Answered SEO question

[Ben Saltzman]

someone responded to another question I asked here saying that SEO needs to be good to get my videos ranked high in YouTube. I assume that means:
1) Finding keywords that TubeBuddy says will rank high for my channel.
2) Putting those keywords in many of our descriptions and titles of our videos.

Is that accurate?
Is there anything else that goes into good SEO?

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important because it is one of the few things that we can control when it comes to who we want our videos served to by YouTube. It let's YouTube know who this video is for and who needs to see it. And the process is fairly simple; you make a video about a certain subject, and then you cater the metadata of the video to reflect this subject.

Actually ranking for a term is not just about SEO though, there are other variables that come into play. If the term has too much competition your video is going to be pitted against a lot of other videos and it will be required to outperform them. If it does not then it is not going to rank in Search for these terms and it will fall out of favor with YouTube. If the video performs very well and lands at the top of the search ranks it means nothing if the thumbnail doesn't stand out against the other videos in Search; viewers will click on the other videos and eventually your video will fall out of the search ranks.

The key to this process is to do research on the things that viewers are searching for that are underserved. There are a literal bazillion videos about making chocolate chip cookies... but how many people have done tutorials on making chocolate chip cookies at the beach? If there is traffic for that term then you have an opportunity to create something that people will enjoy and appreciate for years on end. Once you find the needle-in-a-haystack search terms you need to make sure YouTube is serving them correctly. Take these keyword phrases and make sure they are entered into the beginning of the title, the first 200 characters of the description and the tags. This gives YouTube a very focused idea of what your video is. Once this is complete you need to make sure that you craft that title in such a way that it intrigues and compels viewers to click... and you want to make sure that you include a thumbnail which does the same and stands out against the other thumbnails it will be competing against.

SEO is not a magic view machine... on its own it does nothing outstanding for your video performance. But harnessed correctly and implemented over the course of an entire library it is an effective tool for creating a foundation of evergreen traffic for you channel and a great way to take advantage of the thing that YouTube is best at; putting you directly in front of the viewers who are looking for exactly the video you made.

 

[Ben Saltzman]

Thanks for this.
A question for clarification.
Are you telling me the OTHER videos I have posted have no influence on SEO for a single video I make?
In other words - if I have other videos on making cookies, and those have "making chocolate chip cookies at the beach" in their descriptions, those will not help me get a video that is ONLY focused on "making chocolate chip cookies at the beach" to rank high on youtube?

 

[Ben Saltzman]

Thanks for this.
A question for clarification.
Are you telling me the OTHER videos I have posted have no influence on SEO for a single video I make?
In other words - if I have other videos on making cookies, and those have "making chocolate chip cookies at the beach" in their descriptions, those will not help me get a video that is ONLY focused on "making chocolate chip cookies at the beach" to rank high on youtube?

Hello?

 

[MattCommand1]

Dvery channel has keywords you can assign to the channel. Also, Google & YT seem to have a sophisticated algorithms. I would like to think that a channel dedicated to "making cookies" will favor new videos on the topic. I would certainly lean into it. Unfortunately, I've not seen any definitive info one way or another.

If one video were to link to another video or playlist within your channel, I would think it would be a "signal" to the algorithm as a related topic. But again, I am speculating.