may try it 🙂
Best regards, Krzysiek
Thanks for that tip, Krzysiek! I’d never heard that one before. But it makes sense that they’d want to rank news faster than videos in other categories.
Article is awesome, and Surely I can rank for my upcoming videos by these super easy tips..
Thanks A lot!
Yes you should definitely be able to rank with these tips, Nishant!
Wow Brian! Excellent overview and so easy to follow! Going to see if this can help a client of mine. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Dave! Let me know how the video works out for your client.
Great article. However the best method to rank your videos I have found is getting backlinks from Youtube itself. Those are safe backlinks and very powerful. Here’s the Fiverr gig I use:
fiverr.com/clixess/put-your-youtube-channel-as-featured-in-3-high-pr-youtube-channels
Glad you liked it, Mat. I like the idea of getting internal links from YouTube, but the links you get from that gig are actually only for 30-days.
Just for the record I make a substantial living from YouTube marketing and I also run my own SEO firm with over 250 clients with Google Front Page Rankings. Now I use Fiverr for my YouTube rankings and I agree with Brian but would also like to add a little more value. After you do what Brian suggest visit Fiver and find someone that dripfeeds views for 20 days. 100 views a day for 20 consecutive days works wonders with the right backlink profiles. I’ve ranked for several medium competition keywords without any backlinks. Google will rank your video with social signals from just YouTube. Here is my formula 100 likes, 50 comments, 10% dislikes, 100 subscribers driven from the video, 50 video embeds and about 250 Facebook shares and likes, then build backlinks. There is a link to my Youtube channel feel free to Google search any of my keywords.
Wow you weren’t kidding when you said you were going to add a little more value. Great stuff!
There is much you can do right with YouTube but there is also a lot of things you can do wrong! For instance all of my affiliate videos are on the same channel, if Google decided i violated their tos I would have to start all over but Google see the value I bring. I would suggest using different channels for different niches rather than having 1 channel or 1,000 channels.
Always use the main keyword and 2 lsi keywords as your tags, always put your channel name in tags, always link to your channel and use the most popular channel name as a tag so your video can pop up after their video is finished.
Always upload your video in HD if you can, always use your main keyword as title, url, first tag, file name, and use title as first sentence. Ex. keyword is Fat Laughing Cat
Title: Fat Laughing Cat – Can’t Stop Laughing
Description: https://me.com/Fat_Laughing_Cat
Fat Laughing Cat – Can’t Stop Laughing
Tag: fat laughing cat, fat, laughing, cat, big giggling feline, obese chuckling kitty, mrpelage(my channel), fatcatlaughter,(top video channel)
Brian I hope your readers are getting value from this!
Really good stuff yet again. I know I’m getting a lot of value from it so I’m sure Backlinko readers are too 😀
Hey Brian,
This article puts many paid YouTube courses to shame.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
My pleasure, Anthony. Let me know if you have any questions.
Hello Brian i found your article very interesting informative
even for an experienced internet marketer like myself.
You should also be careful how many backlinks and bookmarks you send to your video each day, as too much in one day will get your video penalized and pushed down the ranking. Google and Youtube is catching up with all the SEO tricks.
Thanks Hopeton! Yes, you’re 100% right about that. I’ve toned things down a bit since everyone and their mom has started to spam YouTube videos. I’ve even done some white hat promotion so that I survive any future “YouTube Update” Google may roll out.
Hi Brian
This post is exactly what Ive been looking for, so thanks!
Some questions
1 – Ive heard that linking form other YT videos to your money video can help with G rankings, have you tried this? Any thoughts?
2 – Is there any point in diluting anchor text so should we just go full EM anchor text and spam the crap out of it until it ranks?
Cheers
Tim
Happy to hook you up, Tim.
Onto your questions:
I’ve heard that to but I never got it to work. The problem is most of the links will end up on a PR n/a page which won’t
pass any juice. If you can get your link on a high PR page, then that would definitely help.
I dilute anchor text just to be on the safe side. If Google does roll out a “YouTube update”, they’ll definitely use anchor text as part of the equation. I want my videos ranking for years, not months
Just for the record I offer a video ranking service both for YouTube and Google. So I know a little about vseo. If you have a brand new product you can throw tons of backlinks to it as long as it looks natural. Google has no idea how this search term will perform so it would be unfair to penalize you. Hopeton you gotta remember Youtube is not just a video site it’s also the 2nd largest search engine and a pretty huge social site. When was the last time you watched just 1 video on YouTube?
Google is still nothing but a computer software and if you ranking high in Google make sure you’re ranking high in YouTube so you getting at least 30% suggested video traffic and 25% YouTube search traffic. Google will drop your video if it’s only ranking high because of backlinks. And it’s okay to get 100-200 fake views YouTube don’t care about that, but once it’s like 5,000 views in 2hours for a topic that gets 100 searches a month all from Russia, you going down!
Hope this help. Also if interested in my service I’m at seomojo.com
Just to be clear. 100-200 views just to give your video that presence, (nobody wants to be the first person to watch your video) 3-5 days after you upload it in the span of 25-50 views a day until you at 100-200 views. Then just keep building quality links then everything else should be natural especially the traffic. Or what’s the point? Have a video getting 100 views per month making me $500. Keyword research should be your main concern, then rankings come easy.
Thanks for all of your insights on this. It’s clear that you know your stuff when it comes to ranking YouTube videos!
Way to go Brian. I just did the whole youtube seo thing in a while, and well I made couple sales too through clickbank.
I think the other thing to that will make your video up in the first page of google is the audience retention and numbers of likes and subs.
Glad to hear that, Sumarwan. That’s true: retention, likes and subs are really important.
These link building steps aren’t enough to rank any video 🙂
Hmmm. Not sure what makes you say that, Syed…
If I will promote my youtube videos on video submission sites then i can get good ranking and fast result in Google.
Sounds like a plan, Marya!
Outstanding post – thanks for sharing. I have a question: What is worth the most: A link to my YT-video or if someone embed the video on a website. Or does it depend of the PR attached to the linking website?
Glad you enjoyed it, Claus. Good question. I’d say a quality link is worth more for ranking in Google. For ranking within YT, embeds are more important.
Hey Brian,
Awesome post! It turns out that one of my videos ranked just by following your instructions on video and description optimization. I didn’t even get around to Vagex! I’m sure that if I can rack up more likes and blast a few links(I don’t need to ATM, it’s pretty high in G anyway), I could do even better. I may just set up a few affiliate link videos(out of my niche) as a side income. Plain awesome, man.
Glad to hear that, Shabbir, and thanks for sharing your experience with everyone 🙂
Hey Brian. From my experience embeds are just as important because in a way it’s a more powerful link. Most importantly home page contextual embeds on high pr related topics are key but extremely hard to get. I would say 1 of those embeds are worth 2 high pr links. Other than that Brian you’re right. Embeds are powerful because the user have to take time embed and share the video. Like for example Google search passive print system. My video is on the front page 0 backlinks. 10 pdf embeds that don’t show up in Ahrefs. Pretty stealth. But the Youtube button on each embed is a backlink that takes you back to YouTube. So if the site is relevant you technically don’t need backlinks for low competition keywordsuse my vvideo as a staple.
GREAT insights. I never really thought of the embed as a link (just as a YT ranking signal. But you’re 100% right, it’s a great link (especially if it’s on a related site).
Does this strategy still work?
I noticed that if the keyword occurs twice in the title it ranks higher. Whats a pad file?
Yes, it definitely still works, Latha (in fact the comment on this post right before yours was someone saying it worked). A PAD file is a software file.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my Q’s so quickly, Brian (0:
Above in the commnets you talk about commenting/liking high ranking videos to boost your own. Am I right, that if I post a lot of comments / likes on top ranking videos on YouTube, the channel that I’m logged in under when i post the comments will benefit from it in terms of YouTube rankings? What about SERP rankings?
My pleasure, Claus. I’m actually not a big fan of that strategy because your comments usually get buried on a page without any PR. I think that energy is best spent on getting more engagement or building high quality external links.
Hello Brian,
I just found your article while searching for how to insert and rank a video in youtube. You provide a lot of information and I hope it will help me. In my case I like to create a video tutorial and try to get it ranking. Currently I’m struggling regarding your tip tp peform a professional video. Is this valid as well for my case – a tutorial?
Thanks for your kind words, Tom. Yes, it definitely applies to tutorials. Just make sure your audio is professional (you’ll need a good mic) and that it’s edited nicely. You can take a look at some of the videos here to get an idea of what to aim for: https://www.quicksprout.com/university/
I have to say, i had no idea it really made a difference to change the title of the video to a kw before uploading to YT I saw almost immediate results. Thanks for the reminder about PAD links to add to diversity… however with that said, after the nightmare that Hummingbird has turned into – do you think that these guidelines still hold up in todays serp??? Really looking forward to your response – I am in a battle with Youtube at the moment and have been experimenting with different strategies for 2 years now 😛
Happy to hear my tips helped you out, Jon. Yes, I’ve seen that these YT strategies work just as well post-Hummingbird.
Brian do you have an articles on pad links?
I actually don’t. But you don’t really need to master it. Finding someone on Fiverr to do it for you is probably your best bet.
Yeah the ban of the automated views definitely sucks.
One good point, which i havent heard about before that there are video keywords. It makes sense, going to test it out in the future.
Sounds good. I’ve found that video keywords work like a charm.
Thank you very much for this good article, I found many informations that could help me to improve my videos seo in the future
My pleasure, Mohammed. Let me know how it goes.
Well great post though but i have seen that official music videos or product videos or movies, they are top in search results how do they optimize YT Videos ??? Help me by replaying here Mr Admin 🙂
Well they’re probably getting a lot of links, shares, likes etc. because it’s the official video.
And what really helps is that the YouTube channel itself is an authority and highly trusted by Google and obviously YouTube. If your channel has over 10 videos averaging 1,000,000 views each your page rank will naturally go up with backlinks or not!
Good points. It makes sense that Google would give some extra love to established channels (kind of a YT version of Domain Authority).
Hi. Brian, thanks for putting this up.
What do you think about using linkbuilding tool for Youtube video? I have one at the moment but but I haven’t used it for Youtube yet.
I will really appreciate it if you you can give your input.
My pleasure, Harry. I don’t have much experience with link building tools to be honest. I actually recommend using more grey hat strategies for YouTube videos. It’s only a matter of time before they crack down and get rid of super-spammy YT results. That means most tools are out.
Brian,
I going to try your system and I will reply to you for my result
Sounds good, Claude. I’m looking toward to it.
Excellent information and congratulations on ranking your video for such a competitive and lucrative keyword phrase
Glad you enjoyed the guide, Greg. It’s definitely been nice to have that video on the first page of YT for over a year now 🙂
Great post! Youtube videos are definitely the easiest and quickest way to get your content ranked on the first page. I personally only upload one video per channel and I name that channel the “keyword” I’m trying to rank for. I’ve noticed this helps me achieve higher rankings.
Thanks for sharing, Rob. I’ve never tried optimizing my channel but it makes sense that it would help.
