3 Tips for Making Your Video Stand Out in YouTube Search Results (Infographic)

YouTube is the second largest social network, after Facebook, with more than 1.8 billion monthly users. With Cisco predicting that 82% of all internet content will comprise video by 2022, the number of YouTube users are expected to grow. 

Today, businesses cannot afford to ignore the importance of video content in their customer acquisition strategy.

But how can businesses get their videos to stand out and be seen on YouTube, with more than 300 hours of video uploaded every minute?

Here are a few tips you can follow to get your videos to be visible on YouTube search results.
 

3 Tips for Making Your Video Stand Out in YouTube Search Results

Get the Video Metadata Right

The metadata is the text that references your video. The text describes what your video is really about and includes the title, description, tags, thumbnails, and captions

When you first post your video, the only data that YouTube search bots can use to understand it is the metadata. With time,

YouTube uses this data, in addition to other video viewership data, to rank videos on the search results.

Therefore, for your video to get found on YouTube search, you need to optimize the metadata.

Here are ways of optimizing YouTube video metadata:

Choose a Compelling Title

The video title plays a role in the indexing of the video. Therefore, make it compelling.

The title should accurately describe the video content while also addressing what viewers would like to watch.

Use a simple title that is catchy and relevant to the content.  Do keyword research and include relevant keywords in your title. 

Ensure that the title is less than 100 words. If it is too long, users will lose interest and move on to the next video.

Accurate and Detailed Video Description

The video description should inform viewers why they need to watch the video and also encourage the YouTube search engine to display the video alongside related content.  

On YouTube, you have 5,000 characters to describe your video.

However, only the first 150 characters are visible to the user at first glance. Google search results show 120 of the characters of the description. 

Make these first characters compelling to encourage users to watch the video.

Remember to include relevant keywords in your video description to rank better on the search engines.

Include Video Tags

Meta tags are words that users type on YouTube when searching for particular videos. Search engine bots also use these tags to categorize videos.  

Here are a few tips for correctly tagging YouTube videos:

• Research the right keywords to use before tagging your video
• Don’t use more than 10 keywords for each video
• Use different keywords for the tags, title, and video description to avoid tag-stuffing
• Use keyword tags that are relevant to your video content

Focus on User Engagement 

While metadata is important, YouTube also considers the user engagement levels of your videos. 

Create videos that address or solve the needs of your target audience. The videos should also be captivating to keep the viewers hooked. 

Videos with captivating content will rank well, even when they have not been tagged with the right keywords.

Educate, inform, and entertain viewers with your videos to increase engagement. 

Below are the metrics used to measure user engagement on YouTube videos:

Video Watch Time

This is the amount of time, in minutes, that a viewer watches your video. You can increase video watch time by:

• Having a compelling introduction, ideally within the first 15 seconds
• Reinstating the value that viewers will get after watching the video
• Creating emotional and descriptive thumbnails  
• Encouraging viewers to comment and share your videos to improve participation

Audience Retention

This is the percentage of the whole video watched by a viewer.

For instance, if your video is 6 minutes long and someone watches 3 minutes of this video, the retention rate will be 50%.

Social Shares and Likes

Encourage viewers to share and like your videos. Make your content exciting enough to be shared and include share and like buttons on your videos.

Moreover, invite people to subscribe to your channel and respond to comments.

Videos are a great way to grow your business. With more people preferring to consume video content, businesses will have no choice but to embrace the media to reach their target audiences and customers.

Get Your Video Transcribed

Getting your videos transcribed can be beneficial for you in a myriad of ways; some of the most important ones are listed below.

1. SEO Benefits - Providing a transcript of your video will have a lot of SEO benefits. Since search engines are able to index text content better, the visibility of your video will increase and show a better ranking on search engines. 
2. Better UX for the Viewers - Since everyone’s way of learning differs, adding a transcript will give viewers of your video an option to grasp information according to their strengths. Transcripts also help search for a video by keywords or topics.
3. Video Becomes More Accessible - Transcripts enable deaf and near-deaf viewers to grasp the content of the video. Also, people watching the video in a noisy environment can better understand its content by reading the transcripts. Lastly, non-native English speakers can comprehend the content of a video fully with the help of its transcript.

Also Read: 5 Tips to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for Non-English Speaking Audiences