YouTube SEO boot camp - QBN edition
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- cherub
I have accidentally accumulated a fair bit of knowledge in this area. My loss is your gain. If you want your videos to rank and/or get more views on youtube... ask. I'll try to help.
In no particular order, some facts I learned.
Fact 1:
The youtube algorithm cares about where you put your keywords within the title of your youtube video. What I mean is:
"As a student I probably I shouldn't have made these graphic design mistakes"
will not rank the same as
"Graphic design mistakes that I probably shouldn't have made as a student"
because the algorithm prefers you frontload the keywords to the beginning of the title of your video. Really REALLY stupid and simplistic but that's the algorithm. The 2nd example is optimized for the keyword phrase, "graphic design" solely based on where it appeared in the title.
Fact 2:
Same example as above applies to the video description. Front load the keywords to the beginning of the very first paragraph of your video's description to improve SEO and views.
Fact 3:
Youtube does not search plurals of keywords. You would think that putting "banana" in your tags would cover both "banana" and "bananas" but it doesn't. Weird, huh? If you want your video to come up for plural of something you have to explicitly put that tag.
Fact 4:
Youtube ignores both capitalization and the apostrophe. "GRAPHIC DESIGN tips 4 nOObs so let's party" is the same as "graphic design tips 4 noobs so lets party"
Fact 5:
Youtube does count the hyphen. If you want your video to come up for "Co-op" don't put "coop" in your tags thinking youtube adds it, they don't
What else... have I forgetten anything?
As it turns out, since youtube owned by google alot of these probably also work for google SEO too.
Warning: use all these at your own risk. I don't have any official training in youtube SEO
~This thread is like Trooperbill catnip. Let's see how long before he notices, heh heh
- trooperbill0
took me 6 hours but then couldnt log in haha
seems about right.
- couldn't log into QBN? UGH. I hate it when that happens.cherub
- Continuity0
I imagine this basic check list also applies to IG's algorithm, especially the front-loading of keywords.
- I have no knowledge whatsoever of instagram, but I'd be curious to see if facebook owned IG does SEO differently. It's a different company. Not sure.cherub
- cherub0
So the basic umbrella term "SEO" that I'm using as shorthand in this thread, unlike google where you're only trying to rank your website for one thing, google search... On youtube "SEO" really can be broken down into several subcategories of the end result you want.
But even before that, it helps to realize there there are 2 completely different algorithms for youtube shorts (youtube's version of tiktok) and youtube non-shorts (traditional youtube video, pre-short era).
Any time you upload a video that is less than or equal to 1 minute in length from your smart device using the youtube app, it is *automatically* recognized as a short and goes thru a different algorithm and pipeline. Basically, youtube takes your short and dumps it into everyone's "short feed" and your short then gets seen as people scroll thru their feed. That's the primary way they are seen. There are 2 other minor ways:
-they are also reported to be searchable thru keywords
-they can be found on desktop as you scroll the youtube site
But the primary way is thru shorts feed. All I know is shorts uses a different algorithm. If u are awesome at shorts and suck at full size video, the algorithm can give u thousands of shorts views, and little or no full sized video views. Like I said, different algorithm.Getting back to full sized videos, the subcategories of SEO are:
-Browser / Homepage
-Youtube search
-Suggested Videos
Probably there are more, but these can be explained further. I'll try.
Videos from channels that a user is subscribed to will generally show up on that user's home page when they first open the youtube mobile app or go to the website on a desktop. Under the hood, this subcategory of SEO is called "Browsing features" and I'm not sure exactly how to target this subcategory specifically, except to say you want your "total expected watch time" to be high and your "average session time" to be high.
Youtube search. This is the subcategory that cares about how you title your video and how you write your video description. Its the main one we speak of when we speak of how to "rank on youtube" This one could be covered even deeper and I've already started a deep dive in my very first post.
"Suggested videos" this subcategory is the one that can land your video right underneath another video on youtube after the person finishes watching. After a video ends, there are always "suggested videos" that appear just below that video, sometimes from the same creator, sometimes not. You can target this subcategory by naming your title a similar name, and copying their keywords from their video description. The algorithm then concludes your video might be similar, and is more likely to let it appear below it. It is difficult to target this SEO but it is *EXTREMELY* powerful because if it works, it can get you some serious traffic.
Enough for now...
Trooperbill are you still with me?
- trooperbill1
just imagine whenever you think of seo a little me pops up on your shoulder and nods approvingly lol