Brian,
Really interesting stuff, looking forward to testing this out. I would love your thoughts on our inventory of 3,360 app review videos. We do okay on YouTube, but our website still does not convert much traffic off our 500,000 monthly youtube views. Suggestions?
thank you
Mike
Let me know how it goes, Mike. I’d recommend putting a link back to your landing page in the video description. I’d also mention your site in the beginning and end of your video (with a call to action). I do both for 100% of the videos that I publish and it helps bring in a large chunk of traffic from YouTube views.
Hi Brian, Another great article thanks!
You don’t talk about video sitemap or schema.org. Do you think it has an effect on video optimization or it just helps Google to find the video? Cheers, Laure
Thanks Laure. Good question. Actually, the focus here is ranking videos hosted on YouTube, so you don’t need a video sitemap or to use schema.org. That being said, if you host a video on your own blog you definitely want to use a video sitemap and schema markup.
It is good but now Video Keyword and Tag part do not work. YouTube rank the video on Title and Description only. But you share very good information here.
Thanks
Actually YT still uses tags, Vimal (I just double checked).
Hi Brian,
I just finished reading this You tube ranking blog post and love how thorough it is. I picked up a lot of tips that i will action straight away. Regards, Mark
My pleasure, Mark. Let me know how the strategies work out for you.
Great article. I recently started a YouTube channel just for product reviews and this was exactly what I needed.
Nice Tim! Keep me posted on how your new channel does.
Great tips. I will put them to the test 🙂 have a video ranking page 1 but pretty low down. Hope this can give me a rank boost.
Sounds good, Johan. Let me know how it goes.
Hi Brian,
Reach here via your latest post. Another awesome tip on how to rank videos the PROPER WAY. Does this still apply in 2014?
I have quite a few of my videos which is not ranking as high as i want? Can i try your methods of ranking my videos?
Hope you can share?
Thanks Jeffrey. Yes, these strategies still work in 2014. But like anything that gets popular, ranking YouTube videos with grey/black hat strategies may not work as well long-term. But right now it definitely does. And the on-page techniques will always work.
Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you.
Hi Brian How do you find what PR a youtube video or channel has please?
Doug, you can install a browser toolbar like the SEOBook toolbar or the SE Quake toolbar.
Brian I noticed your video fell to page two. What is the best way to remedy this if it happens.
Just give it some more views and links. It’s a tough keyword so it needs a lot of TLC to keep ranking (something I’ve been too busy to do).
Hey Brian, Appreciate you sharing with us.
Great info here, just made a Google hangout for my local service business and I’m on the bottom of page one. Trying to get on top, so will try some of your suggestions; Thanks so much!
Sounds good, Keith! Let me know how it goes 🙂
thank you so much Brian for this ,, it was very helpful
No worries, Rahim. Glad you liked it.
Great article and its amazingly good. I have tried most of the tricks leaving only backlinks and views. Can we make a video popular leaving this method altogether?
For sure, Kamlesh. If you have a video that gets popular mots of the views and links will come naturally.
Hi,
I applied your whole technique with a fresh new uploaded video – I dont know how it was so effective but I ended up on Page 1 in an hour..
Great tips!
Rock on Chris! Really happy to hear that this strategy worked so quickly for you 🙂
Hi Brian,
it was a great post I must say. I have had a problem on understanding how to rank youtube videos. you have for sure shared the great insights on this topic.
Happy to help Emiley. Let me know how things go 🙂
Hey Brian,
great post!
I guess it’s been a while since you’ve written this (can’t see any dates in here).
Anyway, my question is -would you still use method no. 5 in 2014? Especially social bookmarks and software xml via fiverr. (Youtube only of course)
Thanks Roey. Great question. I may not be quite as aggressive with link building. In my opinion it’s only a matter of time before Google cracks down on spammy YouTube videos. Just like with your real site, it will help to have a clean link profile when that updates rolls out.
Hey Brian,
Great post thank you for putting this all together, great info.! I have been experimenting around with these tactics for about last 3 months and have found comparable results. Actually, it’s funny, you can use similar backlinking strategies for ranking a Facebook page, that’s is what I have found. So now I know I can rank a FB page or a YT video pretty quickly, like you say, like back in ’09, haha, when life was grand! I have used some other services for real, human, YT views, some even offer ‘full views’ or percentage of ‘full views’. Great post just wanted to thank you! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your comment, Martin. I’ve never tried to rank Facebook pages but it makes sense that it would work well considering the authority Facebook has. Great insights all around 🙂
Can anyone recommend any new decent place to get human views?
I have a client who wants to rank a vimeo video for a non video keyword. I am going to see if just linkbuilding will push it to front page.
Sounds like a plan, Hari. Let me know how it goes.
Great post! I have used a lot of the above in my YT marketing. A great strategy for ranking videos for highly competitive keywords is to study the first page of results and see what all of them have in common i.e title wise, description wise and of course analayse the video content itself. Make sure your video has all of these common traits!
Appear in the video yourself, make eye contact, smile and ask them to vote, share and comment!! Youtube have also said that they now look at how long people view the video for as a parameter in deciding which videos rank well! So you can ask them that!
Great insights, Ryan. I’ve also tested asking people to like and comment and found that it makes a HUGE difference.
Great article Brian – thanks! Quick question – I had kind of noticed that some search terms Google seems to not want to return videos in the results at all. If we can rank it for a longer tail keyphrase will Google then be more likely to consider ranking it for the original phrase you can’t get ranked for? For example,if I wanted to rank for Holiday Cottages in The Loire (which I wasn’t able to get a video to show up in at ALL for about the first 10 pages) – If I ranked it for How to Book Holiday Cottages in The Loire – would that help get a ranking for that first phrase I wanted to target (Holiday Cottages in The Loire)? Thanks
Thanks Tanya. I’ve noticed the same thing (that’s why I emphasize the importance of finding Video Keywords). Yes, that’s a solid strategy as long as both of your keywords are Video Keywords.
Hey Brian,
Thanks for all your hard work mate, it’s really appreciated, some good tips in your article here, i’m new to seo and video marketing so hoping to learn from your site – it’s gone straight in my favourites:-)
Hey Anjum. My pleasure. Let me know how your foray into YouTube SEO goes.
Hey Brian,
Great post. I just
recently got into ranking youtube
videos (it’s WAY easier than
personal web pages!). Do you
usually start link building right
away, or do you let your video sit
for a bit before hitting it with
links? I’ve got a video for a big
buyer term that’s just about to start
showing up on the first page of G.
Keeping my fingers crossed!
Thanks Sandal. I usually wait a few days before building links. Good luck with your video 🙂
Ok I had a recent video that literally a week later was on page one for keyword which was competitive and now it’s fallen way off serps. I’ve dug around and heard that GGle/YT in Feb did an algo change. All I know is I was so happy and then depressed as nothing in the video had changed…Any comments. And I haven’t read the comments yet perhaps some info…
Not sure, Kala. Sometimes that can happen if a video suddenly stops getting views and links. I’d just keep giving the video quality views and links.
Hi Brian, great article and really got some new tips. I’ve been ranking videos last few weeks for keyword like “SEO Outsourcing” and “WordPress training London” and some SEO agency terms here.
One of the other tips I’ve found which was great working is publishing those video, we want to rank on Web 2.0’s which has PR and even on our own authority site and linking back to the YouTube.
Also another tip would be doing two to three other
YouTube videos and linking to money video and it will boost the rankings.
Thanks for sharing and Btw your comment helped us rank for “SEO Company Harrow” and couple of agency terms in London.. **Google really takes it when Brian reviews on the web 🙂
Hey Fernando. That’s awesome to hear. Glad I could help you get those videos ranking 🙂
Hey Brian
Ive noticed in the Google SERP’s sometimes my thumbnails dont show up (they work fine in YT)…Any idea why this is?
Hmmm. I’m honestly not sure why that is, Tim. Might be something Google’s testing out.
Thank you so much! What a great value you provide! Blessings to you…
No problem, Janetta 🙂
Very nice, a comprehensive overview of all necessary steps. Thanks a mil!
You’re welcome, Mark. Let me know how they work out for you 🙂
Hi Brian
Thanks for very good tips and info and i would like to ask about somethings, which is:
1- I know that do backlinks with bots or programs, that not good for SEO and Big Brother Google do not love it “i mention to Fiverr Gig”.
2- You do not say anything about Ping work and is that good for websites and youtube and it’s bad for SEO of websites or youtube,
Thanks and waith your reply.
Thanks Mohaamed. Like anything in SEO, you should be careful (even with YouTube videos). Pinging is useless.
Hi Brian,
I appreciate the info for sure, One question. How to you find “video keywords” and how would they differ from what I can get in GAW Account?
Shawn
No problem, Shawn. You can actually use SEMRush and see all the keywords YouTube.com is ranking for. Then search within those results
for keywords that you might want to rank for.
Hey Brian! As you know I like to perfect my video rankings in Google. So I would like to share what’s been simply amazing for me. Case study Google search tube sniper pro or any version of that keyword, review, 2, 2 review. And I’m number 1. Won’t share all my secrets but I’m more than generous. I’ve managed to rank well by doing 3 simple things. 1. Using Soovle.com to get lsi keywords. 2. Commenting on the top 3 videos on YouTube for my topic. 3. Adding the top 3 ranking videos on Google YouTube username to my tags and the end of my description. What really helps my rankings is the suggested video views I get from adding the top video tags. Google loves that. Picture this… if the top rated video is being watched and the link is being clicked then the user is finding what they were looking for in Google’s eyes. Genius really.
You’re the best. Honestly, I know something’s good when I have to read it multiple times to understand it. This is solid gold (and as you said, Genius).
Almost forgot… always add your YouTube video link and YouTube username at the end of your description. It’s no follow but if someone picks it up that’s usually a related pr1-pr4 backlink. Genius.
May you please help with a question.
Will negative back linking affect You tube video?
If you mean negative SEO, probably not. It’s hard to get YT videos penalized.
YouTube is a very high authority site. Picture this… even though it’s no follow you’ll be surprised just how much juice you can get. 20 no follow backlinks from 20 high pr related channels will do wonders for your video. Said that to say this. Negative Seo is usually used to take out the competition. But if you upload videos from the same ip address that you use to do negative seo to your competitors or yourself, your account will be closed. Here are some facts from about 20 case studies I’ve done. Brian my apologies for high jacking your post. Keyword density 10% yes no more. Keyword in url hyper link, url first keyword first it differs so either or. Backlinks high pr do follow and no follow then views 200-400 max, then crappy backlinks for the boost since YouTube is high authority. It’s so easy I spend on average $5-$10 and usually beat Han Fan who usually make 20 videos a launch! Didn’t learn this from any course just case study after case study. Lately been spending more time optimizing vseo and less time trying to rank. Check this out Google search offline client sniper. Didn’t even upload with file name optimized, 0 backlinks just perfect vseo. Brian I’m more than happy to do a guest post no backlinks needed just glad to help.
Thanks again, for your insights mrpelage. You’re obviously an expert on YT video marketing/ranking. You should start a blog about this and sell a premium course. I’d be the first person in line to buy it 🙂
Hi Chris…IME embeds are really important and then send some links to the pages with the embeds, then like Brian says be patient.
