How to Leverage YouTube SEO to Reach Your Target Audience

As mentioned before, to help you rank well on YouTube, you need to keep people watching.

This is called audience retention.

Audience retention is the amount of the video that people watch. YouTube has said that it is a significant factor in how a video and channel ranks.

To quote YouTube: ‘Your goal is to keep audience retention as close to 100% as you can (because this means viewers are watching all the way through your videos). And videos with consistently high audience retention and watch time have the potential to show up more frequently in Search and Suggested locations on YouTube’.

So, how do you get people coming back time and time again? One of the aspects is creating high-retention videos.

Many people have a misconception about what types of video perform well. Quality is always key. However, you don’t need a professional setup for videos to get excellent engagement. Your smartphone is probably sufficient, but there are a few extras that could help take it to the next level, including:

• Tripod
• Backdrop
• Lighting
• Microphone

Next up, you’ll want to research why people search for specific terms on YouTube. To get an idea of this, search for your chosen keyword in YouTube and see how the top results have tackled the content and angle. Rather than trying to be completely different, it can be beneficial to try something similar.

For this, you also have to be aware that some search terms will bring up results for entirely different takes on your intended topic. If this is the case, it’s best to steer clear of creating content on that search term. Otherwise, your video will get lost in the void.

This is a tricky question to answer because there’s no right or wrong one. The length of your video will depend on the content you’re creating. If it needs to be more than 20+ minutes, then people will watch regardless, as long as it adds value.

The main thing to consider is avoid waffling on; otherwise viewers will switch off.

When you first start creating content, it’ll be an experiment to see how people respond. Once you get going, YouTube Studio provides handy insights to tell you how much of your videos people watch. This information can help you in future content creation.

Optimizing your title tag is essential in any type of SEO. Your video title should include your keyword and provide an answer to a question or solve the user’s problem. Look at examples on the platform. You’ll see a wide selection of titles that show you precisely what you’re getting before viewing it.

A handy tip is to try and keep your title tag under 60 characters. Keeping it short will avoid truncation in the search results.

Your description should also include your keyword. If you can, use it as close to the beginning as possible without it sounding unnatural. Fingers crossed, the algorithm crawls it immediately and helps push your ranking.

As a guide for Youtube Seo , your description should include:

• The keywords within the first 25 words
• A description of at least 250 words
• Your chosen keywords between 2-4 times

Although your video’s thumbnail doesn’t directly impact the ranking factors, it can still have a significant effect on your engagement factors.

The thumbnail of your video is what people see alongside your title tag, so it needs to stand out. It’s also another element that tells people what’s in your video straight away.

Some people will only click on a video from what they see on the thumbnail, so making it relevant and eye-catching will ensure people click through.

To enhance your video, use tags that include your keyword and a few variations of it. It’s also helpful to feature tags that are closely related to the topic. Targeted tags can help you rank better and give you the opportunity to show up in the ‘related video’ section.

YouTube has a handy function that not only makes your video content accessible to everyone, but it’s also Youtube SEO-friendly. Closed captions are a feature that benefits people who are deaf or hard of hearing. However, the added bonus is that they’re crawled by search engines.

YouTube does have an automatic captioning tool, but it’s not perfect, so that it might throw some odd words amongst your content. You can change these or create your own. Getting it accurate not only makes it easier for Google to understand, but it’ll reduce confusion for your audience.

YouTube has an interactive feature called cards that encourages viewers to take specific actions. You can select one of five elements, including:

• Visiting an external link
• Discovering another YouTube channel
• Donating to a non-profit
• Answering a poll
• Watching another video or playlist

You can select the type of card you want to include in different sections (timecode) of your video. When the video runs, the title of the card appears in the corner as a suggestion. This is a great way to keep people engaged, but only use them where relevant.

Cards can also be utilized in places where there could be high viewer drop-off points such as the end or around the middle of the video.

A similar feature to cards is adding an end screen. Just like all the elements above, it’s a great way to keep people engaged and watching the platform. The end screen should feature action that you want your viewers to take. Commonly utilized suggestions include watching the next video or subscribing to your channel.

The end screen will need to be included during the editing process, but when you optimize your video, you can include the end screen elements to fill those sections.

To optimize your channel, and encourage interactions with your content, make the most of the tools on the platform. They help to boost watch time and ultimately move you up the ranks.

Session watch time is a crucial YouTube SEO signal and this figure includes the total time a viewer watches without leaving the platform.

So, your job is to keep them hooked!

