YouTube Optimization Tips for SEOs #SMXAdvanced

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @orainti
YouTube
Optimization
Tips for SEOs

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiwww.orainti.com
* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
* Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal
* Crawling Mondays YouTube Channel Host
* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018
I’m Aleyda Solis, SEO Consultant  
& Founder at Orainti

I wanted to
try something
new for 2019

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/
And then I saw
these numbers…

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://biteable.com/blog/tips/video-marketing-statistics/
These
trends…

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.similarweb.com/
No hype at
all!

Who wants to have a share of this?
semrush traffic analysis

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.similarweb.com/
… and beyond
the Web too!

I decided to do it

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
I bought
Camtasia to
record and edit
videos

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.youtube.com/c/crawlingmondaysbyaleyda
I registered, filmed the first and announced  
the Crawling Mondays YouTube Channel

I began to
promote it over
my social presence
and created also
its own
https://twitter.com/crawlingmondays

I soon discovered
that a shockingly
high number of
people watch
YouTube over their
TV sets… and got a
couple of emails (not
Malte) regarding
video quality

Phil Nottingham
from Wistia saw
my ﬁrst video
quality was a bit
crappy too and
sent me tips for
camera, mic,
lighting and a
soapbox video kit
Thanks @philnottingham

I then started using this kit to film  
Crawling Mondays
Logitech
Panavise 
& iPhone XS
Max
SmartLav+ 
&  
Snowball ice
Aputure AL-
M9 Light
Mic
LightCamera
Camtasia
Editor

Then I realized:
I’m an
experienced
SEO… but this
was not Google!

I needed to
research and test
YouTube to
identify the
optimal way to
produce my
videos and grow
their views

Putting my SEO experience to the best use

Answering key video questions to then test  
their production & optimization process
1.  
Research
2.  
Implementation, Optimization & Testing
Refining
the videos
Distributing
the videos
Which
are the main
factors to
grow your
videos
views?
Promoting
the Videos
Optimizing
the Videos
Producing
the videos
Establishing
goals &
targets to
track
Measuring
videos
results
Who are
your Video
competitors
?
What’s
your
audience
Video Search
Behavior?
How do
you measure
Video
results?

Let’s go through my top video optimization
findings when researching, developing & testing

1. YouTube’s
Videos discovery
goes well beyond
in-YouTube Search,
so is important to
optimize for those
other channels too

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://qz.com/1178125/youtubes-recommendations-drive-70-of-what-we-watch/
Most of users don’t discover videos through
YouTube search, but via video recommendations

YouTube search
is one of many
other trafﬁc
sources within
the platform
powered by
YouTube’s
functionalities
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1714921?hl=en

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1714921?hl=en
YouTube
videos also
have
important
external trafﬁc
sources too
Embedded
Videos
Links to
videos from
external sites
Google
Search
Results

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintisemrush traffic analysis
Organic search is the 2nd traffic driver to  
the YouTube site after direct traffic

12% of mobile search results in the US and  
8.74% in Germany include video thumbnails
Country Video Thumbnail in
top 20 results
In all Categories In Arts &
Entertainment Beauty & Fitness
Any
Video
From
YouTube
Any
Video
From
YouTube Any Video From
YouTube
USA
Desktop 6.92% 52.93% 22.43% 44.73% 8.61% 54.15%
Mobile 12.64% 49.78% 17.75% 28.38% 14.78% 51.04%
Germany
Desktop 3.47% 37.87% 5.17% 35.04% 2.21% 47.51%
Mobile 8.74% 45.77% 10.29% 39.35% 8.78% 57.19%
Video SERP data via SEMrush

Almost half of these Video Thumbnails in  
Google Search Results are from YouTube
Country Video Thumbnail in
top 20 results
Any
Video
From
YouTube
Any
Video
From
YouTube
USA
Desktop 6.92% 52.93% 22.43% 44.73% 8.61% 54.15%
Mobile 12.64% 49.78% 17.75% 28.38% 14.78% 51.04%
Germany
Desktop 3.47% 37.87% 5.17% 35.04% 2.21% 47.51%
Mobile 8.74% 45.77% 10.29% 39.35% 8.78% 57.19%

Country Video Carrousels in
top 20 results
Any
Video
From
YouTube
Any
Video
From
YouTube
USA
Desktop 51.14% 79.91% 68.10% 90.87% 63.50% 83.47%
Mobile 31.91% 81.91% 33.60% 93.20% 47.15% 85.69%
Germany
Desktop 59.04% 76.89% 62.10% 75.30% 57.45% 81.68%
Mobile 24.67% 77.23% 22.80% 76 % 26.13% 84.76%
31.91% of mobile search results in the US and  
24.67% in Germany include video carrousels