Great article. These are guidelines I usually follow and this helps explain it a bit better for me. I do have a question about the description. When you say “Put your link at the very top of the video”, are you talking about the link to the youtube video or link or your website? My co-worker likes to put in the youtube link that goes to the same video in the description. Does that help?
Regards,
Alex
Thanks Alex. I meant put the link to your site at the top (so that you get a higher CTR). But some people also put a link to the video so that they get links to the video in case the video gets picked up by a scraper site.
Your the first person that I have found that has mentioned a “video search” in Google. This is a GREAT point that I will continue to look for and title in the right way to acquire these searches. I do mostly local SEO, and many of the terms that I want to target are not viable as “video searches” per say. I have found that combining reviews with local search terms works well, and that videos can rank about 5x faster than traditional SEO when done correctly.
Now a question.
Since the inclusion of hyperlinks in YouTube comments, do you think that linking to your video from inside YouTube itself (on comparable videos) will help rank that video?
Thanks!
Thanks Dustin. That’s something I learned the hard way after trying to rank YT videos for non-Video Keywords. Yes, that can definitely help send a little bit of internal juice to your video. The only issue is that older comments can get pushed to another page where there’s little to no PR.
Brian,
I have been experimenting with ranking YouTube videos and eliminating the variables mentioned above to see what could be left out for a video to rank. So far for lower competition videos I have found that videos as short as 10 seconds with under 100 views, no comments, and no likes can rank within a few days.
I even found a terms that return ‘not enough data’ in YouTube but gets 350 searches in Google monthly and the two of the top 3 results are Youtube Videos. While I am now the top video in YT for the term, the #2 Video is the one used in the Google SERPs. Any thoughts on why the Google SERPs choose lower ranking YT videos to show? I am leaning towards the lack of social signals but would love your input.
I am currently attempting to rank a short video for the term ‘how to make money online” which gets a ton of traffic monthly. I added the keyword in the title and description, and I am blasting the crap out of it with GSA so I am interested to see where the cutoff is for being able to rank without and engagement signals.
Thanks for another great article and the idea to launch an experiment.
Thanks for sharing that info, Brian. I’d be curious to see if those really short videos stick over the long-term. I’ve seen YT videos get a huge freshness boost. But time will tell. Definitely keep me posted on how your experiments work out for you 🙂
Really detailed post and wonderful insight. Learnt a lot from this port. Thanks for sharing. Cant wait to use everything in my video campaigns!!!
Nice! Rock on Sudhi.
I am afraid this method doesn’t work anymore for ranking in Google, although it does work for ranking within YT. You can read up on it at the blackhat forum on this thread /goo.gl/C00FKn
Makes sense, Foob. It was getting pretty spammy.
Brian am a silent reader of your awesome posts….. Trust me this one pushed me in your commenting area…!! Great stuff…. You always come with quality Thumbs up man..!!! Thanks for sharing it with us…! Stay Blessed
Thank you!
Hi Brain i a big fan of you website i always find a amazing thing here. Now a days i was searching on YouTube Ranking Factor and found your website n 5 Position. Whats about addmefast video views they give 30 sec video view for every viewer. Waiting for your answer before take any action.
Thanks Saif. I’ve honestly never used that service before…
Having tried Fiverr to boost my video views, I now see 300 views frozen and a link to
https://support.google.com/youtube/troubleshooter/2991876?p=viewcount&rd=1
Definitely not what I expected to get 😉
Ouch. That can happen KU. I’d be super-careful about where you get your YT views these days.
that’s good to hear. From your experience, would you recommend waiting a week or two to blast,
That’s a good idea 🙂
Im not seeing your bluehost review video on page 1. Did something change with whats needed to rank?
Like all rankings, David, that video’s result tends to fluctuate quite a bit.
Hi dean , thanks for his information before. I am trying to rank my youtube. Right now , I became the No. 1 video on youtube search. But I have not reached page one on google search. Especially after I type my keywords in google.com there are many competitors i slap in page 2-3. but when i type in my keywords google.co.id, I am in position 10 page 1.
According to my experience in my country search, google.com is more mostly used than google.co.id
What do you think I need to do to rank in google.com? Thanks for your help before
I’d make sure that video appeals to US viewers, Reza.
Really useful guide Brian! We have around 100 explainer videos on YouTube that could definitely be ranking better, will be putting this into practice. Quick question, can you suggest any tools that actually track YouTube rankings?
Cheers,
Guy
Thanks Guy! Let me know how it goes.
Hmmm. I actually don’t but I heard that Authority Labs was working on that.
This is the actual tool I use to keep track of all my clients and my personal videos on YouTube and Google.
Ha ha ha! Here’s the url https://www.wsotoolz.com/video-rank-checker/
Thanks man! Great find 🙂
WOW, That’s what i’d call a detailed, step by step guide. I have one question though. When you promote your youtube video (aka building backlinks), have you noticed if it affects it’s rankings inside youtube? Of course if a video is displayed on google it certainly has more views and likes which can affect it’s rankings inside youtube search engine, but i’d like to know if simply by building links on it, i will see positive results inside youtube.
I’d also like to point out that recently social media sites tend to rank higher than in the past. For example facebook, twitter, linkedin etc tend to rank as easy as youtube videos (or even better).
Thanks Alex. I’d call it that too 🙂
That’s something that a lot of SEOs debate. I personally haven’t seen links influence YT rankings, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Also, good call
on social media profiles. They do rank well these days.
Hey Brian and Alex, the backlinks doesn’t necessarily help your YouTube rankings, but backlinks from other videos and channels are a big part of the YouTube algorithm and Google rankings is a part of YouTube algorithm as well. What really helps is higher PR backlinks and front page Google rankings, that will naturally help your video rank better on YouTube. If you have good rankings on Google, your YouTube rankings also get better. Then the obvious, high retention views is what dominates YouTube search results. Ex. Google search “draas” without quotes, my client video is number 5 on Google and number 1 on YouTube. How? Everybody has more views, likes, favorites and comments. But my video is properly optimized, and my Google presents is evident.
Hi Brian,
Can you share the YouTube view service you used?
Hey Sal. Unfortunately they stopped accepting any new customers (and I haven’t used them in a year…not sure if they’re any good anymore).
How does the PAD submission work? Are they going to take my YT link or is there more involved than that? Will they ask for the video that I downloaded, which is not the YT link. A little clarification on that?
It’s pretty much semi-automated submissions, Joe. They let you link to anything…including random YT videos 🙂
Some great stuff here. Especially your 17 powerful back-links post which I learned a couple of new things which is awesome. Thanks! My question is Bluehost allows you to have your (Hxxp://backlinko.c0m/bluehostdiscount) redirect to your Bluehost affiliate lander? Or is it you just can’t have your PPC URL as a redirect? I am not sure that I totally understand Bluehost terms. Thanks Brian.
Thanks Jon. Yes, you can redirect the affiliate URL from a more user-friendly URL using a plugin called Pretty Links.
Hi Brian, thank you for great article. What is the best youtube high retention views service?
You’re welcome, Ron. I actually haven’t used a service in a while. The one I used to use (Vagex) shut down a while back.
Ron, Google just had some major updates, avoid buying any type of views. Like I previous said, high pr backlinks is what you need. Best practice is using about 5 do follow web 2.0 properties to link directly to your YouTube video, and build all backlinks to your 5 web 2.0 properties so if your video gets deleted from buying views you still have all that backlink juice that you can redirect to the new video.
Will the PAD idea work for You Tube videos? What will they need to promote it?
Yes it can help for sure. You just need a PAD file to start with, Joe.
Hi,
Very helpful article. Thank you for sharing!
I would like asking you one question: How to find a public blog network? Very hard to find some!!!
Can you give some examples of Public Blog Networks?
Thanks Antoine. You can find them on internet marketing forums.
Thanks that’s an awesome review…
would you mind telling me…
if I just get a blast…like a 100,000 or 200,000 link blast..will it work ?
you said all kinds of links work..so was just wondering..thanks..
It can work, but maybe that’s too much of a blast.
Do you link yotube video with anchor text ?
Yes I usually do Kamil.
Does using the YouTube video link instead of the website link in blog commenting work? And if I have a How-to playlist, then is it better to create backlinks to the playlist or to a individual video?
Sometimes, but it depends on the blogger. I don’t usually let people link to videos in comments at Backlinko.
I have a realtor client that wants his videos ranked (on google not youtube) for major local search terms like “homes for sale (city)”, etc. Here’s the rub: he does not want to pay em until I get them ranked.
So, what resources (paid or otherwise, blackhat or otherwise) do you recommend?
I’d follow the steps in this guide, Mike.
I was not aware of ‘Video Keywords’ until i found your blog…Thanks for the step by step explanation. 🙂
My pleasure, Lovely.
great post brian!
got 3 questions for ya. hope you don’t mind 🙂
1. which views, likes, comments company are you currently using?
2. which backlink gigs are you currently using? the fiverr gig provided above is not working anymore. (Both PAD , social bookmarks and articles)
3. what are the anchor texts % should we use for ranking youtube videos.
thanks!
Thanks Howard.
1. I use vagex
2. I just use similar fiverr gigs
3. 50% keyword anchors
Hey brian dean,
Awesome article i don’t know about youtube SEO but after reading this article i fully understand how to rank video on youtube and google also.
Thanks Vishal!
Hi Brian,
wonderful article, as usual.
What would you suggest in this case: there are keywords with +1000 search volume and there is no videos for some keywords at YouTube. It’s not in English language, it’s my local language and that’s the reason.
I asked you this because you have said that we have to find videos. Thanks a lot. Nedim
Nedim, you may have to compromise if you’re targeting a non-English country.
Great post Brian. I was just searching how to rank Youtube videos. So you post cleared me everything. Soon gonna apply these things on my new videos.
Stay blessed stay safe.
Thanks
Sounds good, Usama!
I did followed good SEO practice for a recent video for a Client.
All what here expressed and also all what suggested by the expertise of AdWords (reached to the free call number).
Nevertheless the video is positioned ad page 25 using the most important keywords.
In other words: no climbing into the SERP.
I can also tell you: the very first 2 days, the video was positioned at page 1 on 7th position.
After that plunged at 25 and there still. No way to make it moves.
Hmmm. Adwords is very different than SEO Tormy. That could be why…
This is a brilliant technique. I am going to try this and see if I can rank my video on Google. Didn’t realise that it should be at least 5 minutes.
Thanks Shalu. Keep me posted 🙂
I’m curious if you know whether or not you tube takes periods and other symbols into account during searches. I know both yahoo and google searches will vary when adding these, but you tube doesn’t seem to. Any advice here?
I’m honestly not sure about that…
Brian,
I’ve got to disagree with you about what you refer to as “video keywords”.
From my experiences and from what I teach in my Youtube tutorials — those interested in ranking a video in YT should perform keyword research and search for search terms that DO NOT yet have a video ranking on the first page of Google, for their desired keyword or search phrase.
It’s much easier to rank for these phrases, when there is NOT a video already present for a search term.
This is what I’ve found to work best Brian.