Much like binge-watching your favorite Netflix shows, encouraging the same on YouTube is an ideal scenario for anyone wanting to rank well in the search results. To do this, there are a few YouTube features that can help:

An excellent way to keep people watching is to create a series. This feature is perfect for linking a range of videos to keep people interested and wanting more. While a series can improve watch time, you also need to let people know about it.

Do this by adding an end screen that points to the next episode in the series to avoid people leaving your video or the platform.

In addition to a series, you can also create a series playlist.

If we use Netflix as an example, it links episodes and seasons together to encourage continuous watching. The same can be done on YouTube.

Series playlists give authority to a group of videos on your channel and tell YouTube what order to play the videos. So, this will boost your chances of appearing in the ‘up next’ element after the video.

When you’ve created a series, added cards, and an end screen, the chance that YouTube will recommend your content to viewers will be much greater.

When you’re editing and optimizing your video content, one of the main aspects to improve engagement is to give people the tools to do it. Take a look some of the ways to achieve this:

When someone subscribes to your channel, this is a massive indicator to YouTube that they love your content. Thus, this also sends ranking signals to boost your content.

So how do you get people to subscribe? Just ask them!

In most videos, you’ll see people often include a snippet at the end that asks viewers to subscribe. It can be an effective way to increase the subscription rate and keep them coming back for more. It’s all the better if they activate the notifications feature too, so they’ll be informed every time a new video is uploaded.

The comments section is also an important ranking signal for YouTube. If people comment, it sends a message that they are interacting and like your content (even those negative ones!).

If people are commenting, then make sure you’re also replying. This also helps to show YouTube that you’re engaging with your audience.

A great way to encourage comments is to ask questions in your video that spark some conversation. Just include ‘leave your thoughts in the comments below’ or something similar to get people talking and interacting.

This one might seem obvious, but it’s another thing that can help improve your visibility on YouTube. It’s basically asking people to rate your video. So just add a quick ‘if you like my video, give it a thumbs up’.

On the flip side, getting a thumbs down tells YouTube people don’t like your content, so try to avoid these.

While it’s important to optimize your videos, many people will come straight through to your channel page. When this happens, what will they see?

The featured video section shows content that you want people to basically click on first. It’s natural to put the most important videos or ones you want to rank at the top, but you could try other techniques.

Some people have found success in creating an introduction video to showcase what the channel is about and what visitors are likely to see if they keep watching. This drives engagement for some channels but not others.

Another way to utilize this spot is to use YouTube Analytics to pick the best one for your audience. By looking at the ratio of subscribers to unique viewer rates, you can opt for a video that showcases your top content and that viewers are already enjoying.

Finding the balance is key and you can swap these featured videos and experiment to get the best results.

YouTube offers a range of options to customize your channel, and the playlist or series (mentioned above) that you created is a great element to add to it.

A series gives viewers the opportunity to watch videos in order. This is more likely to keep them engaged and improve overall session watch time.

To help get your videos seen across the Internet, the power of sharing it is an essential tool. In today’s world, everyone is on social media, so although it sounds obvious, getting it on every available platform will boost your views.

There are several ways to share your video, which will encourage people to interact and share it with others. Below, we look at some of the most prominent ways to share your content:

Video is fast becoming one of the most consumed types of media on Facebook. You’ll probably notice your feed is constantly filled with short clips and longer videos. Although native Facebook videos get more impressions than YouTube videos, it’s not something to ignore.

The traffic that is driven through this platform can give your videos a boost. Cross-posting content is one of the most significant ways to create visibility and drive people to your channel.

It also provides an affordable way to advertise. So, if you have a video you want to push, it could be a great tool to get it in front of a target audience.

Twitter is still a great way to encourage engagement with your videos. Insights have shown that videos get higher engagement rates and views when shared on the platform, as simple retweets are easy to do.

Research suggests that around 90% of Twitter video views happen on mobiles and 82% of users watch video content on the platform, so it’s the perfect opportunity to get your content out there.

LinkedIn is one of those platforms that often gets pushed to the back of the queue, and everyone assumes it’s just corporate. However, although business-related content does well here, any type of material could have potential as long as you have the relevant audience.

LinkedIn users are often more engaged with people they have common interests with. If the video provides value, it’s even more helpful to these people and their connections.

You can also add videos to your LinkedIn profile for more visibility.

Quora is a great place to share videos. People that use this platform are looking for ways to solve common problems, so providing value in this area is a great way to boost engagement.

This platform has other benefits for sharing your videos too; it helps you build links to your channel and improves your social presence. Just don’t spam the site too much with links. Balance is key!

If you have an email marketing database, utilize it. Emails are one of the best ways to get click-throughs as the people receiving them are already interested in what you offer.