Usually +80% of Videos in these carrousels in
Google Search Results are from YouTube
Country Video Carrousels in
top 20 results
Any
Video
From
YouTube
Any
Video
From
YouTube
USA
Desktop 51.14% 79.91% 68.10% 90.87% 63.50% 83.47%
Mobile 31.91% 81.91% 33.60% 93.20% 47.15% 85.69%
Germany
Desktop 59.04% 76.89% 62.10% 75.30% 57.45% 81.68%
Mobile 24.67% 77.23% 22.80% 76 % 26.13% 84.76%

2. To maximize
your discoverability
within YouTube you
need to optimize
for relevance,
retention and
engagement

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/discovery
YouTube’s algorithm has two goals
Help each
viewer to find
the videos they
want to watch
Get viewers to
keep watching
more of what
they like
1 2

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://qz.com/1178125/youtubes-recommendations-drive-70-of-what-we-watch/
It’s actually pretty good at it

These principles are used through different  
discovery channels within YouTube
Suggested
Videos
Search
Home
Videos
Trending
Subscriptions
Tab
Notifications

YouTube’s will follow the audience behavior
What users
watch and
don't watch
What users
like and dislike
How much
time users
spend
watching the
video
"not
interested”
feedback

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://towardsdatascience.com/using-deep-neural-networks-to-make-youtube-recommendations-dfc0a1a13d1e
"YouTube’s
recommendations
systems provide a
real-time feedback
loop to cater to each
viewer and their
varying interests."

Suggested Videos are ranked to maximize
engagement based on prior user activity
Topically
Related
Videos
Videos that
viewers watch
along with the
current
video
Videos
from a
viewer’s past
watch
history

YouTube Home shows videos from subscriptions,
videos watched by similar viewers, new videos
How many
times the
video has
been shown
How well
the video has
engaged and
satisfied similar
viewers
How
often the
channel or
topic is
viewed

YouTube search ranks the most relevant and
highly engaged videos to the query
Title
Relevance
Watch
time of
video for
query
Description
Relevance

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.briggsby.com/reverse-engineering-youtube-search
Most of these
have been
found to have
a high
correlation
with the best
ranked videos
in YouTube
across many
studies

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://backlinko.com/youtube-ranking-factors
With a few
exceptions that I
wanted to test
when optimizing my
videos to maximize
their relevance

However, it was clear relevance is not enough  
(as in SEO), here retention & engagement are key
Relevance Engagement Retention 
Title, description, etc. Likes, views, ratings,
comments, shares,
subscriptions
 
Watch Time

SEO, CRO &
Community
management
together are
needed to
maximize
YouTube’s
discoverability

At this point I
realized I might
have
underestimated a
bit what was
needed… but I
was going to give
it a go anyway!

How to develop relevant videos to be liked so
much that retain and keep users engaged?

3. As in SEO, start
with an audience
preferences, topics
and competition
analysis to establish
relevant queries
targets to establish a
video content plan

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiAhrefs & keywordtool.io
Obtain popular
queries to
target by using
your current
keywords tools
with YouTube
support, like
Ahrefs or
keywordtool.io

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiBuzzsumo
Identify the videos with more engagement  
about your topic using tools like Buzzsumo

Refine the terms by using YouTube’s focused  
tools like vidIQ, including competition metrics
vidIQ

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintividIQ
Identify the
top ranked
videos
keywords
used in tags,
as well as the
most popular
related terms

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiGoogle Trends
You can also
verify
trending
topics by
using Google
Trends that
includes a
YouTube ﬁlter

Use SocialBlade & Noxinfluencer to obtain the
top channels from any topic in any country
Socialblade & Noxinfluencer

Obtain your competitors subscribers,  
video views and uploads over time
Socialblade

Analyze their ongoing behavior:  
How often do they publish? When?
Noxinfluencer

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiNoxinfluencer
What topics do
your
competitors
publish about?
What are the
best performing
ones?

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiNoxinfluencer
What terms are they targeting  
with their top performing videos?