Greg
I guess we have to agree to disagree. I’ve ranked youtube videos for insanely competitive keywords in the past (including “bluehost review”). 100% of the time, they were Video Keywords.
i checked a video with seoquaqe and it has 16 backlinks from youtube how is this possible?
I guess that person is linking from his YT channel, Greg.
Hi Brian, this is very very good content. I followed everything step by step. I just subscribed to your website too. You mentioned that this video only cost $90 to make! Can you share your video resources? I am trying to start a Thai cooking blog. 🙂
Thank you!
Thanks Ploy. I just hired a production company where I live (Berlin) and hired someone on Elance to do the post-production. Good luck with your cooking blog 🙂
Brian – What if a keyword doesn’t have YouTube videos ranked on the first page, but they do exist on other pages of the query? Would they be considered “video keywords” because the potential exists for the videos to rank higher with the proper Video SEO? Thanks in advance for your insight…
That can work, Andrew. But in my experience you want a keyword where there’s a video on page 1.
Hi Brian,
I love this post – it hadn’t occurred to me to rank a YT video until I read that a fellow affiliate was getting 35% of his sales through YT!
I have two questions if you don’t mind:
1. Is it possible to post the same video twice and rank it for different keywords?
2. I did a search for Video keywords and 1 video came up in the top10 results – is this enough to make it a legit video keyword or do you need to see 2-3 videos show up?
Thanks
Angelina
Happy to help, Angelina.
1. You need unique videos
2. 1 is enough as long as it’s from YouTube.
Well i dont know how to thank you ” Brian ” for that big effort you are offering .
Thanks alot for the huge help .
Love Josef <3 🙂
This comment is thank you enough Josef 🙂
I like your site, however I don’t agree with you about finding a YT video ranking on Google (video keywords)
I have a bunch of my clients videos on the first page of G that never displayed a video before.
Hey AJ, that’s been my personal experience. But I’m sure it’s possible to rank YT videos that don’t
already have video result…but it’s much harder to do it.
Thank you for this important information, I’m planning to share my videos on Google+ Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Flickr, Reddit and some social bookmarking networks like Digg, Stumbleupon, Will this help me too ?
Yes, that can help, Sahar.
Very well written post, Brian.
Love your site layout and feel!
From my own personal “first hand” experience, the way that many YouTube channels are ranking their videos for competitive keywords(within competitive niches) is through buying mountains of traffic, subscribers, etc,
I have been analyzing a number of YouTube channels(competitors) and websites, after initially being baffled as to how they shot up to first page(mid to top) after only just recently setting up a Channel
My suspicions were confirmed when I noticed that a number of channels) has thrown a mountain of views(millions) and subs( tens of thousands) plus other social FACTORS
It worked, as they are now firmly cemented near the top of their niche, and would be banking some quite large figures…..
It only took me a few minutes to get this Analysis data…
So, a number of YouTube channels are currently “ranking the pants of me” and unless I wish to risk my account, there is not all that much I can do…except pump out more “high quality videos, and hope that one of them …takes off…..
Hey Daniel, you’re 100% right. There’s a lot of that going on right now. But knowing Google, they’re not going to put up with it much longer, which will mean we will be ranking in the long-run.
Brian, When a person subscribes to your YT channel as a result of watching a video, does it matter if they subscribe while Watching the video, or after the video is finished? What about subscribing after only 1 minute of the video or half way through? Does the timing matter? (You had mentioned if they subscribe after watching one of our videos it helps the video rank. I have known that but always wondered if it helps if the video is finished or not?)
Thanks
That’s a good question, Greg. Honestly, I’m not sure they look at that level of detail (although they might).
Brian thanks for your reply. True, They probably don’t get as detailed as to distinguish between a person subscribing during or after watching a video…. but you never know! Crazy things can happen. I will assume if you don’t know, then it likely doesn’t matter.
Also, I was unable to re-find my post to reply back to your reply. Is there a convenient way to get to the end of the posts or to view my own post from today – other than click on “next comments” 50 times? Thanks.
Greg, I’m open to the idea that they use it. As you said, you never know 🙂
Unfortunately not. I do the same thing to look at old comments 🙁
Brian Dean i would like to thank you this video educated me alot now i know the real term in use behind the scenes with getting your back behind google in youtube. much love, and thanks again sir 🙂
You’re welcome, Christian.
Hi Brian,
about video keywords. why do we have to look for keyword that only has video result on SERP.?
how if no one has made a video for a particular keyword, but the keyword itself worth to aim?
thank you
You don’t have to, Andre. I’ve just found that it works best 🙂
Andrew Tran is right, your content is something else. Found your site about a year ago and haven’t seen it since, so now going back and reading all your new posts to catch up.
Thanks Tom 🙂
Hi Brian,
This is a very helpful post for me. I liked your trick for related videos in youtube using competitors website as a tag 🙂 it works. This was new for me.
Following your blog really awesome content.
Thanks for educating us.
Happy to help 🙂
This is a great tutorial! I didn’t realize “fake views” were even possible and am pleased YouTube is able to deal with them appropriately.
Thanks Jennifer. Yup, fake views are definitely on the way out 🙂
Excellent post, I learned a few new things here that will definitely boost what I am already doing to rank high for videos.
Thanks Jonathan.
As always, a fantastic post. I’m curious to know where you get a pro videographer, studio and editing for your video for only $90. Do you use a student or where do you find people to do this? I’m in Australia so I know it will be different but usually I can use a similar method. Or is it mostly Craigs List type ads?
Thanks for great content as always!
Thanks Tess. I just find random people off of Craigslist in Berlin (where I live)
🙂
Great tips Brian!
I’ve seen success with making videos lately and am looking forward to using your SEO tips to help my videos rank on page 1.
Thanks for the value!
Jeremy
You’re welcome, Jeremy. Happy to help.
Amazing trick (av. monthly searches 300 ) for keyword search. Thanks for all tips and trick for youtube videos.
Glad you liked that one, James.
Hey Brian,
What is the microphone you’re using in the videos??
Not sure what it’s called, Scott. It’s a fairly cheap wearable mic from Amazon.
if we have new channel and don’t have any activity at all. how can we do all these things at a time. like retention views, blog post, comments blah blah
Aman, The foundation is keywords and a great video. You don’t need an audience for that.
I tried to download your PDF with two different emails. Didn’t get a confirmation email at either email address (and yes, I checked my spam filter).
Sorry about that, Kass. Might be an issue with Aweber. I just emailed you the PDF.
Great article it was extremely helpful! As a side note, who did your video you mentioned for $90? It was great quality and we are looking for companies that we could outsource to do ours.
Happy to help, Emily 🙂
I hired someone locally to shoot it and hired a guy on Elance to edit it.
Hey Brain
Another fantastic post!
Just a quick question, is there a way to determine if certain search phrases which dont currently show video results (namely “how to’s”) would do if a youtube video existed with enough relavence?
Cheers!
David
Hey David. Unfortunately not. Only Google knows that 😉
Brian
I have implemented some of your tips and have managed to break into the top 10 of videos (our video was 23 for key word when I first read your post). I have held back on implementing all of the tips so hopefully I can keep climbing up the rankings as I try more of your tips
Thanks for your help, great post
Ed
That’s awesome to hear, Ed. Rock on!
Great to know. I ranked on page one for the first video I tried to rank. Super exciting. Then no ranking for the next one I tried. Good to know what to look for! BTW, I’d love to see the YouTube Checklist, but I’m being offered the 25,000 visitors guide when I joined the mailing list. Is there a direct link to it?
Congrats on your success Brighton. You should have the YT guide in your inbox 🙂
i don’t usually reply in posts BUT your wonderful explaining and sharing methods make me browsing your blog all the night even if tomorrow is “EID” (holiday) 😀
i will start practicing all your methods and let’s see what happens .About that method .. is it working even with monetizing youtube videos ?
Sounds good, Abdellah. Yes, it can work for all YT videos.
Thanks Brian for this informative article, I use some of the methods when uploading videos onto Youtube. I also really liked you video on keyword research, which opened my eyes to new places to look for new keyword ideas.
You’re welcome, Arthur. Happy to help 🙂
Hello Brian,
I really appreciated the information you provided in your article.
Question: Who do you recommend I hire to have my videos made?
Thanks
Sure, no worries Philip. I actually make them myself.
I was just searching for “how to rank youtube video” and your site poped up on the first page in google…
Very good content you shared … but just one thing to ask .. which “category” we should choose while uploading a video … because the categories are limited and does category matter ?
I haven’t found that categories make any difference.
Excellent post! Thanks so much. I was struggling with choosing keywords based on whether they did or did not already have a video ranking on p.1 of Google. This has been extremely helpful.
Happy to help, Vanessa. Let me know how your videos go.
Hi! What are your thoughts on adding more than one link to the descriptions? I’m in a situation where I’m using one language neutral video for several different countries. I’m expecting quite a lot of views and I was hoping leverage that fact to SEO several different pages (in various languages)
Jacob, I’ve honestly never tried it.
Thank you for your post. It´s great not only for SEO, but also great to learn English on it… 🙂
You’re welcome, Alex 🙂
Thank you for this valuable resource on video SEO, something anyone who now finds web site SEO increasingly difficult (like me) should find very useful.
You’re welcome, Paul. Let me know how the strategies work for you.
I was wondering if you are still following the replies here..and if you are..my question: I used to be able to land a video on page one of GOOGLE for just about anything as long as the search count was typically under 500,000. It seems now, it is more difficult even to land on the first page for something like this..(and please go look at the examples and provide your input if you are still monitoring this page)
Example: bankruptcy attorney in port lavaca (I could not get it there..but did get it here) hire bankruptcy attorney in port lavaca ..also exchange the word attorney with laywer and you will see it is stil there.. any ideas? thanks
Michael, it’s definitely harder now. But it can still be done.
Hi Brian,
I’m from Germany and found your article while searching for SEO optimation for my Let’s Play channel. Very interesting and a lot of information I can adopt. So thanks a lot and keep it up.
You’re welcome, Phillip.
Hey Brian, thank you for the info about ranking YT videos, I’ve been doing YT for about 4 years now and even tho I’ve been able to get a couple of million visitors to my sites I am now only wondering what could have happened if I knew about all this earlier.
Now, my question would be the following, a competitive niche has NO YouTube videos on the G’s 1st page. I did some digging and found 1 video on Page 7, and a DM video on Page 13, the keyword has about 80k results, and no one has titled their video with the exact keyword match – (that’s indexed on Google).
What are my chances of actually ranking on the 1st page here?
– My video will be about 3 minutes long (really no room to make it longer)
– The video will be pretty much HQ, with voice-over, a tutorial actually, completely unique
– I’ll be able to drip-feed views/likes/subs at the same time but not for long, maybe first 300 views and a reasonable amount of L/D/SUBS/Social Shares to go along with it
Do you think this (in any universe) could be possible to send G a signal to rank my video at least for some “test” air time?
Thank you in advance, you deserve it!
Eddy, that’s impossible for me to say. The best way to find out is to give it a go.
