YouTube keyword research might be considered a dark art by some, but keep in mind that if you know what you are doing it can prove to be a very valuable tool. Here you can find a complete guide into keyword research for YouTube that will hopefully help you to create the perfect keyword list for your video.
What is A Keyword And How Do They Work?
If you upload YouTube videos, one of the most important things to keep in mind is how someone will find your video. YouTube does not use the same search engine as Google and Bing, so YouTube has its own way of assessing what a YouTube search result should be. Looking for an experienced keyword research agency to target your specific keywords found in your nearby area.
On YouTube, a keyword is called a “Search Term” (or “keyword” for short). YouTube’s algorithm analyzes YouTube videos and “listens” to what words users search.
The YouTube will then show the most popular YouTube videos that match those words at the top of a YouTube Search Result List.
YouTube uses these keywords as a way to determine which YouTube video is the most relevant YouTube video to show at the top of YouTube search results.
It will show the YouTube video with the most YouTube likes, YouTube comments, YouTube ratings, and YouTube subscriptions at the top spot of the YouTube Search Result List.
The higher your YouTube video ranks, the more people will be exposed to your video.
If you have a good enough YouTube strategy, that could mean building up a big YouTube audience.
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, YouTube has its own YouTube search algorithm, and YouTube ranks YouTube videos by YouTube comments, YouTube likes, YouTube ratings, and YouTube subscriptions.
The higher your YouTube video ranks on YouTube Search Result List for popular keywords that people are searching for YouTube videos on, the more people will see your video.
YouTube keywords are YouTube’s way of determining YouTube video relevancy to YouTube search queries. YouTube will automatically try to show YouTube videos that YouTube users want to see at the top of the YouTube Search Result List.
So, if you know what YouTube users are searching for, and have a YouTube video optimized with those popular keywords in it, you’re going to have a YouTube video that YouTube wants to rank at the top YouTube search results.
YouTube Search Result List is displayed in order of “relevancy”, relevancy refers to how relevant YouTube thinks your YouTube video is based on YouTube’s Keyword research and YouTube algorithm.
There are many ways to find popular keywords, one way is by using SEO tools.
YouTube allows users to search YouTube videos by entering keywords into the YouTube Search Bar on the website, YouTube also has a “Suggested Keywords” feature where YouTube will automatically suggest popular YouTube search queries you can use as your next video’s Title, Description, and tags. Another way is to find out what people are searching for is to use the YouTube Trends feature.
YouTube Trends shows what YouTube videos are trending on right now, and it also shows you what videos are trending on Google and YouTube’s “Most Viewed” section shows you which YouTube videos have the most views that day or that week.
How to find keywords for your video?
- Head to the Keyword Ideas section on your YouTube Analytics page.
- In the search field, type in the topic for your video.
- These are some of the keywords YouTube suggests based on what you entered.
For example, if your video is about how to knit a scarf, you might search for something like “how to knit a scarf” or “knit a scarf.”
- To find more keywords, click the arrow next to “See Related Keywords” to view all of the keywords YouTube suggests for your video.
- To get more keywords, click on the “See More” link at the bottom of the list of related keywords. You can keep scrolling down to find more suggestions.
- Type the keywords you want to use into the search field, separating them with commas.
For example, if you’re uploading a makeup tutorial, type something like “makeup, tutorial”.
- Click the arrow next to “See Related Keywords” to view all of the related keywords YouTube suggests for your video. If you want, you can click on the “See More” link at the bottom of the list of related keywords to find more suggestions.
- Click on a suggested keyword from your search or the list of related keywords.
- A new page appears that tells you how many videos include this keyword and provides a link to search for your video in the YouTube search engine.
- Click on Google’s Keyword Tool link to find more keywords related to your search term.
- A new page appears with a list of suggested keywords and related long-tail keywords.
For example, if you type “knitting scarf” into the keyword tool, you’ll see a list of related keywords like this:
Optimize Your Video Title
The following are tips on how to get your video title optimized so that it ranks higher in the search results of YouTube and Google.
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Title Length
Keep your videos under 3 minutes, if possible. If you have more to say, create a video series out of your topic. When I did my tutorial on How to Make Money Working from Home, I wanted to split that topic into 3 different videos.
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Keyword Placement
Put your keyword in the title of the video. Placing it in the description helps too, but placing it in the title is better. It can be at the beginning or end of your title, just make sure you have it there! Don’t keyword spam though, or search engines will just ignore your keywords.
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Common Mistakes to Avoid
Do not put “The Best” at the front of your title- that actually takes up valuable space you could use for other things. It’s better to say, “This is The Best Video on _______” or something like that.
Do not add other websites’ URLs to your title- anyone searching for your video will see multiple other people’s URLs and get confused as to what the original source of the topic is. You should always link out to other people in your description, but keep their links out of the title.
Don’t use symbols or numbers- it is best to spell everything out. People often type in a number, and if you type the number instead of spelling it out, you will lose traffic/views/etc.
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Keyword Ideas
Use a simple phrase that accurately represents what your video is about- do not put target keywords in there unless it is actually accurate and relates to your video.
Valuable keywords will rank higher than popular ones- what you want in a keyword is one that is specific and has little competition. You want something that people are searching for, but it must be searched for often because obviously there’s not much competition if no one else ranks on the first page.
Google Trends
Use this website to see how often your target keywords are searched for each month/year, and then you can determine what good keywords would be based on that information. Once again, do not put popular keywords in there because someone else will probably have already taken it, so find the ones less traveled so to speak.
YouTube Keyword Tool
This is a website where you can type in your keywords and it will analyze them for you to determine their competition, search volume, etc. You can then use that information to decide which keywords are the best to use based on how competitive they are and how much traffic you want/need for them. This tool is very helpful!
How Do You Get More YouTube Views With Keyword Research?
Ok, so you’ve come up with a video idea and now you want to get more YouTube views. Nice work!
But how do you choose a keyword to target?
I’ll show you.
In our newest infographic, we’ve outlined how to research and rank for keywords that will help your videos get more YouTube views.
Feel free to share it via the buttons below, or even print it out and hang it by your desk for reference.
“How to do keyword research for YouTube videos.”
Ok, So How Do We Do It?
We’ve broken the process down into 7 steps:
- Brainstorm Keywords
- Find Related Keywords
- Find Competitive Keywords
- Sort by Difficulty
- Find Volume and CPC
- Determine Relevancy Score
- Check for Trends
You already have the most important thing, a great video. Now you need to find out what YouTube viewers are typing in to find videos like yours.
- Grab a pen and paper and think about all the possible search phrases for your video. Write them down.
- Once you’ve written them all out, start to combine them and use different words or phrases to form new words.
- You’ll now have a list with lots of different, long search phrases you can now use to find out how many people are searching for them.
- Go to Google’s Keyword Tool and type in one of the long phrases you’ve written down. Make sure to hit enter after entering it in the search box.
- The tool will return a list of different words or phrases with their monthly search volume.
- Take a look at the list and compare it to the original list of phrases you brainstormed.
- Once you’ve found a phrase that has decent monthly volume, use YouTube’s AdWords planner to find out if people are actually searching for that phrase.
- The AdWords planner can be found here. Type in your keyword phrases and see what YouTube thinks about the phrase you’ve chosen.
- If the AdWords planner says your search term isn’t used that often, move on to another phrase and come back if you need to.