Last Updated on June 14, 2023
The shopping culture of today is one of many options and short attention spans. Your brand can grow quickly and reach far more people than simply your target market with the aid of YouTube. Therefore, it is important to leverage YouTube SEO best practices.
According to a recent survey, YouTube was the most efficient marketing medium for almost 8 out of 10 businesses. Additionally, 62% of companies now employ it for marketing purposes. Although, not all companies using YouTube as a marketing medium report success.
It is insufficient to just make videos that you find entertaining, upload them, and watch the clicks roll in. To keep your account in good standing, engage with your target audience, and obtain results, you must be aware of all the best practices for YouTube publishing.
We’re going to look closely at some specific YouTube publishing best practices in this piece to help you make the most of this platform, which has the potential to be a goldmine.
Related: How To Make Passive Income on YouTube
1. Create a unique thumbnail
The thumbnail for your video serves as the viewer’s initial introduction to your material, therefore you need to use a picture that actively encourages clicks. Many new viewers will decide whether or not they’re interested in your channel in a split second based only on the thumbnail. Because of this, a bespoke thumbnail ought to be a key element of your YouTube marketing strategy.
Strike a mix between purpose and enjoyment while designing a personalised thumbnail. Your YouTube thumbnail functions similarly to your brand’s primary logo in terms of introducing your company to new viewers. Selecting a polished image will demonstrate to viewers that the video contains the information they seek. Choose one that grabs attention, fits well with your channel art and inspires user interest.
The following list provides a few more best practices for creating a great thumbnail:
- To guarantee that your image is easily viewable on both mobile and desktop computers, choose a 1280 × 720 pixel size with a 16:9 ratio. Then, save your thumbnail in either JPEG or PNG format.
- Use the highest resolution you can, and choose an image that not only inspires the visitor to click but also helps to distinguish your business from competitors.
- For optimal results, pick a background image that complements it with text overlaid in a simple font.
- Choose colours for the image and text that are readable and match the colours in the video.
2. Add your target keyword in your title and description
The algorithm used by YouTube to decide which videos are most pertinent to a user’s search depends on a number of different variables. The inclusion of keywords in the video’s title and description is one of those variables.
Make sure to use pertinent keywords in your titles and descriptions if you want people who are looking for the topics you cover to be able to quickly find your channel. Additionally, you can utilise keywords to inform YouTube of the subject matter of your films, which could result in more views from the “Related Videos” area.
3. Use cards and end screens effectively
You can add YouTube cards, which are square-shaped information boxes, to your videos to enhance their interest, interactivity, and entertainment value. End screens are advertising cards that you can insert in the final five to twenty seconds of your film to promote your website, further content, social media accounts, and other pertinent links.
Cards and end screens are both made with the intention of maximising viewer engagement with your videos. Include a call to action for your brand, though, to make the most of placing cards and end screens.
4. Create closed captions for every video
For all brands, closed subtitles on YouTube videos are a requirement. They firstly make the video accessible to users who are hard of hearing or deaf, but they also provide the option for viewers to watch without sound.
Captions are a crucial option to offer viewers because an increasing number of people are watching YouTube on their mobile devices, and occasionally in public locations.
Despite the fact that you may add captions to your videos using any video editor, we strongly advise using an SRT file or YouTube’s built-in subtitles tool. You’ll see a “subtitles tab” when you watch a video that you’ve posted in the Creator’s Studio. From this point, you can use YouTube’s automatic transcription features to produce closed captions and subtitles for your video.
5. Know the best times to publish
You can choose to schedule your video for publication when you post it. Generally speaking, this is an excellent option, especially if you want to maintain some consistency on your channel, such as uploading a video every Tuesday at 12:00.
Even though scheduling timings are less important on YouTube than they are on other platforms, doing so can still help your new videos gain more exposure.
Your best bet will usually be to post on weekdays between noon and four o’clock. When you publish a video at this time, YouTube has enough time to store it and make it available to subscribers when they’re ready to unwind after working a typical 9 to 5.
6. Invest in high-quality editing
In a similar vein, modern audiences demand well-edited videos with clear footage, high-quality audio, and imaginative imagery or special effects. Spend money on top-notch video editing software or hire a professional to do the job for you.
Don’t just sit talking while staring straight at the camera for 10 minutes. Use a lot of visuals, possibly a few graphs and charts, some creative pop-up graphics, and excellent editing. This will reflect well on your brand, cast your services in a better light and keep your audience interested in your video for longer.
7. Separate your video into chapters
As already said, breaking up lengthy films into chapters can make it simpler to navigate through them. Because they prevent viewers from being irritated with having to sit through portions of longer videos that they may not find entertaining, chapters help to increase retention.
Watch the stats on your dashboard to see if the chapters you’ve added to your video are helping you. Try renaming it to an exact query that a user may use to find this information if you see that interaction declines at a particular chapter.
8. Engage with your community
For YouTube marketing, it’s crucial to keep your subscriber base active. As often as you can, reply to comments from viewers, and include a call to action inviting people to subscribe in each video. The majority of viewers like to feel that they are a part of a lively community. Being as interactive as you can with your subscribers can aid in the expansion of your following.
When handled properly, interaction on YouTube may quickly translate into engagement on your brand’s other social media channels.
9. Maximize watch time
The term “watch time” describes how long a user watches your YouTube video. Users should ideally watch your films all the way through. When people lose interest before or during important information, it can be helpful to figure out what has to be changed in order to get longer views.
You may see view time with the aid of YouTube analytics and make use of that data for your business. Adapt future content to resemble the videos with the longest watch times when you find that some of them have greater watch times.
Here are some strategies to lengthen YouTube viewers’ watch time:
Create an open loop
Your video should begin with a question that it claims to answer. For example, if your are a beauty blogger doing a product review of a makeup brand, you can start your video by saying “Is this foundation matte? Does it blend easily? is it water resistant? Find all this out in this video!” By saying this, you would have inspired some curiosity from the viewer and this could make them stick around for the length of your video as you answer the questions one by one.
Post at the right time
As previously said, use analytics to discover when your viewers are online more frequently. At those instances, post your videos.
Curate playlists
Playlists assist in categorising your content. By organising them into groups based on your most popular videos, you can also use them to spark curiosity and lengthen viewers’ attention spans. If you have a video on how to pick the right foundation, another on how to pick your correct shade of concealer and another on how to pick the right shade of red lipstick. It would be wise to put them all together in a playlist. That way, instead of watching just one of the videos, the viewer can watch all three back to back, gaining value from your video, and possibly loving your content enough to subscribe for more.
Also read: Blog vs YouTube: Which is More Profitable?
Conclusion
When it comes to expanding your brand, YouTube is one of the most extensive ad formats now available to marketers. You have the potential to use YouTube to your benefit with just a little SEO know-how, some strategically placed videos, and the appropriate kind of material.
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