Hey Eddy, my name is Stanford Pelage I am a YouTube and Google seo expert. I’ve made several comments on this thread and I would suggest that you went through the entire comments and look click ctrl f and type mrpelge and read all of my comments, that would drastically help you. The thing about YouTube Google rankings since April 2014 Google had a major update, many vseo have been crying but the solution is pretty simple. Treat your important videos like a website, don’t over optimize and don’t keyword stuff. Everyone says to do long articles, I would recommend a 1,000-1,500 word unique article for YouTube videos with a lot of competition. Don’t spam your video filename, don’t spam the tags. Just 3-5 tags would be sufficient. Main keyword,main keyword with an s and an lsi keyword and what your product does would be perfect, don’t want to confuse Google, that represents spam.
Build generic anchor text like watch this video with low pr backlinks and use the high pr backlinks for your main keywords and lsi keywords. Related keywords does wonders for videos. Keep your anchor text ratio at 10 main keywords, 50% url and 20-30 generic, click here, watch this video and so on. Build backlinks with Generic and url first everyday for 2 weeks and keep it consistent, then once you can find your video with serpfox.com then you start with your exact anchor matches and you continue to do generic and url backlinking. Don’t buy views unless you know your video won’t get deleted. I never buy views. Just vseo. Hope this helps.
Everytime I read your posts, I can rest assured that each second of my time was worth it. Thanks for the concisely packaged value Brian!
You’re welcome, Brian!
Thanks for the amazing article! What would be the perfect proportion of keywords in the channel description? I heard you should use the keyword 6 times in a 1000 characters description.
You’re welcome, Anna. I usually just use my keyword 1-2 times.
Very good read. Thanks, Brian.
$90 video? You must be joking!
Dennis
You’re welcome, Dennis.
Fantastic video Brian. I am looking for someone to create youtube video on my website. So that I can implement your tips and trics to rank the video on youtube.
Best regards,
Eric Duncan
Thanks Thomas. Hope it helps.
This is great value Brian! Thanks so much for sharing this information on YouTube Videos. It’s pretty exciting stuff and I really believe video is the next wave of the future.
You’re welcome, Bob.
Brian, if I use a transcription of the YouTube video IN the video description AND in a blog on my website do you know if Google will score me negatively for having the same content in 2 places?
Joel, I’d create unique content for each one.
Thanks Brian for this very helpful article. With your help i am uploading my first video right now. Lets see how it performs with the tuning i done with your PDF.
Sounds good, Michi.
Hi Brian,
I was very exciting to read your youtube seo tutorial.
Is there any way to rank a youtube video fast?
Because, over the internet, I heard about a lots of methods including “unlisted method” (people upload their video on unlisted, then add few hudred views, after edit video and push on listed).
How about this?
Thanks!
Thanks Vali. This strategy is as fast as I know without doing anything shady.
Hi Brian-
Great post. Question: are you still building backlinks to videos? If so, could you please share your secret formula? Love your stuff and genuine content.
Peter
Hi Peter, I am. But I’m focusing on ranking within YT at the moment…which means a focus on views vs. links.
The tips are great like always. I am facing one big issue here. I followed all your steps, and my videos are NOT ranking.
one thought:
I live in the US, but create videos for german speaking audience. Can it be that youtube is noticing, that I am uploading my videos from the US and and they will not be considered for the german geo-targeted audience ?
You mentioned you live in Berlin at the moment.. so I am german native, lived in Munich as well… what’s your experience with that ? Would be great to know if this might cause a problem.
Just strange that my vidoes don’t show up at all for any related keywords, even by doing everything you mentioned. So yes, curious about your thoughts.
Thx a lot for all your great tips & keep rocking !
Hi Bernhard, I doubt that’s an issue. But it’s hard to say without actually looking at the videos. Also, depending on the keyword, it can take a while to rank.
Ohh.. sorry… my bad, forgot to put the link to my video. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzRlTadqgXE
as you can see it’s a trailer.. not sure if youtube also recognizes a voice in the audio, that might help to rank ?
however, I did one simple video in the past for a different market… this video ranks so well.. it’s crazy… still today it ranks as #5 on youtube.
it’s just so strange that this video and several others I created odn’t rank anywhere. Not even within the first 500 places.
curious about your thoughts.. thx Brian for any little help, keep rocking !!!
Bernhard, I didn’t mean that I had time to personally review your video. I was just saying that it’s hard to give specific advice without a full review.
ohhh I see… lol; ok.. so how does it work with a full review ? Thx Brian !
Hi Brian,
I Stumbled upon this by accident. I found this very useful (added to my favorite 🙂 ).
Some of the services in Fiverr on videos sometimes really mess things up. As you mentioned it, we need to be very careful as google can find a lot of ways to ruin your day. Not saying that it’s bad, it’s so happens that some people want the easy way in.
Thanks for the tip.
Mark
You’re welcome, Mark. That’s 100% right: 9 times out of 10 those Fiverr gigs aren’t worth it.
Missed a big one here…did not read all of the comments – but CC transcript or manual transcript is huge.
Good call, Brian. I’ve actually added those to my last batch of videos. Need to add that to the post.
Hi Brian,
Many thanks for this:o)
I do have a question though… with the ‘video keywords’ I have shortlisted, google is typically listing one youtube video on the first page of results.
Is there a way to determine whether or not it is worth competing with that video? (Assuming google will continue to show only one video result.)
Many thanks!
Noel, at that point it’s worth creating a video and testing it out.
Brian,
Well, I know you’re “walking the talk” because I found this on the first page of Google while I was looking for ways to promote my family’s new YouTube parody channel! I really appreciate your tips and your videos are really professional. My question is, how do the “rules” differ for promoting funny videos? Are there good places you know of to post those? I know you’re crazy busy but I’d love to hear your advice!
All YouTube stuff aside, how are things, my friend? I hope you’re enjoying the holidays so far.
Brittany
Hi Brittany, I’m well thanks 🙂
The basic rules are the same.
Hi Brian,
Your site is awesome! Great info that is easy to implement. Thank you.
Video question. Are you just using outsourcers from ODesk, or do you have connections?
The cost of the video was very good, the quality however is great!
Thanks again sir,
Steve
Thanks Steve. I actually use Elance, but it’s the same idea 🙂
One thing I’ve been curious about from a video SEO standpoint is captions. Logic tells me that if you upload your own caption file to the video, YouTube would use that to discern what your video is about and use that info in how it ranks your video in the results. I’m running an experiment on one of my YouTube channels right now to see if they have any effect on views over time. We’ll see!
-Matt
Hey Matt, I’ve uploaded transcripts but haven’t seen much of a difference. Can’t hurt though.
Hey Brian,
Thank you for the post. Some of my YT videos are ranked in YT. But they are not stable in ranking. Can you tell me, how to stable them?
Thank you in advance.
Paul, fluctuations are normal. I’d just continue to build quality views and they’ll rank higher over time.
I cannot add a “suggested video” to my channel. Have they gotten rid of this feature?
Hmmm. Not sure Ryan. I haven’t checked in a while.
Not one to usually comment, but a very good blog. I salute. Video Seo is something that is massively overlooked.and you’ve nailed it on the end beautifully.
Some very interesting YouTube SEO Tips, Brian.
It seems that with YouTube once a channel is quite popular(as in big) in a given Niche, you can almost throw out a large chunk of the SEO On page off page optimizations, ect, and the video will rank up on page one(also in Google search)….
Have seen this over and over, again….they just throw up a video….and it hits near the top of page one in around a day or so…(and pulls in some high traffic and engagement)
Though, it seems that for small to average sized channels that are not considered to Be Authority channels( in a niche) or, haven’t broken through to the top level(within a particular niche ) every possible effort to gain further exposure and expansion, is required…
So, for these small to average channels, uploading videos and hitting page one…or even further down the ladder(in certain niches – moderate comp) can be a long and bumpy process………
Thanks Brian,
I am glad you wrote this article! What are your thoughts on wistia and vimeo? Are they worth the investment are there any alternatives for small startups?
Great article. Stumbled across your stuff yesterday! I have a question if you’re able to spare the time:
I’m researching keywords to optimise a video. In google, I have searched for a question like “how do I know I have nodules”. There is a YouTube video, but it’s 6th in the google list. Does this mean there’s a really good chance that you can out perform this video and still go for the keywords? Thank you 🙂 Chris
Hi Chris, that’s a good keyword to consider for sure.
Hi Brian:o) Can I omit the word ‘video’ in the file name if it’s an mp4, or does it always make sense to keep it in (as your example) ‘weight_loss_tips_video.mp4’
Thanks!
Good post, I will put it into action for the next month and see what results I get back. Thanks for sharing your advice and strategy. 🙂
Thanks for a very helpful post Brian.
I was just wondering if you perhaps could recommend a software/tool that can automate the process of finding “video keywords” instead of doing it manually?
Thanks again.
You’re welcome, Herschel. I think SECockpit has a feature that can help with that.
Some great insights here Brian. I particularly liked your “video keywords” explanation. Good stuff!
Thanks Andrew!
Hey Brian, I’m in the current process of optimizing my YouTube Channel and update everything I can to improve its SEO rankings.
I also went through your entire checklist, definitely very cool tips man, thanks!
Sergio
PS. Oh and the in-video feature inside settings, is now called “featured video” only, I can’t see anything about “in-video” anymore.
Happy to help, Sergio and thanks for the heads up. I’ll fix that next time I update the post.
How would you go about checking how your YouTube video is ranking in the SERPs and on YouTube?
By searching for it?
We’ve found that our own Google Search results are based on our own browsing preferences, and prefer to use an objective ranking tool
Lori, you can use a web proxy or VPN.
Just use the “incognito” window of your browser (you are not logged in there).
Great article Brian.
I learned a lot from it, but I don’t agree with you on video length.
Short and sweat is what is required on YouTube. 5 to 7 minutes is the optimum time for YouTube viewers. Keep your video to 15 minutes at the most. Hardly anyone watches a YouTube video for an hour no matter how good it’s content.
Love your summary of video SEO. I’ve been exploring the wonders of YouTube for a couple of years and its definitely underrated as a lead generation tool.
There’s just one thing I’d like to add, Google does “listen” to videos as it uses voice recognition software to interpret the words of videos, and the ‘interpretation’ can be seen in the “Subtitles” section of the video. Its interesting to see what YouTube thinks you are saying, compared to what you actually are.
I wonder if you’ve tested modifying the Subtitle text a little Brian as I once got training that recommended its worthwhile to check or make minor changes.
You can rank youtube videos fast with fake views, and very well…
As you mentioned, you just need long retention (“high retention”) views.
You’re just awesome! I have got a new thing from your amazing article. I always thought that ‘tags’ is the one of the most important thing than keyword. But now, it is clear to me. Thanks a lot.
I really like the SEO info you put out on for YouTube and keywords on websites. I am presently working on a Home based STEM website I offer for free. I have someone working on my SEO. He is using 60 listings on busy sites. My question is, Is this something that would replace mete words and keywords in a website?
Great article, Brian – thanks!
Hi Brian great info. As i have recently started a you tube channel, and had to learn everything from scratch, which would you say is more important for ranking/ views- correct tagging or title?
Your Title is definitely the ranking factor that is going to hold more weight. I could argue the title is the most important factor.
