YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, with nearly 2 billion logged-in users visiting the platform every month, making it an excellent medium for marketing your product. However, if you don’t know how to rank a video on YouTube, you may find your video is lost among the 400 hours of content that is uploaded every minute – which equates to an awe-inspiring 66 years’ worth of content every day.

While that thought settles in, here are some tips from the Definition team on how to rank a video on YouTube.

Establishing a keyword

As with optimising for written content, the first step to ranking your YouTube video is to choose a target keyword. You’ll need to use a tool – like the appropriately named Keyword Tool – to generate a long list of potential keywords. Think about the language your target audience uses, and what questions they’re likely to be asking related to your product.  Next, focus on the following key factors to determine which keywords to target:

Search volume – Does the keyword generate a large number of searches? As a general rule of thumb, the bigger the better, as you want to reach as many people as possible. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Bottom-of-the-funnel keywords – such as ones related to the benefits of using your company’s product – may have fewer searches, but will yield a higher conversion rate.

Competition – Are there lots of high-quality videos with millions of searches for your target keyword? If so, it may be worth targeting a different keyword, unless you think you can produce something better than what’s currently on offer.

Scripting

Make sure you’ve included your keywords and synonyms in the video script. YouTube will automatically transcribe these so it’s worth double checking they’ve been accurately interpreted.

Optimising your title and description

The next step is to optimise your video’s title. Make sure to include the target keyword, while ensuring the title is readable and engaging. It can be helpful to use the keyword as the first word in the title, but don’t force it if it doesn’t fit naturally.

Then, take similar steps to optimise the video description. Include the keyword in the first 25 words of the description and try to use it two, three, or even four times. Ensure the description is at least 250 words long.

Setting up your tags

The next step is to set up your video tags. Try to use around 20 to 30 tags on your video, making sure that the first tag is your exact target keyword. If you’re targeting, for instance, “Innovative finance ISA”, make sure that’s the first tag, but also include a few variations like “IFISA”. A few other tags should cover the topic of the video, for example, “ISAs”, “tax-free savings”, “tax-free investment”, and “retirement planning”.

Now it’s time to release your video into the wild. But your work isn’t finished yet.

Promotion

The next step is to use the feedback system to boost your video. Encourage your friends and colleagues to watch the video, and then have them work through the following steps:

  • Add a positive comment underneath
  • Give it a thumbs up
  • Watch it all the way through, and only after finishing the video subscribe to the channel

Once you’ve done all that, stop and think about who else you could ask to complete these steps – perhaps individuals in your professional network will be interested, so it may be a good idea to share the video on your LinkedIn. People interacting with your video will give you a serious boost in rankings, so it’s worth taking the time to get as many people involved as you can.

Then consider how else it could be promoted – the more engagement you generate the better.

Rinse and repeat

With those steps, you should be well on your way to ranking your YouTube video. Now that you know how to rank a video on YouTube, consider producing and releasing videos more regularly to generate a real following. It’s a fantastic way of building familiarity with your target audience, getting your brand out there, and nurturing people down the sales funnel.

If you need help with marketing your video, why not reach out to our MD Jamie to discuss strategy? Or, find out more about our SEO services.