YouTube Keyword Research: The Ultimate Guide
YouTube keyword research method enhances your video’s SEO, attracts audience, and grows your channel by utilizing easy-to-navigate tools and tactics and identifying the right phrases and terms.
YouTube keyword research method enhances your video’s SEO, attracts audience, and grows your channel by utilizing easy-to-navigate tools and tactics and identifying the right phrases and terms.
Just like in a Google search, users type in specific keywords when searching for a particular video on YouTube too. Figuring out the keywords a user will most likely use to find videos related to your industry is popularly known as “YouTube keyword research.”
You may create videos that are of high quality, engaging, and informative. But if you don’t use the right keywords, it may not even reach the audience it should. YouTube keyword research involves identifying popular phrases and terms used by viewers to search for a video and using them in your videos. This provides an insight into the type of content they want to see on the platform. As a YouTube creator, use keyword research to plan the kind of videos you make for your audience and organically reach new viewers within your niche.
Now, you must be wondering: Is traditional keyword research for SEO similar to YouTube keyword research? Both of them are closely related. However, it is critical to think about YouTube keyword research as a different ballgame with its own best practices, do’s and don’ts. A Youtuber using it well has a greater chance of displaying their videos at the top of the search results. Moreover, remember that Google also heavily emphasizes YouTube videos and displays them on its search results for particular search terms. So, you have to be extremely diligent while performing YouTube keyword research to ensure that your video reaches its target audience.
YouTube keyword research helps video creators appear at the top of the YouTube search result page. Planning the keywords that you must add to your YouTube videos helps increase incoming traffic to your content, which you can plug to other links and your own channels while ensuring that you get desirable views of your videos.
YouTube is a highly competitive platform, and over 500 hours of videos are uploaded every minute. Ensuring viewers find and watch your videos is exceptionally challenging unless you have a robust YouTube keyword research strategy. When you take the time to do some keyword research for your YouTube videos and understand what your target audience is interested in watching, your chances of superseding all the other 500 hours of videos and putting yours ahead of the curve increase.
Video tags are words or phrases that give YouTube information about your video. YouTube keywords are generally added to the video tags to provide the platform context about your video. Using clear language helps rank it better on the search page.
Video tags carry metadata information and allow you to inform YouTube and Google about your video’s topic, category, and much more. Tags are considered to be an essential part of YouTube’s search algorithm and the way it ranks videos.
Here is how you can add tags to your new videos:
For existing videos:
You can add keywords throughout your video, including in the description and title, in addition to the tags.
Title: Your title is probably the most important element of your YouTube video. It basically influences how many users will be interested in clicking and watching them. The title of your videos must have the main keyword, which should ideally be added at the beginning of your video. Moreover, it should be below 60 characters and must be able to grab the attention of the viewer. Add bold and challenging words that urge users to click on your video without being clickbaity.
Description: A well-written description for your videos allows search engines to understand what your video is about. Moreover, it gives your viewers information about what they can expect after clicking on them. While writing a description, make sure to add the main keyword in the second or third sentence and incorporate it naturally three to four times throughout the content. Additionally, the description should be of at least 200 characters and have other secondary keywords that are relevant to the video.
Along with adding keywords to the main content of the description, you can also use them as hashtags. Adding important keywords as hashtags helps your videos appear for specific search terms, allowing them to rank higher.
A keyword research tool helps you understand what your target audience is searching for and what phrases will help you gain the maximum engagement and views. These tools let you develop a basic idea of how to proceed with your upcoming YouTube video.
Additionally, they help you identify specific metrics, such as the number of searches a particular keyword has obtained and its competitiveness. The competitiveness aspect is related to how difficult it is to rank your videos for a specific keyword.
The analytics report provided by YouTube lets you view popular search terms your viewers use across the platform. To get access to the YouTube analytic research report, you must first sign in to YouTube Studio > visit “analytics” > then go to “research” > and click on the “your viewer searches” tab.
