YouTube is an internet portal that allows users to create content and view videos . In it, you will find a wide variety of topics: Gaming, video blogs, music, movies… Without a doubt, it has become one of the best online search engines, surpassed only by Google.

With over 1 billion monthly views, and over 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, how can I make my videos stand out and grow my views? Through SEO!

Therefore, it is very important to acquire the necessary knowledge to help us grow in a solid and consistent way. Here we will teach you a series of strategies with which you will see very effective results in a short time, and thus you will be able to position your videos among the first search results.

Read on to learn all about YouTube SEO!

What is SEO on YouTube?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) They are a set of techniques used to ensure that your videos reach a good position on the search results page.

To do this, we use tools that, through metrics and statistics, provide us with information about the terms used by our competition and the words most searched for by the user.

How does YouTube search work?

YouTube search engines cannot themselves interpret the information in the images or videos that we upload. Therefore, YouTube relies on SEO to understand the information that is in our content, and in all the data found in the title: the label, description, file name, among others.

For this reason, SEO is very important since it gives us the opportunity to grow fast, and even if we have few followers, we can climb to the top positions. But how do we start to position our videos?

Here are the 5 essential steps for you to grow on YouTube!

Step #1: Video Title
Keep in mind that the title is one of the most important factors. This allows direct interaction between your content and viewers. The more exact it is and the more it matches the user’s search, the better your video will rank on YouTube.

A good example could be the following:

If you place the word Diets as a title for your video , it will be very difficult to position yourself, since there are many videos that talk about ” diets “. On the contrary, if you place your title The best diet for this 2023 in a more specific way, you would be sectoring your search . In this way, YouTube will reward you for putting a longer and more exact title, and the chances that your video will be positioned and a user will find it among the first positions when looking for what diet they can do this year, are greater. It will improve, then, the CTR (Click Through Rate) – We have a post on our blog where you can learn how to optimize the CTR and improve the positioning in Google.

Step #2: Labels
They are words or phrases that you can include in the description of your YouTube videos, allowing both viewers and the platform to know what they are about. This will help you appear in search listings earlier and associate you with similar content, which can amplify your reach with related videos.

If you go to a YouTube video, you won’t find the tags , since they are not visible to the public. However, with the Tags for YouTube extension, available in browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox, you will have easy access. Later, we will explain what these tools are about and some tricks to get the most out of them.

Step #3: Hashtags
YES, they continue to set trends! This 2023 and for many more years, hashtags are essential to position. These, like the labels are composed of words or phrases; however, hashtags differ by being accompanied by a sign (#) before each phrase. They help significantly as these allow you to directly search for videos on popular topics and will be more effective during certain events or seasons as they work according to the trend.

Step #4: Thumbnails
As a complement to the title, the thumbnail for your YouTube videos is also an important pillar within each video, because we can draw the viewer’s attention through its design. We will leave you with some of the most important tricks to improve your thumbnails for YouTube videos.

• Put yourself in the viewer’s place: They have too many things to see on the Internet and little time. That’s why they want to know what your video is about without having to click on it or do a lot of reading. Our YouTube thumbnail has to be able to tell a story. Or at least be representative of the first 30 seconds of the video.
• Add text to your thumbnails: This will make it clear at a glance what the content of the video is about. But try not to overdo it, 5 words will be enough. And don’t forget that the color of your text should contrast strongly with the background. If not, it will be difficult to read.
• YouTube thumbnails that show a person work best: Close-ups of people always work well. It has been proven that if the image shows a person looking directly into the viewer’s eyes, or looking at the text on the thumbnail, it works even better.
• Use bright and contrasting colors: Do not use light colors. Did you know that according to YouTube the color yellow, when used as a background color for the thumbnail, gets more views?
• Use high definition images: Never upload a blurry image. The idea is that your thumbnail is a JPG, GIF or PNG. That it measures 1280 x 720 pixels or 1920 x 1080 pixels (ie 16:9), and that it weighs less than 2MB.
• Add your logo to your video thumbnails: This way people can quickly recognize that the video is yours. Even when the video is outside of YouTube.
• Always work with the same thumbnail style: Repeat it in all your videos, so viewers can easily identify them. Obviously each header must be different, but surely you can define colors or design standards that unify the style.
• If you make different types of videos, another very good option is to define a different style for each type of video: All your videos will have a thumbnail with a black and white background, but on that background the video clips will have a green text and the videolyrics a blue background. So that when browsing the channel, the viewer knows at all times what type of content each video has.
• Do not use images that are not related to the content of the video: Trying to deceive the viewer will only bring you bad comments and you will lose credibility among viewers.
• It is very important that you make sure that your headers on YouTube look good: Both on big screen devices and on mobile devices. When viewed on a small screen, the colors continue to contrast with each other and the texts remain legible.

Step #5: Numbers
THEY POSITION! Putting a number in the title of your video or in the thumbnail text will help you improve the CTR. If, for example, you want to make a guide on how to find trends to create interesting videos on YouTube, transform this title as follows: “5 TRENDS for your YouTube videos” or “2023 Guide to find TRENDS on YouTube, and by the way…caps are important too.