YouTube SEO 2023: How to rank your video – keyword research
Table of Contents
Introduction
There are different ways to understand what they want to watch but as for the on-page seo, you can start with analysing queries viewers use in order to find the content around the topic you would like to cover. In other words, the question is “what is the intent of the user?”
This article is the first article of the series of articles around YouTube SEO. If you haven’t, it is recommended to first read the introduction article.
What they want to watch – Keywords Research
So let’s say you would like to create a video about pumpkin pie recipe.
Here is the process
1. Start with your SEO keyword research as a basis.
Make a list of keywords/queries that could be used in order to find pumpking pie recipe (ex: how to make a pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie from scratch….). If you really don’t know where to start you could use Google Trends. This tool helps you to see the popularity of your keywords over a specific period, plus gives you other suggestions.
Keep in mind that those related queries are based on keywords used in Google search. So you still have to finetune your list.
2. Select the most relevant keywords and write them in the YouTube Search bar
As you can see just above, you have more granular information regarding your target keyword that could help to better rank your content on YouTube. The great thing about the auto-complete feature is that it only suggests the most popular keywords based on actual user searches. In other words, it means “these are the most currently searched terms by people on YouTube around that subject”.
3. The autocomplete function will show you the most searched queries including those keywords.
For instance when I started looking for “pumpkin pie recipe” keywords combination, I didn’t know that “pumpkin pie recipe without eggs” was trendy. This indicates that I could write an article for vegans without changing my core topic “pumpkin pie recipe”. The only drawback is that with the autocomplete function, you can’t estimate the volume of searches behind a query.
4. Pick the relevant ones, these are the potential keywords you want to optimise on.
5. Check the amount of content already existing for those in Google Search
Aim for the ones that have low volumes of results, it will be the easiest to rank on.
Your videos will also rank on Google search. To have an approximation of YouTube videos done on the subject, you can use the query “keyword site: youtube* query”. In our example it would be “keyword site: youtube* pumpkin pie recipe”.
As you can see, if we use the first suggested keyword on YouTube based on the popularity, for “ pumpkin pie recipe vegan” there are less results. Which indicates that there is less competition. So we have a higher chance to rank on that query. The goal is to find keywords with low competition when you just started. In addition, you could look at the title & description of the first result in order to check they keywords they are using.
Another good point, the search results page on YouTube shows up to 20 results on the front page, while Google only shows up to 10, this means more chances for you to position yourself on the first page of results.All these are good reasons to start optimizing your YouTube SEO as of now.
