How Do You Rank a Video on YouTube Using SEO? Step by Step

What are the best tools for video SEO?

The best tool is your brain. You might laugh, but there are loads of tools out there that purport to rank you for videos. You can use something like VidIQ, which is one of my favourites, and it gives you an idea, a steer and some suggestions. The best tool you have got, though, is your brain and testing.

So yes, look at what other people are ranking for, how they are ranking and why they are ranking. It is not just about the number of subscribers people have got.

That is where people get disheartened. They look at a video that is up there, has been there two or three years, has 300,000 views and the channel has a million subscribers. Do not be disheartened when you see that sort of thing, because it is very easy, if you get it right, to outrank videos that have been there for a length of time. That is probably the best signal to look for.

In terms of tools there are loads of them. Download a few and try them. They are not expensive. Most of these tools are 20 or 30 bucks, so give a couple of them a go.

How can I improve my SEO ranking on YouTube?

In general on YouTube, rankings come from the tags, the description and the keywords within the content, so it is a bit like old school SEO where you would look at the keyword density in an article.

My advice personally, if you really want to rank for a particular term, is to search it and find all the videos that rank. Search in incognito, search from other browsers, find all of the content you are trying to outrank, then put it into a spreadsheet and find the commonality between them.

But you are not trying to copy them. This is the issue, and this is where people go wrong. You have got to be better.

You will find videos at the top where you think there is no keyword density in this at all. They are probably ranking for another reason, because they have got a massive channel or massive engagement on a particular topic. It is relatively easy to get into the top 20 or 30 videos, but as with normal SEO, you want to be in the top three to get traction, numbers and views.

What is the most effective SEO tactic right now?

Video. That is the only thing I would recommend to anybody right now.

Look, you can go blogging, and you can spend fortunes blogging. You can go buying links, so you can buy authority links. I cannot remember the last time I read somebody's blog, to be honest. Loads of people are still buying links and spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on them.

The best way to get links is to get viral content or to get a really good piece of PR. If you get one really good piece of PR it is going to go a long way. Obviously, if you can get a video to go viral and it is on a topic you can gain PR on, game over.

Even though we are a niche agency, we have got a really good understanding of the wider marketing challenges, because we have been in the industry such a long time. Many SEO agencies and others do not have that broader understanding, so they do not see the value in being cross-channel and omni-channel and being in other places. Recently, doing some traditional PR and supporting the work in other ways has made a massive difference to the videos, and vice versa.

Do black hat tools and bought links work?

No, and there are still a lot of people trying to cheat. Do not get sucked into the fact that there are black hat tools out there that will drive you additional engagement, views, subscribers and likes, or purport to get your tags right, or sell you link building packages that build links back to the videos.

The best advice is to do it properly, and to be truthful to what you are doing.

How does YouTube SEO work, step by step?

Step by step it comes down to a good piece of content built around the right keyword, so start with the keyword research. Use something like Google Keyword Planner, which you can access through Ads Manager, and look at all of the phrases that go around your topic.

Do not get obsessed with what I would call your golden phrase. If you are an estate agent, do not go after estate agents, because you are battling everybody.

The big thing now is questions. Questions and answers, because they have got the intent built into them. Somebody is going to search how do I do this. I was speaking to my mum this morning, and she is 74, and she was looking up how to lay laminate flooring on YouTube. So apparently people over the age of 18 do not use YouTube. She actually said to me it is a godsend, that it is amazing and she can find anything on there.

Which keywords should you actually target?

Target phrases that have some volume but that you can realistically rank for, because there is a balance between ease of rank and amount of traffic. Somebody asked me this week to rank for the word dog. Good luck. Maybe if you want to go at it for five years, then you might.

Taking dog as an example, I do not know whether somebody wants to buy a dog, buy dog food, rent a kennel, or do whatever else with a dog. If people land on your content and they are not finding what they want, that is the worst thing you can do. So, surprisingly enough, you would not want to rank for the word dog.

What do you do once you have chosen the phrases?

Once you have decided on the phrases, you have just got to go and build the content. Like we are sat here today talking about YouTube SEO, how to rank on YouTube, what content to put onto YouTube and how SEO works on YouTube. We are making a video based on a topic, and we have gone out and researched all of that around the topic.

There is no hidden secret. I am here to get this video ranked towards the top. By all means look at what we have done and look at what is within our videos.

Do not cheat, and do not be tempted to buy links, because it will come back and bite you overall. They always say content is king, and content genuinely is king, providing it is good content and relevant content.

That might not have been step by step, but there were certainly some good useful tips in there.