This funnel enables you to target specific segments of your list, depending on the content.

More views and engagement driven through emails ultimately means more chances of visibility in rankings on YouTube. You can also add your YouTube channel link to your email footer to encourage click-throughs.

Sharing on social media is just one way to get other sites to link to your video content. Another element to consider is general link building to other websites and embedding content on your own site.

When building links via guest posts or similar methods, don’t forget to plug your channel URL and individual video URLs. Getting inbound links will help you build up an authority on YouTube, which sends all the right ranking signals to the platform.

Once you’ve created your video, optimized it, and hit the publish button, what next?

Unfortunately, once you’ve uploaded it, you can’t go back and edit the above elements, so getting it right before publishing is vital. However, you can delete it if required.

So, once it’s up and running, the next step is to analyze its performance.

To do this, use YouTube’s analytics.

There are several handy elements to this tool. It has everything you need to drill down to what actually works for your video content.

Take a look at the main sections in YouTube Analytics:

In YouTube Studio, head to the Analytics tab, and you’ll find the main overview of your performance. This helps give you a guide on how your channel is performing. In this section, you’ll see four reports:

• Top videos – this shows your videos ranked by views.
• Real-time activity – your video performance in the last 60 minutes or the last 48 hours.
• Latest videos – this shows the performance of your last ten videos.
• Typical performance – a helpful insight into how your last video performed compared to your channel’s typical performance.

This overview is only available if there is sufficient data available.

This tab shows you the overall reach of your videos. There is a main graph highlighting how many people saw your content (impressions) and how many clicked through. This feature also provides information on:

• Traffic source types – data that shows where people found your videos.
• External sources – this includes traffic from sites linking your videos.
• Impressions and how they led to watch time – an important metric that shows how many people saw the video on YouTube and who click through to view it.
• Top search terms on YouTube – search terms that your viewers used to find your videos.

Engagement is an essential metric as it helps YouTube determine how popular your videos are. This tab shows the data on several aspects of engagement to help improve watch time. Here you’ll find:

• Overview – a graph that shows watch time and average view duration.
• Top videos and playlists – a list of your top videos and playlists with the most watch time.
• Top cards and end screens – a list of your top cards and end screens in the last 28 days.

It’s helpful to find out who is watching your videos and the audience tab can show you these key metrics. The information included here is:

• Overview – the graph shows unique viewers, the average number of videos watched per viewer and subscriber numbers.
• Top countries – data shows your viewers by country and is based on IP address.
• Top subtitle/CC language – this indicates subtitled languages used and is based on usage data.
• Age and gender – this shows your audience by age and gender and is based on signed-in users.
• When viewers are on YouTube – a handy insight into your audience’s online activity across your channel and the whole platform.

This information is only available if there is sufficient data. For all sections, most data can be analyzed for different time periods by using the filter.

The above information gives you an overview of your channel and videos. Still, there is also a range of similar analytics to drill down into individual videos.

How you analyze these will also enable you to understand your audience. One of the main areas to look at is your audience retention graphs.

To see this information, select a video you want to analyze, and click on the audience retention graph.

This graph highlights the views for every second of the video and plots the retention rate as a percentage. The line presented in the chart shows how popular different parts of it were. There will also typically be bumps in the data that are said to show ‘True Engagement’.

Go to these bumps and see what parts of the video sparked an interest. Try and identify why these aspects of the content would have performed better compared to others.

In contrast, check out any significant dips in the graph. This can identify why people leave the video, and it can be a great idea to add cards in these places to help engage people more.

Another element is how people respond to the intro. If you see a significant fall here, then it probably means you need to work on it. Adding a card can also improve engagement.

As discussed above, keywords are a major factor in determining where you might rank and also what searcher you appeal to. Tailoring your content to searcher intent is vital and you can identify whether you fulfilled this by checking out YouTube Analytics.

To see keywords and traffic data, select your video > analytics > reach viewers tab > Traffic source: YouTube search.

Take a look at what performed well, including keywords that produced a high view duration. To gauge how it performed in comparison to other videos, benchmark the numbers against your average data.

Videos that received a low engagement might not be hitting the searcher intent at the right angle. So, if you’re looking to target a specific keyword, re-film the footage from a different perspective to see if you can up the engagement rate.

That concludes our guide on leveraging YouTube SEO to improve your audience reach. YouTube SEO is technically one of the easiest methods of search engine optimization to implement. However, it is a learning curve to ensure you modify and optimize all the different elements to keep people engaged on the platform.

By using the tips above, you will be able to harness the reach that YouTube offers and start ranking for relevant and enriching content to boost your company growth.