Optimizing your YouTube videos

So, you’ve made a high-quality video that is interesting to your target audience. But before publishing, it’s worth working on optimizing it. Further on what to look for.

File name

This is not a very significant signal, but still the file called wordpress_seo.mp4 reflects its content better than video12345678.mp4. Use a high-frequency key in the file name, it will not be superfluous.

Video title

The title of a video plays the same role for its promotion on YouTube as the title tag of a web page for its promotion in search engines.

Here are the criteria for a good video title:

— Concisely expresses the main essence of the video and attracts the attention of the target audience. You can use various formulas for composing headings (4U, AIDA, how-to and others) or try to formulate it yourself. The main thing is that the user, by the name of the video, understands why it is worth watching.
— Contains keywords. This will help to bring the video to the TOP not only of YouTube, but also of Yandex / Google search engines. High-frequency keys should fit organically at the beginning of the header:

Does not exceed 40-60 characters with spaces. YouTube offers up to 100 characters in length, but important keywords need to fit exactly in 40-60, otherwise the title will be «cut»:

Doesn’t cheat. For example, if you use the word “review” in your title, users expect to see it, not an ad.

Includes the name of the brand or product if relevant.
Contains a mention of the speaker, if important. In the case of an interview, be sure to identify the hero.
Includes slang or professional vocabulary specific to the niche.
It can be provocative or humorous, contain intrigue if it «hits» the target audience.
May contain the name of a city or region if the company provides local services.

Video description

The description expands and complements the video title. The limit on the number of characters is 5000. When the user opens the video, only the first 157 characters will be visible, further description will be revealed by clicking on the “more” link, so try to put keywords and important links at the beginning:

Tags

Typically used as tags:

— brand name;
— the product’s name;
— high-frequency keywords that characterize the niche;
— near-thematic keys.

There is no limit on the number of tags, but there is a limit on the number of characters — no more than 500. You should not try to use this amount to the maximum. Typically, a video can be described within 20 tags.

Using keywords in tags helps to promote videos in the TOP according to targeted queries and appear in the recommended videos section.

If you have no idea what tags to use, you can look at competitors’ tags. To do this, on the video page, you need to enable the code view mode and by searching for the words «keywords» or «tag» find a list of tags for the video:

Blindly copying competitors’ tags is a bad idea. This method is needed to understand what the channels in your niche are focusing on. Use the tags that best describe your video.