YouTube is one of the most dominant social media platforms worldwide. Almost 1 billion hours of videos are watched on it daily, which makes it the best place to target your audience.
But how can you make your videos rank higher and reach more people in YouTube’s competitive environment? For this, you will have to use the right keywords in your videos and understand their importance in the eyes of YouTube’s algorithm.
You can use keywords in different ways to create highly targeted content to help your videos show up higher in the search results.
In this article, we have explained what keyword research is and why it is significant for the success of your channel. We have also shared the proven ways of doing keyword research and a lot more!
YouTube keyword tool research is a practice that SEO professionals use to find terms or queries that people enter into YouTube’s search engine. You can use these exact terms to make your video rank higher on the YouTube search results.
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. More than 3 billion searches are done on it in a month. It indicates how huge this platform is, and you have plenty of opportunities to target your audience.
Since YouTube is one of the most popular search engines, it is likely that, right now, some users are searching for a query that your video answers. It means they are looking for your video at the moment.
But the problem is, more than 500 hours of videos are uploaded to this platform every minute. It means many YouTubers like you must have made videos on the topic that your target audience is searching for. So, how do you beat those YouTubers (your competitors) and make your video rank higher in search results?
It’s simple: You plan the best video optimization strategy, and doing keyword research is its most important step. When you use the right keywords to optimize your videos, you are likely to get more views, comments, likes, and subscribers.
Below are the top methods you can use to find the right keywords for your videos.
YouTube video tags are the words or phrases that tell YouTube what your video is about. They are an important ranking factor.
You can find these tags through your competitor’s videos that are ranking at the top. YouTube does not display tags publically. But, fortunately, there are ways you can still find your competitor’s hidden tags.
Open a video, right-click on the page, and go to the “view page source.” Page’s HTML will appear on your screen. Don’t worry. You do not have to read the HTML.
Type “ctrl + f” if you are using a Windows PC and “⌘ + f” if you are using Mac. Then type “keywords” in the search bar. Video tags will appear on your screen following the term “keyword.” Use them in your video to make your video rank higher.
YouTube allows YouTubers to use as many tags as they want (there is a 400 characters limit). But you should not stuff numerous tags as it can confuse the search engine about your video’s category.
Use a mix of multi-word tags (long-tail keywords) that tell YouTube about your specific video topic and single-word tags that tell YouTube about the broader topic of your video.
An example of long-term tags includes “how to do push-ups,” and an example of its single-word tag can be “fitness.”
Instead of manually searching each keyword, try searching the keywords that have helped your competitors get the higher position in the search results.
To find competitor keywords, you will first have to find 3 to 5 competitor channels. It is better to target the channels that are not YouTube giants but are of your level. Open the first channel and go to its “videos” tab.
In the right top corner of the screen, there will be a “sort by” button. Click on it and choose the “most popular” option from it. Now, the most popular videos of your competitor will appear on your screen. These videos will have the most views, comments, and probably likes as well.
Find keywords used in the title as well as in the description of these videos. Explore channels of other competitors as well. And make a list of suitable keywords to use in your own video titles and descriptions.
The best thing about these keywords is that they are proven. Someone of your level is already ranking their videos by using them, so why don’t you do the same or maybe better than them?
So far, we have talked about finding keywords. But do you know that not all keywords are created equally?
Some keywords are used by every other person like “health and fitness,” “adventure,” etc. It makes them very competitive. It can be hard for a new YouTube channel to rank on such keywords. That is why you should start with low competition keywords and first let your channel grow through them.
Low-competitive keywords have fewer search volume. It means few people search these terms on YouTube. Due to this reason, many YouTubers consider them unimportant and neglect them. It creates many opportunities for new YouTubers to target such less-competitive keywords and still attract a decent number of audiences.
These keywords are very easy to rank. You may not have to put extra effort into increasing your video’s ranking. Try to find and use them to help your channel grow. Use the following methods to find low-competition keywords.
To find low-competition keywords, you can use keyword research tools such as:
These tools show different stats related to a keyword. Like monthly search volume, competition, related keywords, etc. You can easily select low-competition keywords and use them to rank your videos faster through these stats.
This is a free YouTube keyword research tool you can use instead of paying. Every time you enter a term on the YouTube search bar, YouTube automatically suggests some keywords in the dropdown suggestions box. It is called YouTube autocomplete feature.
These suggestions are actually the queries that people search related to your term. They usually have low competition. You can use them to rank higher, or you can first explore their stats on the above-mentioned tools.
The YouTube video description is one of the best places to insert keywords for SEO purposes. YouTube reads it to understand the context of your video.
YouTube’s algorithm gives more value to the first few sentences of your description. So, you must use your main keyword in the first three lines.
If you search a particular keyword in the YouTube search bar, you will find that all the top-ranking YouTube videos are using almost the same keyword in the first three lines of their descriptions to rank higher. Therefore, write each video description carefully and wisely.
VidIQ is a freemium tool that offers a feature used specifically for YouTube keyword research. There are only a handful of tools that provide this feature. So, make the most out of this tool and find the right keywords for your YouTube videos.
VidIQ is quite user-friendly and easy to use. Open it and enter a keyword in the search bar. It will create a list of the related keyword ideas for you. In addition to this, you will also get data on each keyword. This data will be about keyword search volume, competition score, related score, etc.
Consider TubeBuddy your YouTube competitor spy. With its helpful features, you can find tags and keywords that your competitors are using to rank their content. It also provides a whole lot of useful information such as the SEO score of a channel, words in a description, etc.
Its Tag Explorer feature lets you find related keywords. Enter your main keyword in the search bar and click on the “search” button. A list of suggested keywords will appear on the screen. Go to the “summary” section to find the search volume and competition score of these keywords.
By using specific words and phrases in your YouTube video descriptions, titles, and tags, you can greatly increase your YouTube video views, likes, and subscribers. There are many ways of finding suitable keywords. One of them is to look for the proven tags and keywords that your competitors have used to rank.
Keyword research tools like VidIQ and TubeBuddy can also be very helpful in finding the right keyword. They provide a whole lot of information that you can use to grow your channel audience.