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiVidIQ
Gather your competitors overall best
performing terms to expand & refine yours

As a result you will now have a set of not so
high competitive, but relevant terms to cover
Medium
Search
Volume
Low
Competition
High
topical
relevance for
your
audience
High
expertise
Feasibility
to produce
and cover w/
a video
Possibility to
repurpose on
blog post
Is there a
video intent?
Google
shows
videos
Are
aligned
with your
marketing/
business
goals

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiTubeBuddy
In my case this would mean to avoid generic SEO
topics, much competition not so relevant audience

While focusing on more specific yet still popular
terms for a more niche audience with experience

Establishing a consistent publication  
schedule for them
Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
1
Publish How to
“Set SEO Alerts”
1. Promote 
in Social & Groups
2. Reply to comments
3. Repurpose video in
blog post
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/Reshare
other people
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/
Reshare
other
people
1. Ask for
feedback on
current video
2. Ask for
questions for
next topic
Record
next week
video
2
Publish How to
“Optimize
faceted pages”
1. Promote 
in Social & Groups
blog post
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/Reshare
other people
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/
Reshare
other
people
1. Ask for
feedback on
current video
2. Ask for
questions for
next topic
Ask for
ideas/run
poll for
future
topics
Record
next week
video
3
Publish Interview
“With Carlos -
How an SEO
agency in Spain
is run”
1. Promote 
in Social & Groups
blog post
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/Reshare
other people
1. Reply to
comments
2. Retweet/
Reshare
other
people
1. Ask for
feedback on
current video
2. Ask for
questions for
next topic
Record
next week
video
… … … … … … … …

Which I have
followed to
publish 21
videos this year

Targeting terms like this, that would be also
otherwise more competitive to rank in Google
PWA SEO
SEO for Web migrations
SEO alerts
SEO dashboard
Voice optimization
Facet pages optimization
Google Update Analysis
AMP SEO
Hreflang Tags
Keyword Research
International SEO
Content Pruning

I now had the
targets, but
how would I
measure my
videos results?

4. Monitor from the
start your videos
performance both
within YouTube and
Google Search
Results to measure
and identify
opportunities

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiYouTube Studio Analytics
YouTube’s
channels come
with a powerful
analytics tool,
allowing you to
check your
videos reach,
engagement,
audience

Your videos
overall
impressions,
CTR, views and
unique viewers

Which are
your top
YouTube’s
trafﬁc sources,
and their
video
behavior

The keywords
used to ﬁnd
your videos via
YouTube Search

The most engaged videos overall  
and per feature

The audience
proﬁle and
subscription
status

All this
provided at an
aggregated as
well as video
level too

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiGoogle Analytics
You can additionally monitor your videos
behavior by using Google Analytics

And use
video’s
optimization
tools like
vidIQ
analytics
features too

Especially to
track your
evolution
overtime vs.
your
competitors
channels and
videos

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiVidIQ
And set alerts
in them to get
to know
whenever new
videos from
relevant topics
start trending

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiRank Ranger
You should also track your videos rankings for
targeted terms in YouTube search results

As well as
your videos
rankings in
Google’s
search results
with a video
thumbnail

Your videos
inclusion and
rankings in
Google's video
carrousels for
your targeted
queries

With the
possibility to
check your
rankings
evolution in the
video carrousel
vs your
competitors

Once you have
a video
tracking
system in place
it’s time to
move on with
the execution!

5. Optimize your
YouTube videos
content areas to
maximize their
Relevance

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://youtube.com/c/crawlingmondaysbyaleyda
Start by optimizing the base of your presence:
Your channel description, keywords, links

When publishing
your videos you
want to make the
most out of each
content area to
optimize towards
the video
targeted queries
Tubebuddy & VidIQ

Starting with
titles,
descriptions, tags
for which
YouTube’s gives
length references
and you can get
keywords
suggestions w/
tools add-ons
Tubebuddy & VidIQ
Titles
Descriptions
Tags

Which can
save you time
from looking
for the related
keywords
elsewhere
Tubebuddy & VidIQ

Adding relevant
hashtags in
descriptions and
titles

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiRev
I also uploaded
my own “higher
quality” closed
captions to
videos (besides
YouTube’s
automated ones)

Like this
LOL

Are they all taken into consideration when
ranking in YouTube search results though?
Title
Description
Hashtags
Tags
Closed
Captions

I tested it

I included the
same “dummy”
text in the
title…

In the
description…

In Tags…

In hashtags in
the
description…

… and in the captions!

Which of these are taken into consideration
when ranking the video for a term?
Title
Description
Hashtags
Tags
Closed
Captions

So exciting!