What an informative post. Stumbled on it this link on Google first page while searching for how to optimize YT videos.
Hi Brian, everytime when I visit your blog I found some gold. Thank you for sharing great things from a long time.
We have saw that, some low quality content sites make huge number of backlinks and then they may rank for short period of time. But after all hit by penalty.
Is it same with Youtube. Those who do link building here or connect a lot of channels can outrank quality videos which we create without doing these things?
Another great detailed report on ranking videos. I can easily rank videos within days but your method looks like it will make videos stick for months on out. Excellent Brian. This serve as a great resource to have as the perfect guide.
Thanks for keeping us well informed with your informative posts.
Jose
Cheers Brian, great tips, rying them out right now…Tags have always confused me!
Hi Brian,
Amazing article just like all your work. Thank you!
Quick question: You say you don’t recommend payed views (i.e. fiverr) which is understandable for various reasons. However, would you say that if you start from scratch (no social network whatsoever and a brand-new video) it could be beneficial to buy maybe 2,000-5,000 views, a bunch of likes/subscribers/etc. just to get it started and then let it grow organically?
Hey Brian, thanks for the great information. Most S.E.O (Trainers) leave out a lot of useful information leaving me stuck but not you man. I already signed up for the checklist and ready to work hard. I’m starting a beauty channel and beauty blog and we both know I need all the S.E.O tips that are around lol. Thanks again and looking forward to read more of your great content!
Thanks for the tips Brian. I am going to give all of your steps a shot and see if I can help increase the viewership of my films. I put a lot into my movies and I am hoping people enjoy them as much as I do producing them. Take care.
Hello,
This is a very nice article. It’s very useful for me as a beginner youtuber. I have a question? How many (at least) back-link i need to rank in google or youtube.
Thanks
Very valuable insights you are presenting Brian, thanks so much for your generosity. I would like to gain your opinion on the value of 1-3 min promotional videos for services companies – do you think they still have value for ranking them in google searches for related keywords, or are they too ‘2003’?
Hi Brian, this is my first time to visit your page and I find it very helpful. I will be visiting often. Does the length of a video determine it’s ranking in youtube? Thanks.
Would you recommend using videos that our firm has created for clients (as long as they give permission to do so) as a way of improving our rank for certain keywords? Great article by the way, we will begin putting this into action.
Great article, I feel that I have learnt a lot from reading this, and will definitely be using your tips on my You tube videos from now on, to try and improve my views.
Hi Brian
I have seen nowadays, people are getting more deep into YouTube SEO. Every YouTuber wants to rank their YouTube Videos But very few got succeed.
I am also a YouTuber and I love to upload interesting videos on my YouTube Channel.
I had started my YouTube Channel before 2 months ago and I was uploading interesting and helpful videos on regular basis But I was still not satisfied with the results.
I wasn’t getting enough views on my videos. My Videos were not getting ranked. So I decided to learn a bit more about YouTube SEO.
I had learnt so many things from this article and I am sure, I’ll get better results after implementing these ranking tips.
Thanks Brian for sharing this great piece of content.
Happy Blogging 😉
Hello Brian,
You should change your first image “This video is ranking #3 for the keyword “SEO strategy“… today your video is ranking #2 for that keyword.
Hey, Brian, your SEO video now ranks #2 in YT. 🙂 Just thought you’d want to know!
Hi Brian, just wanted to thank you for all the great info here… I am just starting to finally use YouTube for my business, and will be using your tips and suggestions for sure.. Cheers!
Hey Brian, thanks for the guide. I have a question, do backlinks have any effect on your videos? Do they help you rank your videos better? I’ve checked other websites and some people say they do, others the opposite.
Great Stuff Brian!! I have read carfeully throughout your guide and noted down a customized plan for myself to follow everytime I post youtube videos. By the end of the blog post, I saw that you had a checklist already provided haha. It is great however as I’ve written a more customizable one. You information is truly helpful and so valuable. Thanks so much for this blog post.
Kind regards,
Jameel
Excellent article Brian. We’re just ramping up our Youtube channel. Do you have any comments on whether there’s a difference in SEO from embedded YouTube videos on a landing page vs. watching the video directly on YouTube?
Hi Brian,
Would it be easy to have YouTube videos in a businesses YouTube channel show up in Google search results on searches for the businesses name? Or will Google only show videos for popular/relevant keywords and videos with lots of views?
Great article!! Thank you
Hey Brian, I’m really glad that you’ve come to the same conclusion as I. It settles my heart to have an expert think the same way.
I have 1 little problem with your claim about longer videos being better. Personally when I’m looking for a how to solution to a problem I prefer shorter videos because then I won’t have to click through the video to get to my answer. I think eventually it will be about offering the best information in the shortest span of time. I think ultimately that the retention rate of a shorter video with the same quality will beat a longer video just because it has less retention.. because people prefer easy and fast solutions. What do you think?
Thank you Brian for providing such enlightening tips on SEO optimization. I manage the YouTube channel of a bank. Not sure if you’d like to write another article on how to promote corporate channels with mainly business-related clips…
I came across your site searching for the KW how to rank YT Videos in google. Well I loved the simplicity but clear to the point approach.
I am still struggling with finding the best way for me to rank and make more money online. I usually make only around 300 – 500 online as a Freelancer on Fiverr. I tried ranking with YT videos and I achieved good results with one video with views around 19.000
Looking forward for more with your systematic approach!
Regards from Amman
Amin
Thanks a lot Brian for this brilliant article, my own experience with YouTube has been kind of a hit and miss thing and haven’t been doing a lot of stuff there these days.
This motivated me to push harder using the correct strategies.
Thanks a lot!
I have a YT channel on Funny Videos and no videos are ranking on Funny Videos keyword even though Im getting 2K views on every videos. So please help me out. 🙂
Regards
Hi – thanks for this website! I have a question regarding YouTube video optimization. We have 3 ads running that we want to post on YouTube. The issue is, each ad has both a 15 second spot & a 30 second spot. If this were a typical website, I’d just put a canonical tag on one of them. How would you recommended optimizing videos in this situation?
thank you so much for this tutorial, I get a lot good result for my Youtube videos.. and more money from monetize 🙂 $$
Hi Brian!
Amazing post, right on time since I’ve recently launched a Youtube channel. Just one question though:
Can I use several competitors channel names as tags or only one (per video)?
Incredibly descriptive and actionable to the layman of YouTube marketing… DEFINITELY going straight to Evernote.
Thank you, Brain! this will serve as my #1 guide to video content creation on YouTube.
I don’t mean to sound rude or anything but a few strategies, which you mentioned are pretty irrelevant. For instance, your video’s filename; or even the amount of words you have in your video’s description; embed your video in your site.
All doesn’t really matter much, Youtube doesn’t use backlinks to rank one’s video, or the filename of the video to know which search term its targeting. Also I’ve saw countless videos with barely no description outranking others with nearly 800 words.
The only thing that matters is watch time. The amount of time someone spends watching your video. Youtube associates this with the quality of your video. If you have a video with a lot of watch time, in other words, engagement then Youtube will give it more visibility to it in their search results.
Quick question though. What about a video that ranks quickly within 24 hours and it has no engagment no comments to views… yet because its key word optimized for youtube it ranks very high maybe among low competition keywords!! How could you go into a high competeion keyword and make a great video and have it move to page 1 in a week!! starting from ground zero no engament but great video and SEO.
you said “If your video stinks, it won’t rank…no matter how optimized it is for SEO.” . not true. ive seen terrible videos out rank nice professional videos because of bettwen SEO. so what do you mean here! Do you have it 100% figured out are you saying!
Just a small detail, but when you are creating file names separate the words with dashes not underscores 🙂
Brian
I was not aware of the keywords for video in youtube. I have been slightly moving away from using video on YouTube and using inbound video strategies as emphasize discussed by Wistia. I’m curious if you think embedding video on your site page through wistia instead of youtube embeds means a loss video seo opportunity?
This is really useful info, thank you. Just to clarify, you mentioned backlinks. Is this for improving the rank of youtube videos or the youtube channel? Thanks for your help.
Awesome article!! Thanks for sharing, I am somewhat familiar with SEO but have recently started a YouTube channel and I feel this information has been very helpful to me. I’m looking forward to reading more of your articles!
This is really useful info, thank you. Just to clarify, you mentioned backlinks. Is this for improving the rank of youtube videos or the youtube channel? Thanks for your help.
This is another excellent piece of content Brian. I now find myself asking, “What would Brian do?” while creating content/outreach. In this piece though, I cannot wrap my head around your video production only costing $90. Every time I have looked into video production/editing locally, the price has always been $1000+. Perhaps because I live so close to Hollywood LOL.
Thanks Keith. I do pay a lot more now. I updated the post.
Can you cite your sources?
Most of this is wrong or hearsay.
Nonetheless arguably it helps mislead my competitors
Hi Brian,
Great post as usual. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
What if the keyword has a video result in the first 100 results (or first 50), Do you think there is a chance that if I create a video it could get on the first page?
Another question, Do you think I should make the video longer than the already ranking video?
Thanks in advance.
Hey Brian, Is there any role of thumbnail to get more views on videos?
Do you believe that anchor text links to a particular video will help it rank not only on google, but on youtube? As long as the anchor text link is varied?
Brian,
Great article with lots of good info as usual. Are you saying that if the keywords don’t get 300 searches per month, the video won’t make it to Google results?
Although some business terms have smaller search numbers, a good Google listing would still be very welcomed by the owner.
Any ideas on this?
Thanks,
Tim
Hello Brian,
Thanks blog for youtube videos ranking, mate.
By profession, I am website designer. I always recommend my clients to make video for company intro and post to Youtube or other video submission sites.
To be honest, They are getting important sales leads from youtube as well.
I am fully agree with video length. I found that longer video is getting better rank than Shorter vidoes.
Cheers
Ben
Hi Brian,
Great content! I’m just wondering about the minimum length of 5 minutes. Do you have any numbers on how many people use the filter ‘short < 4 minutes' option when searching? I use it a lot myself. For me, that is a reason to keep my videos under 4 minutes where possible. Also, if you make your video longer than 5 minutes just for the sake of length, it can hurt the user experience. What are your thoughts on that?
I work in the Dutch language, producing how-to content, but I haven't found any 'video keywords' yet. I guess that's a regional thing. Anyway, competition on Dutch keywords is a lot less than on English keywords.
Thanks for your precious advice Brian.
Eric
Hey,
Thank you for your advice. A lot of the content (although really good) was pretty similar to other blogs on the topic. However there was one new point for me that I think is really going to help. I love the idea of adding a link to our latest piano video in the signature of all our teams emails. I can modify all of the signatures every two days when a new video is released and this will put them in front of so many more people. Great idea!!
As a thank you, I would like to offer that we make a cool piano cover of your favourite song. Feel free to email me your idea. Thanks again. James
Another Great post Brian.
I would like to add one more point.
If people embed your video on their website/pages then it will rank better because Embedding is a ranking signal for YT. So we should approach bloggers to embed our video on relevant blog posts.
Please let me know your opinion on this.
