Tips To Optimise and Grow Your YouTube Channel For 2021

Tips To Optimise and Grow Your YouTube Channel For 2021

Video content is one of the best ways to engage with your target audience. However, it’s not just a case of uploading something to YouTube and watching the views roll in. With millions of channels and videos online, cutting through the noise can be challenging, but it’s not impossible.

Everyone on YouTube started with no subscribers and very few views, so it is possible to start hitting those high numbers with the right video marketing efforts.

To help you take your YouTube videos to the next level in 2021, there are some key areas to cover outside of creating high-quality content. So, take a look at our YouTube SEO guide and details on how to optimise your YouTube videos for SEO.

Focus keywords

On a basic level, consider YouTube as another form of search engine but for videos. To rank better in the search results, you need to focus on hitting the keywords people are searching for. However, similar to other keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. practices, simply stuffing in as many as possible will not work!

In short, what’s the main topic of your video?

Once you have this, use this focus keyword and use a keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here. tool to obtain variations of your keyword to enrich the content. Popular YouTube SEO tools include SEMRush, Ahrefs, and KeywordTool.io.

If you have a keyword that pulls in a lot of searches but is high competition, check out the other long-tail keywords similar to your focus keyword and jot these down. These may be more suitable for your video, and you can use this to optimise your videos further.

Let’s take a look at how:

Optimise the title tags of your video

While including your focus keyword in the title is one of the best ways to ensure you meet YouTube’s numerous ranking factors – it’s not enough in the overall context.

YouTube is filled with videos with similar titles to your keyword. To see the scale of competition you face, just do a quick search.

To make it different, it needs to stand out and be compelling. Ask yourself, why would someone click on my video? Most of the examples you see in the top results promise the viewers something. So when people search, they know exactly what they are going to get!

The title should also include a short description surrounding the keyword. This will help to hook the viewer, plus it describes what they will get out of it.

Optimise the description

The description of your video is the next place to enrich your YouTube SEO. When your video shows in YouTube search results, it displays a snippet of your description (the first 125 characters). In short, this is similar to the Meta descriptions you see on Google, and it’s vital for these to be engaging and have your focus keyword within it.

Some handy pointers when writing your video description:

• Aim to write around 250 words.
• Include your focus keywords towards the beginning of the text.
• Don’t copy and paste other content into this section. Make it unique!
• Direct viewers to your social media and website if relevant.
• Give viewers a little reminder to subscribe to your channel.

Add relevant SEO tags for YouTube rankings

In the tags section, add relevant SEO tags and include variations of your focus keyword here. Using tags in your video content can help you feature in the ‘Up Next’ section of competitor videos too. To see what tags others are using, check out apps such as VidlQ.

Make longer YouTube videos

There is always a conversation about how long should videos be to rank higher. However, the answer simply lies in that if your video is longer and more engaging, YouTube likes this, as you’re keeping viewers engaged and on the site for longer. Plus, they can serve more YouTube ads.

However, long videos don’t automatically mean they’ll perform better than shorter ones. If you drag it out with no purpose, the user experience will be reduced, and viewers will click away.

Keep people engaged and encourage more of it

You could have the best title and description in the world, but if the video doesn’t keep people interested, then you’re back to square one. Think about how to make your content engaging to improve watch time. Use additions in the video, such as animations and sound effects. Above all, check out YouTube analytics and see how your other videos have performed, and identify drops in views and points in the video.

It’s not just important to keep people watching; it’s essential for your video marketing SEO strategy, to keep them coming back. The more engagement and views you get, the better your rankings.

Add closed captions

YouTube has a feature that allows closed captions to show while your video plays. This enables your content to be accessible for anyone with hearing difficulties and those who don’t play videos out loud.

This feature is not just a great user experience factor; Google and YouTube also crawl it so it could help improve your overall SEO efforts.

Create backlinks

Linking to your videos from other places is a great way to improve your technical SEO efforts for your YouTube channel. In the same way, you include linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. in written content such as blog posts; add video references too. Link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. is an essential aspect of in all SEO marketing, and you could also get expert assistance in boosting your efforts from a specialist SEO company.

Optimise your YouTube channel description for SEO

If viewers visit your YouTube channel, what do they see? In short, if you want people to navigate your videos easily, organise your channel and create playlists.

Playlists are great for keeping people engaged. It means you can organise the videos in a sequence, and once a video finishes, the next automatically plays.

Get social

One of the best ways to promote your YouTube channel and videos is through social media. Post your new content to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and encourage everyone to check it out.