Tests results
suggest that
the title,
description
and hashtag
are

Title
Description
Hashtags
Tags
Closed
Captions
No tags and closed captions though

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://support.google.com/youtube/answer/146402?hl=en&ref_topic=9257782
It’s not like if
YouTube doesn’t
warn about it
though

And Closed Captions have other important roles
that will improve engagement & retention
For Hearing
Impaired
Watch muted
video
Non-native
audience
support

Remember that it
should be about
giving the best
possible
experience and
satisfy your users
needs

vs
Take a look at how the top ranked videos for your
queries are optimized to improve yours

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @orainti#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @orainti
6. Optimize your
YouTube Videos
towards
Engagement &
Retention

Once you're ranked
for a query in
YouTube Search
Results: How do you
engage and retain
users?

Besides a relevant,
catchy title and
description, it starts
with your video
thumbnail, that can
make your video to
stand out vs the rest
and improve your CTR

Thumbnails are the
“ads” of your videos
and as such you
should design them to
make them unique,
attractive with a
representative image,
including a catchy title

Replace the “default" thumbnail autogenerated
from the video with an original image for it

Run AB tests of
your video
thumbnail and
metadata with
tools like
Tubebuddy, to
identify your
audience
preferences and
optimize them
accordingly
Tubebuddy

Create playlists to facilitate users to browse
through your channel videos using their topics

You can easily
manage
Playlists in
bulk using
tools like
TubeBuddy

Include info cards in your videos to link to other
relevant ones or create a poll to engage users

Like this! Ideally asking users to click and
participate in your video

Add end-screens
to your videos
using the
YouTube’s studio
feature to refer
your users to
more of your
videos and
subscribe to
your channel

They will be
shown like this
at the end of
your videos

Don’t be shy!
Ask your users in
the video to:  
 
1. Keep watching to
get answers 
2. Leave comments
with questions 
3. Like the video  
4. Subscribe to channel

Engage with
users in the
comments
addressing their
questions, liking
meaningful
comments and
pining the best
one

Promote your
videos and
incentivize
subscriptions
outside
YouTube too
https://twitter.com/crawlingmondays

Even ofﬂine!

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.seroundtable.com/youtube-subscriber-giveaway-28157.html
You can do give-aways to encourage
subscriptions, like Barry is doing

It’s important to promote while the video is
“new” since YouTube gives a “freshness” boost

Engagement and retention require you to polish
your conversion & community management skills

7. Repurpose your
YouTube videos to
generate blog
posts that will also
help to maximize
your Google video
search results

Create a blog or
section within your
existing blog,
creating a blog post
for each one of
your videos
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/crawling-mondays/

Embed your
YouTube video in
the post initially to
help promote it,
along a transcription
of it, including
complementary
information and
resources

Include a “rel=0” parameter to disable related
videos at the end of your YouTube embed

Link to your channel with a “?sub_conﬁrmation"
parameter to go to subscription option

Include a watermark to your entire videos

Watermarks will
be shown at the
bottom of your
videos, even
embedded ones,
allowing users to
subscribe

You can
generate the
transcriptions
with automated
speech to text
services , which
are very cheap
Rev

Or you can do it for free, copy/pasting
YouTube’s automated transcripts

Yup. Free content FTW!

After the “freshness” period passes by, you’ll
want to switch the YouTube embed for Wistia

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintiWistia
Wistia videos will add VideoObject structured
data to the embedded videos

Like this you’ll have
higher chances to
rank for your target
queries in Google
search results with
long-form posts with
embedded videos

Sigh. This is
nice, although
too much work!

Ready to see some results?

You can rank for
those not yet so
competitive but
highly relevant
terms within
YouTube

Like this

Or this

This

this

Rank as well in
Google search
Results with
your YouTube
videos and
embedded
video in blog
posts too

Ranking also in
Google’s search
results with the
post with a video
thumbnail when
the YouTube video
doesn't rank

Or rank twice
with the same
video within the
Video
Carrousel, with
the YouTube
video and
embedded one
in post

The process is slow, iterative and incremental…
but it can pay off if you're consistent

I'm certainly not Casey Neistat yet tho!  
I’m still learning (and testing a lot)

Keeping always in mind that it’s  
about maximizing the RER
Relevance Engagement Retention 
Title, description, etc. Likes, views, ratings,
comments, shares,
subscriptions
 
Watch Time

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.seroundtable.com/youtube-subscriber-giveaway-28157.html
While also providing value

And I already
feel good about
that thankfully

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://youtube.com/c/crawlingmondaysbyaleyda
Thank you!
Questions?

YouTube Optimization Tips for SEOs #SMXAdvanced

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