Now, you need to enter a keyword, and you will discover the different related keywords that your viewers have searched for. These keywords are classified according to their search volume from “high,” “medium,” and “low.” Although the analytics report doesn’t give you the exact number for the search volume, you can use it to get a basic idea of what terms most of your viewers are searching for.
There is also a “content gap” tab in the tool, which helps you identify the terms your viewers searched for and didn’t find any satisfactory results. Identifying these content gaps and making videos to fill in these gaps can help you attract more views and develop a loyal viewer base. You can also check out broader insights by clicking “searches across YouTube.” Do note that these insights are only from the last 28 days, but you can bookmark them for later reference.
You may have noticed that when you search for a video on YouTube, it suggests the preceding words as soon as you enter a word on the search bar. This feature, known as “autocomplete,” predicts what you might be searching for and subsequently suggests phrases or words.
One good thing about the YouTube autocomplete feature is that it only suggests the popular keywords or terms that most people are searching for. So, in a way, YouTube automatically tells you that these are popular keywords with a high search volume. This undervalued information is great for optimizing your videos to ensure that they reach your target audience and help boost traffic to your page. Moreover, this feature also helps you identify the topics on which you can make videos and expect maximum results.
Let’s say you are planning to make a video on healthy lifestyle tips. But you are confused about how to move forward with the idea, considering there are a lot of topics you can cover when talking about a healthy lifestyle. In such a scenario, you can type the search term “healthy lifestyle,” and the YouTube autocomplete feature will suggest numerous topics on which you can make a video. If one of the results is “healthy lifestyle tips for people with a 9 to 5 job,” you can make a video on this topic, covering all the aspects of how working adults can lead a healthy life without having to compromise their professional commitment. Not only is this a perfect topic to make a video on, but also, since it is a long-tail keyword, it will be easier to rank due to a lack of competition.
Just like traditional SEO where competitor analysis plays a big role in determining the keywords that you need to target, YouTube video optimization also requires competitor analysis. It is vital to understand what videos they are making and the keywords they are targeting.
Regardless of the niche that you make videos on, you are bound to see creators who are doing better than you and have the same target audience. Paying close attention to what topics these creators are making videos on will help you get an idea about what your target audience wants to see and will inspire you to make better videos and become a better creator. Often, individuals experience creative blocks. In such situations, competitor analysis can also help overcome this and ensure that you always work to your full potential.
While conducting competitor analysis, you need to pay close attention to the following details:
While directly copying their content will lead to plagiarism, which is not appreciated on the platform, you can always take inspiration from other videos and figure out how you can improve yourself as a creator. Moreover, you can also look at the tags that your competitors are using and how they are able to rank their videos for specific keywords. Although it is crucial to understand that tags don’t influence the search results drastically, using popular tags can benefit your videos by making them relevant. You can find out the tags that your competitors are using by following the steps mentioned:
Step 1: Go to any of your competitor’s videos
Step 2: Select “view page source” by right-clicking next to the search bar. An HTML tab will appear.
Step 3: Now press Ctrl+F and type meta name = “keywords,” and you will find all the highlighted instances that were used by your competitors in that particular video as tags.
When you optimize a website, you consider whether the content meets the user’s search intent. As mentioned earlier, since YouTube is a search engine just like Google and Bing, the videos you post must also meet the viewers’ search intent.
Viewers who click on a particular video have certain expectations that your video must meet. Hence, it is very important to identify the search intent of the keywords you are targeting and make videos that match that intent. In simple words, your users must be able to watch what they are looking for when using a keyword to search for a video.
So, how do you identify the search intent of a keyword? Well, when you have a specific keyword such as “Tesla review,” it dictates that users are searching for a review about the car and if it is worth investing in. However, if you are targeting vague keywords such as “Tesla,” identifying the search intent is difficult. In this case, you can use the YouTube platform itself to determine what videos are trending for the keywords and proceed with making your video.
Keyword mapping is assigning keywords or phrases to a particular page on the website and, in this case, assigning them to a YouTube video. To successfully conduct keyword mapping, you need to make a spreadsheet or chart the keywords that will help you gain traction on YouTube and find the videos that will work the best with them.
