We said it once before and we’ll say it again, VIDEO! VIDEO! VIDEO! According to The Social Shepherd, people watch an average of 84 minutes of video a day. Video is an extremely important part of marketing your practice and should be a large focus each year. Platforms like YouTube make it very easy to categorize your content and feed it to the right audience. In order for YouTube to be able to categorize your videos and channel properly, you need to do a little bit of keyword research and planning.
What are YouTube Keywords?
YouTube keywords are an important aspect of any YouTube channel or video. YouTube has created its own set of SEO practices and YouTube keywords are one of them. YouTube keywords are geared towards increasing your subscribers and gaining more views on your channel. YouTube keywords are meant to be the defining characteristics of your channel. Whether they are key phrases or words, they are meant to embody what your channel’s overall message is trying to convey. In using these keywords, YouTube can identify and place you in a specific category for what content you produce.
How YouTube Keyword Research and Planning Works
Doing overall keyword research on your company and industry will help you better understand the type of content you should be creating and producing on platforms like YouTube. When deciding what keywords to use for your channel or videos, using the search bar is a great spot to start. Simply type in what your channel’s topic is and the autocomplete function that YouTube has installed will give you a number of suggestions on what individuals are searching in relation to what you typed in. This is a simple and quick way of picking the right keywords to use for your channel and videos. Another, but more tedious way to do some keyword research is by doing a little bit of competitor analysis. Doing some research on what your competitors are using as video titles, tags, thumbnails, and descriptions can help you better understand what words and phrases are gaining more traction over others. Doing some quick keyword research can increase the likelihood of the success of your channel and increase your views.
Why It’s Important
YouTube keywords are an integral part of a successful YouTube channel because once you understand what users are searching for in your niche industry, you know exactly how you need to title, tag, create a thumbnail and describe your videos. Successful keyword planning and implementation can be the difference between having a viral video and a video that gains no traction.
Video Optimization
When it comes to video optimization, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of having a successful video reach the right audience.
- Change Your Video File Name: Insert your keywords or a keyword into the video file name. YouTube can read the file name on the backend of the platform which is just another step in which your keyword is going to help put your video in front of the right audience.
- Have a Keyword in the Video Title: A clear tip is to insert the keyword directly into your video title. Placing the keyword in the title will help determine whether the user wants to click on the video or not and also appear in more searches that relate to that keyword.
- Tag Your Video with Popular Keywords: Tagging your video helps not only the user understand what your video is about, but it gives YouTube insight into the content and context of the information in your video.
- Add Hashtags: Adding hashtags can be fun! Adding hashtags with related terms can increase your views and visibility on YouTube. It’s important to remember that you don’t want to flood your video with too many hashtags. Quality over quantity! To add hashtags to your YouTube video, you can either put your hashtag at the bottom of your description or at the end of your title when you are uploading your video. Once it’s uploaded, you’ll notice that the hashtags will be placed just above your title in blue for users to see!
- Add a Custom Video Thumbnail: Creating thumbnails is one of the spots in which you can be creative, but also sneaky! Creating a creative thumbnail that catches the viewer’s attention using keywords and creative design also increases the success rate of your video.
Using video and platforms like YouTube is a great way to get your practice the exposure you’re looking for!
Points Group is a healthcare marketing agency that dedicates itself to staying on the cutting edge of healthcare marketing and provides you with an in-depth approach to measuring and reporting on your success.
