In previous posts, I have spoken about the importance of keyword research when picking your video topics. You’ve done your research, you’ve made your video and you are ready to upload it to YouTube but where do you need include your keywords for your video to be found in search results? Get ready to become a keyword master. Watch the video below or scroll down for the old fashioned version.
No messing around, I’ve got a lot of information to give you so let’s get straight into it. There are 3 places where you need to feature your keywords, your title, description and tags. Seems simple enough but we need to go a little bit deeper.
Title
First of all, YouTube reads everything like a book, from left to right and they place more importance on the words at the beginning than the end. How does this relate to your title? Well, you need to include your researched keywords in the exact same order as you researched at the beginning of your title. This is telling YouTube that these are the words that are most related to your video.
A lot of businesses get this the wrong way round, I’ll give you a couple of examples. The first is for a company promo, they start the title with ‘Company name’ followed by the keywords related to the business or even worse just ‘company overview’. YouTube will look at this and presume that your company name is the most important set of words in the title.
Flip it around like I did for Coachman, a car detailing company based in Maidstone.
Keyword research showed me that there was a gap in the search results for the keywords ‘car detailing Maidstone’ meaning there was a fair amount of search volume, not many videos using these keywords and those videos weren’t very well optimised.
I titled the video ‘Exquisite Car Detailing In Maidstone, Kent - Welcome To Coachman’. By doing this and placing the same keywords in the description and tags, like I will show you in a minute, Coachman are now number one in YouTube search results for ‘car detailing, Maidstone’.
Top of YouTube search results!
The second example is for a series of videos. Most channels will include the series name and episode number as the first words in their title when really it should be your targeted keywords.
Now you might be saying, I can’t think of keywords for each episode. Here’s a tip for you, take a key piece of information or question that is raised in the video and try using one of these as your keywords. Then follow up with the series name and episode number as the second part of your title.
Bonus tip! You have 100 characters for your title on YouTube, use them. The first part of your title should be keyword rich but you can use the second part to build peoples intrigue and draw them to watch the video.
Description
Again, YouTube is reading your description with the most importance placed at the beginning, that means you want to naturally include your keywords as early on in the description as possible in the same order as your title.
So to use Coachman as an example again, the first couple of lines read ‘Welcome to Coachman, we offer exquisite car detailing in Maidstone, Kent. Our services include polishing, ceramic and polymer coating and paint protection film.’
Include your keywords at the beginning of your description.
Don’t just copy your title as the first part of your description, this is lazy and won't benefit your viewer. Try and work it in naturally to tell your viewer what they will learn in the video.
Bonus tip! Try to use your keywords multiple times in your description as this strengthens the relationship of the keywords to the video.
Tags
Lastly, we are talking about tags. Your viewers will never see your tags but they are crucial in telling YouTube the subject of your video. Can you guess what I am going to say next? Include your keywords in the exact same order as your title and description as your very first tag. I think you know the reason for this by now!
Your target keywords need to be your first tag.
For the rest of the tags, add words that are related to your video such as a location, other topics covered in your video or other words that have the same meaning as your keywords.
You have 500 characters, try to use as many as possible. That doesn’t mean including keywords that are not related to your video as this will negatively affect your search rankings. Just try and think of any words that you want your video to be found for. If you want some suggestions then TubeBuddy has a great tool for this.
Bonus tip! Include multiple incorrect spellings of your main keywords in the tags as this will help your video be found by people who are not great at spelling or typing.
That’s A Wrap
To wrap up, you want to include your keywords in the exact same order in your title, description and tags. YouTube reads everything from left to right placing more importance on the beginning than the end so always try and get your keywords at the beginning of each area.
Do you have any of your own keyword tips? Then leave them in the comments below. If you need any further help please feel free to get in touch.
Do you want to make sure your YouTube channel is bringing in profits for your business? Then make sure you check out our new video series ‘Your Essential YouTube Checklist - 5 ways to make sure your channel boosts your business’ right here!