Thanks
Hi Brian, very informative post. I have a question about schema.org on-page markup for videos. If you have an embedded YouTube video on your website, and you have used this markup, will the SERP point the user to YouTube or your site? If not, is there any way to get the SERP to show your site rather than YouTube for embedded video?
Starting a new YouTube channel & keep it up to the mark is the biggest challenge I am facing right now. That is why I am reading many articles regarding YouTube Videos & ranking factors.
I liked your blog. It was long enough to cover all important aspects. However I would like to know more about annotation & success rate of it.
which is hardly mentioned in the blog.
Hi Brian!
Loved the article. With all due respect, I think some of the things you said might be outdated. I’m fairly plugged into the Youtube SEO space. Could you cite your sources on the likes, comments, shares, and favorites? I might be wrong.
Will Chou
Keep up the great work!
New at this Video SEO. Didn’t know I could do that. Anyway, this has been very helpful. Thank you! Your page will be on my favorites starting today. Keep posting! 🙂
Hi Brian,
Great article! I’m having some difficulty finding Video Keywords, as most of the relevant keywords in our line of business are not showing YouTube results on the first page. Is it possible that there just aren’t YouTube videos out there that fit this particular keyword to fill the space (and that’s why nothing is showing up), or does that more likely mean that Google hasn’t allocated the video space on page 1? Thanks!
Thanks Brian for such a nice information. I want to ask that please share some community forums where we can drive huge traffic for our YouTube videos? Also i want to know that which is boosting paid advertising platform for YouTube videos? (not google, it is very costly)
I’m a little confused about finding video keywords in Google. Say I want to target “licorice root benefits.” I just checked Google and a video appears on page 3 when I search that. Should I make a video with that keyword still?
This a complete guide to get rank for video. I am very happy to get your post this time. And I need to improve what I have done so far. Getting high quality is video is the key to success with. And that’s my biggest challenge.
Brian, amazing article. I downloaded your checklist. Quick follow up question: Do you have an SEO guide for creating the actual YouTube channel?
This logic is excellent. I’m curious as to how well this would work for a film teaser as opposed to an ad or how-to video? Are there any steps one should alter a bit to provide SEO for the teaser? Luckily, I have several different directions I can go with keywords and for a film teaser, it can easily be linked to how-to video keywords. Even though it’s technically advertising for the film, the video is of a mock cooking show on how to bake old fashioned pies, as that’s what these characters do in my film…lots of SEO opportunities that most film teasers wouldn’t normally have! Any further insight would be MUCH appreciated!
Hi Brian,
Does adding sub-titles has any SEO effect ? I could imagine it does since it allows youtube to have the exact content of the video, so more content to analyze than just the description…
Cheers,
Pascal
Nice article Brian,
I thought you would elaborate more on how to get my videos rank in the SERP of google … :/
Great post.. I recently created a YouTube channel and those videos are not ranking in first page. Will try these tips for sure. Thanks for sharing!
What about backlinks though? Should I be looking into backlinking my videos in an attempt to raise the rankings through Youtube? Or would that only affect Google’s video rankings?
Hi Brian,
My name’s John C. from Singapore, I’m an online and video marketer and I’ve been really enjoying the blog posts you have here, definitely awesome actionable stuff! 🙂
Have a few Qs to ask you regarding your above article (as I’ll be helping 1 of my clients to implement the exact steps you’ve mentioned in that article), hope you can help me out:
(1) Is this something that needs to be done every single month in perpetuity to be effective? Just like normal SEO?
(2) If I help my client do video SEO and then stop, will my client continue to get value out of the the dollars spent earlier on my video SEO efforts?
(3) Lastly, are the video SEO tactics/techniques applicable to other video sites such as Vimeo, Dailymotion etc, or is it ONLY meant for Youtube/Google alone?
Looking forward to your reply, thank Brian! 🙂
Cheers,
John
Hi Brian, some great insights there. I noticed you’ve used both YouTube and Wistia to embed your videos on this page. I know hosting embedding YouTube videos can cause cannibalisation issues in the SERPs. What’s your preferred method of hosting videos on backlinko so they rank for backlinko and not the video host?
Hi, I tried downloading the checklist but it won’t accept my email. Any way to get it? Thanks!
Hi Brian, nice post! Thank you very much!
I have a questiona… If I add captions to my videos, does it help in any way? Thanks again!
I searched to learn how to rank YouTube video and your post appeared first in Google.
You did a great tutorial here by give examples as you explain things.
Thanks for the free pdf file.
Thanks for making this guide for us. Getting views on my YouTube channel is much harder then I thought it would be. I am excited to try out some of these tactics.
Brian,
I can’t even remember the last time ive left a comment on a site. Its been years and years but I had to say thank you as this was amazing information for a newbie. Very well put together! Thank you!!!!
I’ve searched a lot for this kind of information and although I have found a lot of good information this is without a doubt the most complete and detailed look at ranking videos on youtube and google. Thank You very much!
Fanstastic comprehensive guide I ever seen on the web. Really nice to have Brain Dean to learn SEO. I ever dream to become a SEO guru now my dream comes true and Brain is the source. Cheers!
Hey Brian,
Thanks for the nuggets there. I do everything you mentioned on this post except for getting traffic at your suggested source. Nice one. I noticed that you suggest going after video keywords. Will videos still rank without having any video keywords showing up on page 1 for my intended terms?
The video keyword was an awesome tidbit. Other tips like the Yahoo answers was awesome too. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing!
Brian,
Great post as usual.
I’m seeing more and more videos with lower search numbers and still ranking on Google. Is the 300 figure still important?
In some markets 200 searches with buying intent is gold.
PDF checklist didn’t send. I see spam folder and didn’t find it
Hi Brian,
Awesome post you have there.I am starting a new channel and thanks to you have clearer picture now.One problem i am facing is when i want to use google keyword planner it asks me to put my info as well as put ads pricing and also ask me to put billing information.Can you tell me how i can use this without having to do that.Thanks in advance
I’m lucky to get you blog with some awesome tips that inspire me every day to start blogging , Brian you’re such a great man!
When I apply this tricks my video rank and view increase in short time. Before on of my video view was 60+ then it 1k plus. But I have a problem, that was email signature. Is it harmful for AdSense users.
Great article about youtube videos, but I have a question. I see that you start link building within a few days. What types of links are you building to your site? I heard some people are even spamming links to youtube. I would think that even if google is ok with that now, in the future they might not like it at all and punish you badly. I know you aslo mentioned social signals, is that your only link building? Thanks
Thanks Brian,
I have just started a YouTube channel and came here especially to see if there is any extra knowledge related to YouTube, thanks I got it.
Cheers
Hi Brian
Thank you for your excellent posts and against the herd approaches.
Do you know if you can promote a youtube vid on a FB ad campaign?
Have you tried other backlinks besides the ones above?
So I saw a launch a couple months ago by a fellow who grew his list to 80,000 people for free who basically made a video and SENuked it a couple times. What have you seen with that kind of aggressive approach?
thanks!
Stay awesome!
Hello Brian, Im just finding my way around youtube to drive more traffic to my site. Do you have a guide on best practises when setting up your youtube channel with seo in mind. Like how do I best link back to my site so its not violating G but gives me the links I need to make a difference. Thank you
Meh, I disagree with your theory about using less tags. You should use all 500 characters for optimal results. There is no proof that likes/dislikes does anything to the SEO. I’m sure that is more for the content makers info and viewers warning. The description can be up to 5000 characters. Best to post your other video links. You have no proof of anything, noone does, we can only guess how youtube seo works..
Hey Brian – great info! What the “closed caption” feature. Does including a text file of the content help the search engines understand your content?
Great article, looking forward to setting up our Youtube channel using this as a guideline.
Only topic I was missing here was the effect of adding .srt-files (cc) to your video.
I’ve heard people say that Google is able to index those and that they could potentially increase your videos value, but I don’t know if that is true as such?
Hey Brian,
Thanks for that post very informative,i have a quick question,do you think that youtube (video) will outrank google.com and become the number 1 search engine at some point and if yes do you think it may happen on short,medium or long term? thanks a lot Brian!
Hey,
What if website has YT video embedded and the same YT video has a link to the website in description – does Google consider it link exchange? thanks
Hi Brian,
Great information here! Curious to get your ideas on trying to rank a YouTube Channel when there is already a lot of other sites ranking for a search on the brand name. Also what about linking using the YouTube generated vs. custom channel url?
This is great! Is there a faster way to try and find YouTube keywords in google? I am finding it rather difficult to find any with YouTube in the search results. Thanks!
Dear Brian, thank you for this clear and helpful tutorial. A question: if I want to rank a YouTube video specifically on Google… should I focus only on engagement (retention views, comments, social media shares, ecc.) or should I add also classic backlinks (anchor text to the video url, from other sites)? I still don’t understand If the last ones are almost useless or actually useful.
Hey Brian,
This guide is awesome! But I’m wondering how to do YouTube keyword research (and keyword research in general) with the new Google Keyword Planner. IMO, it’s much harder to use and it only gives approximations for traffic. Any help on this front would be much appreciated.
Great post as always Brian. Love the video keywords distinction. Keep up the great posts 🙂
Thanks Brian, Now i can rank some of my videos.
What is about whiteboard animation video for amazon conversion ?
It will convert to sell ?
Impressive info.
I have a question though: Does the channel’s name and google email address influence the video search ranking?
For example: I have a video name “Breakfast recipe for kids” if my channel’s name is “Breakfast Recipes” and my email address is breakfastrecipes101 at gmail.com.
Does any of these factor helps my video ranks in youtube’s or google’s search engine?
Please advice.
Thanks
P.S. Sorry for my bad English.
You are so right on the length of five minutes and being worthwhile like anything thrown before the screen, fed to the ears of busy Internet users. Good tips and video helps our business so so much being up in the left hand corner, off the beaten path for easy trips to gawk at property. Deliver it to them with video!
Great Tips
I was always curious about ranking on Google with videos. I never would have thought about youtube keywords. Thanks
Hi Brian,
An SEO-agency I work with have given the advice that we should not embed YouTube videos on our site, but instead use hardcoded videos. From your post it is clear not the way to follow. We will keep on with the YouTube embedding. Thanks a lot for your great post.
Thanks for this guide Brian !
I was wondering if affiliate links in the descritption hurt the ranking of the video, do you have an idea ?
Hi Brian!
Great post, thank you!
I was wondering how paid advertisements on Youtube influence the SEO ranking. I love advertising on Youtube as the views are very cheap, but in general the engagement is lower. Does Youtube count these engagement the same as organic views? Any tips how I can utilize this the best way?
Hey Braum, you’re welcome. Good question. As far as I know the metrics count similar to organic views. But I don’t have a ton of experience with YT ads so I’m not 100% sure.
Wow! I recently published a new video on YouTube featuring an upcoming dance talent using the same methods as above and it worked. I’ve got to say, this worked. Hmm…
Well you always write about the keyword “SEO” while giving YouTube examples. How can it help to YouTubers who don’t have any blogs or website (in step 3 – description part)? You could have given examples of YouTubers who are in entertainment industry as well because the people who visit your site are not necessarily webmasters. They could be anyone.