Keyword mapping must have the following elements:
Keyword mapping is a bit time-consuming but has two major benefits that are worth the time and effort:
There are numerous tools that you can use to enhance your YouTube SEO game. Here are some versatile tools:
Ubersuggest is a powerful YouTube research tool that provides insights into the keywords that your viewers are using and ensures that your videos rank both on YouTube and Google. The tool, along with assisting creators with keyword suggestions, also provides insights into the search volume. Additionally, it also helps you identify the difficulty of keywords and gauge if they are the right terms that will help your site rank.
The tool also provides long-tail keywords that strike a perfect balance between search volume and how easy it is to rank. So, if your channel is new, you can focus only on the long tail keywords while staying away from the difficult keywords that have a lesser chance of ranking. Moreover, the easy-to-use interface and navigation features make it one of the most sought-after keyword research platforms trusted by top creators.
TubeBuddy is a keyword research tool that is specifically designed for YouTube. This platform makes finding relevant keywords for your videos and optimizing them a breeze with the help of easy navigation and analysis.
It helps you easily analyze the specific keywords and terms you are looking for, suggests tags that will be beneficial for your videos, and offers insights into how you can improve their performance. Moreover, it also tracks your current ranking for specific keywords and provides effective tactics for optimization.
VidIQ is similar to TubeBuddy and offers insights into which keywords are working for you and which are not. Moreover, with this tool, you can also check out the keywords your competitors are targeting and learn how to improve your videos for better results. Furthermore, it also provides suggestions for tags that will help your video rank on both YouTube and Google.
Another noteworthy feature of the tool is that it shows videos that are trending for particular keywords. With this, you understand the search intent of these phrases, which is essential information if your goal is to create videos that are relevant to the search intent.
Keywordtool.io is a great alternative to Google Keyword planner and can autocomplete search terms that are popular on YouTube. The best thing about the tool is that the free version can be used to generate 750+ long tail keywords for every search term you have fed the software.
The platform understands that every keyword used for a particular search is an expression of the viewer’s desires, doubts, and problems. Hence, the tool allows you to search for a term and its related keywords to closely understand the intent. Once you have understood the intent, you can refer to trending videos to gauge what your target audience wants to view and make content accordingly.
YouTube Autosuggest helps users find content more quickly and efficiently by predicting and suggesting search queries as they type in the search bar. Additionally, this feature offers fantastic benefits to creators. It compiles trending topics and popular searches, helping creators discover new and popular content and identify what viewers might be interested in watching. Moreover, it provides insights into what keywords and phrases are popular, potentially guiding content strategy that aligns with what the viewers are searching for. Overall, YouTube autosuggest plays a significant role in making content discovery easier. It helps you, a content creator, find topics and ideas for your upcoming videos and ensure that they trend on the platform.
Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to analyze the popularity of a search query across different regions and languages. This platform uses charts to track the rise and fall of a particular search query over time and assist in identifying the keywords that will be beneficial for you in the present time.
So, for instance, if you are planning to make a video on productivity, you can simply provide “productivity tips” as an input to the platform, which will lead you to numerous search terms related to this term. This information helps you identify what will work best for you and create videos accordingly.
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is a powerful tool designed to help digital marketers, SEO professionals, and content creators identify and analyze keywords to improve their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
The tool provides detailed insights into the search volume, keyword difficulty, and cost per click of the keywords and offers valuable suggestions based on the seed keywords entered to help you discover related terms and long-tail keywords. Additionally, it also offers accurate metrics on how difficult it is to rank the keyword in the top search results, helping you prioritize your efforts on more achievable targets.
As mentioned above, YouTube is similar to any other search engine, with the difference that it is specifically made for video searches. So, just like one would optimize their webpage with relevant keywords to be at the top of the search results, it is important to optimize YouTube videos as well to help viewers find your content and improve your channel performance.
Fortunately, numerous robust tools help you find relevant keywords that you can use to enhance your ranking. So, if you are a budding creator or an SEO professional, spending some time in keyword research and finding the relevant terms and phrases that will help your channel grow is the need of the hour, especially considering the dominance of video content on the internet.
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