Thanks! 😉
You’re welcome, Mayaprakash. If you don’t have a blog or website Backlinko probably isn’t for you. Our goal is to help pro marketers do better. And pros usually don’t just have a YouTube channel, but a website too.
Thanks for these great tips, Brian!
I got a question: do you know if the video metadata has any influence? And about the manual subtitles (not the auto generated)?
I’ve heard it has been a factor and help a little bit. What do you think about that? And how do we really know if it helps or not?
Thanks. 😉
Hey Brian, thanks for writing this article. Quick question; what happens if you search on Google for related content in your niche and you can’t find any video keyword results?
Thanks Brian for the detailed writeup. I was taken from step 0 to at least step 2 using this blog.
I am about to start uploading videos for a company I work for. It’s pretty much a family business, so the videos are nowhere near as professional as yours, but we still hope for some positive impact.
Great read, Brian! Thanks for sharing.
Question for you. Have you found that removing old/outdated YT videos affects search rankings in a meaningful way? Trying to gauge any potential negative impacts of removing old videos from my YT channel.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Brian,
This is awesome! One of my friends was saying how she gets lots of views from related videos in her niche; I think the tags are a great way to do that. You rock 🙂
Hi Brian. Fantastic post! I’ve been making videos for myself and also for clients for several years now. The truth is, I knew about most of these tips. However, I’m a marketer by profession.
When digital marketing is what you do for a living, you often take for granted that probably 99% of people who use YouTube are NOT professional marketers. They’re just people who use YouTube for fun and as a place to share videos with friends and family. My point is that while your tips seem second nature to a professional video marketer, for the most part your average social media user has no idea about any of this stuff.
The main reason I love this article is because it’s the RIGHT information and it’s easy enough for beginners to understand.
Another thing that often happens to people who are new to YouTube is they come across some of the really horrible SEO practices out there, like buying fake views, likes, and subscribers. It’s often through no fault of their own. It’s simply a matter of the Internet being saturated with bad SEO information and practices.
The fact is that Google and YouTube simply want people to act naturally. In other words, concentrate on the things you can control, like on-page SEO, content quality, website design, social media footprint, and overall user experience.
I have a review blog that ranks incredibly well for a lot of “buyer” keywords, and I’ve never bought or even tried to build any backlinks for it, with the exception of blog comments, which I believe are mostly “no-follow” links anyway.
The truth is that if you create engaging, educational, and entertaining content, the backlinks and social media engagement will come naturally, and that’s exactly what Google wants to see.
In short, make sure your on-page SEO is perfect, your content is amazing, and your website is appealing and easy to navigate. The rest will happen naturally and soon enough you’ll start to see that incredibly valuable free organic traffic. Again, great article.
Hey Brian,
I’m probably a bit late in the day to post here, but I’d really love your advice!
I’ve just started working with a client who already has 40+ videos on Youtube, and they’ve asked me to optimize them.
Youtube SEO is new to me, so I’m not very sure how’s best to approach this.
Can I use the GKP to find words that will rank in Youtube or does it not work like that? I’ve been trying to use Youtube Suggest, but not had much success.
They also rank for a few terms already. Should I attempt to improve those videos first for the best ROI?
Thanks, Brian.
Keep up your stuff, it’s awesome!
Hi Brian,
Thank you very much for an extensive and very useful guide!
One thing that puzzles me though: That I cannot upload an updated version of a video (like you would upload an updated web page). This means that you start from scrath if you make a new version and your “seo juice” starts from zero again. Correct, or am I missing something?
Hi Brian,
As usual, great stuff!
Just one question: you suggest to put our link at the top of the description, but I see now that you didn’t do it on your most recent videos on YouTube. Is that some sort of A/B test or you just changed your mind on that? I know it isn’t probably that important, but just to make my mind once for all.
Cheers
Any update? New Tips
I’m thinking on the point of embedding the video in my blog. The number of views will increase, but how can I gain subscribers? Only no. Of views will be important for gaining SEO – while no. Of subscribers are less..
Thanks for this tips I tried this and was on Google first page for a keyword with over 10k monthly searches and was there for a week. I later dropped ranking, Do you have any tip to stay on page one of google
Brian it seems to me that one of the biggest downsides of videos on your site is the load time. So I was checking into lazy load. But then I read that Google doesn’t crawl videos if they are lazy loaded. Do you think lazy loading is a good idea? Basically what’s more important for SEO: speed, or having Google see the extra video content? Or is there another way to make videos faster?
Thanks very much!
Hi Brian,
Thanks for such nice information you provide.
I’ve a Question. Is there a way to find out which keywords are ranked or searched directly form google search that targets to my videos on youtube?
I can see through my channel analytics that some traffic is coming directly from google search but search queries are not provided.
Hey Brian,
Love your content! I work with clients who don’t want to see google serp keyword volume and competition data, but rather specifically youtube keyword volume and competition data. I don’t think that’s possible, so I just wanted to ask if you could give a definitive yes or no to this question:
Is there such thing as a tool that gives keyword search volume and keyword competition, with realistic accuracy, specifically for youtube?
Hi Brian,
Loved to read your articles. Such an informative post to YouTubers and creators. This could be best for the video marketing too.
I think TubeBuddy also helps people to know the competitions about keywords. I’m using TubeBuddy whenever I optimize my YouTube videos.
Thanks a ton for sharing
Looking forward to seeing such kind of awesome post.
Hey Brian, thanks for the great guide!
I have a question though: what if my niche has ZERO Video Keywords? Haha. I work in Brazilian market, so things seem to be a bit different for Portuguese keywords.
Thank you in advance!
Hi Brian,
Thanks for sharing and explaining the Ultimate Youtube SEO guide, very helpfull! I have a question, is it better to rank hosted videos (for example Wistia) which don’t show up in Youtube or to rank Youtube videos? Hosted videos show up in google video and take the visitor directly to your page while youtube does not (only in description). Which video platform would you advise?
Great article as always Brian! This is very comprehensive on how to get a video to rank. Do you think off-site backlinks help rank a video on YT search results?
HI Brain, I have a question. One of my videos was ranking on the top in youtube until few days back. I did few changes and now I am not able to replicate those results. So what cause such a slump?
I am not even appearing in the SERP (Youtube) while searching for the title of the video. Another point is we have distributed the copyright of our video with other premium youtube channel and now they are appearing almost everywhere in the SERP (even when a user search for the title). They are also expending $90 on a daily basis to promote that video.
Despite of all the above facts, I am still get mid traffic from few keywords.
P.S: Mistakenly, I have done these changes so many times.
Does Youtube penalize videos which get tweaked every other days? If so, then how to get back those ranking once again?
Looking forward to hear from you!!!
As a Small YouTuber after study this content, I think keyword research is the big problem for me. I think most of time we choose huge volume keyword and that’s why we can’t reach rank on search engine easily. What about you say the keyword volume.
One of the biggest questions I have is does the main difference in the videos ranked in Google results vs Youtube results come down to the fact that those ranking in Google on average have more backlinks pointing to them?
In other words, are those videos ranking in Google results more the result of backlinking than a perceived “better fit” for Google SERPS than Youtube SERPS?
Do those videos ranking in the top spots of both Youtube and Google happen to have backlinks which would help rank better in Google.
The Quora magic works really well. Thanks for sharing such great video Brain.
Hey,
So I googled search terms and NOTHING came up with videos in Google search… Still worth adding videos to You Tube? And would I still use the same process as above…?! Thank you
I mean nothing in my niche…. 🙂
Brian, loved this – as per usual.
I do wonder though why you don’t seem to link to your backlinko.com website from your Youtube videos.
I know linking externally from Youtube reduces your YT SEO rankings, but is it worth the reduced SEO to your site, and the reduced flow of viewers coming over to your site from YT?
We’re growing our channel, and I want to link to our ecommerce site where possible – just not sure if the trade off is worth it. Is this anything you’ve tested?
Thanks in advance!
545 comments with the vast majority of them answered – almost all of the comments are either positive or have positive slants… SIMPLY AMAZING!!!
Now you have 546 positively slanted comments.
But, first what I didn’t do.
1. I did not optimize the video internally.
2. I did not embed the video on my own site.
Not that I’m being rebellious – lol – I’m testing your theory on a 30-minute video that already existed which was ranking in position 17 for targeted keywords.
Guess what?
It worked!!!
In less than 12 hours I’m finding the video in positions 1 – 4 for long-tail equivalents of my targeted keyword. If there is anything you missed it was talking about long-tails.
Here’s how I make sure I’m building long-tails.
During the keyword phrase building part, I find my initial keyword.
EXAMPLE: Apple Pie
NOTE: I have no idea if this is actually going to work – I’m building it as I’m writing this.
Suggested: 4,250,000 (About)
HREF: 128K (Nice but competitive crowd. It would take a very long time to rank a blog post here – especially for a brand new blog.)
Looking at keyword suggestions I see a variety of options – but I want none of them in full – instead – I want to choose only one word and build my keyword phrase from there.
Suggested: Apple Pie Filling (About 327,000)
AHREFS: 38K
We now are in a much better sweet spot for YouTube and easier to rank on Google. Thought because this is a long-tail strategy both terms may eventually rank. But we are not done.
KEYWORD: apple pie filling canning
SUGGEST: About 65,900 results
HREFS: 600
We can rank for all 3 keyword phrases with this being the easiest so far. But we still aren’t done.
KEYWORD: canning apple pie filling recipe
SUGGEST: About 54,300 results
AHREFS: 50
Something very interesting happened here. Notice how the word usage shifted but all keywords are still in place minus the one with 600. If I use this phrase as an LSI equivalent both on the video and in the description and tags I only gain more momentum.
Looking for suggested keywords on YouTube I find I’ve reached the end. But just the beginning of possibilities.
Because it is at this point that I start mixing and matching the rest of your keyword strategy.
how to do apple pie filling canning (2018)
apple pie filling canning recipe made [easy]
Yes, it took a bit of time to put these keywords together – but think of the tremendous value of having done so.
I’d never have thought of the above without first reading your article. Thanks for writing it – my video marketing is going from non-existent to OH YEAH!!!
Hi Brian,
Thanks a lot for this up to date YouTube SEO tutorial. It works in parts also for our filmproductions even if we do not have channels and the same success you have with yours. Wish you all the best
Danaron
Always keep in mind that correlation does not equal causation. “comments STRONGLY correlated with ranking highly in the search results”. It’s possible that those videos have more comments because they are higher ranked and so more people watch them, and hence more people comment..
But I guess with all these algorithms it’s a bit like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first.
Hi
Is it enough for me to write a list of the words that I want to rank high in in the video description, or does it have to be a short article that includes these words?
Thanks
Hi,
I was wondering what video software do you use to make your videos?
Love it Brian! Great job! You even have answered most of the comments! IT really is amazing and will surely help me a lot. I plan on following step by step.
My goal is to promote my youtube channel : youtube.com/dronelivecam
If you could check it out and give me some tips to improve it would be awesome!
Cheers
Ray
Hi Brian,
Is there any benefit to doing LIVE videos on YouTube over pre-recorded? For example, do live videos reach more people? And, if so, is this only for the duration of the live session or are the benefits sustained after the session ended?
Thanks!