YouTube SEO: The organic search opportunity many marketers overlook

How important is YouTube SEO?

YouTube has 2.5 billion active users globally, making it the second biggest social platform on the web (second only to Facebook). It’s also the second most visited website in the world and the second most used mobile app (which doesn’t include web sessions). Only TikTok ramps up more hours of usage per month, globally.

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So, yes, YouTube SEO is important if you want to reach one of the largest online audiences. YouTube’s reach is particularly strong in the UK with 90.6% of adults (over the age of 18) actively using the platform.

That’s the third-highest YouTube adoption rate in the world.

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YouTube’s extensive reach means you can access almost any audience on the platform. Want to reach B2B decision-makers? Good news – YouTube is the primary destination for B2B leaders exploring potential purchases.

Want to crack Gen Z as it becomes a key consumer generation? Great, because they’re increasingly using platforms like YouTube and TikTok over traditional search engines.

Do I need YouTube SEO if I’m already paying for ads?

YouTube advertising helps you target audiences by showing in-stream ads during relevant videos, plus other ad formats across the website and app. Aside from targeting, the great thing about YouTube ads is that you don’t need to manage a channel and create regular video content. You simply create your ads and place them on videos your target audience is watching.

The downside is you’re always interrupting the experience. Ad block usage has reached a point where YouTube is blocking them altogether. The other factor with this is that you’re piggybacking off interest in someone else’s content.

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With YouTube SEO, you create the content your target audience is searching for.

The other key benefit of being a YouTube creator is that you can build an audience of subscribers who regularly watch your content. You create a loyal community of followers, capturing interest at the earliest stages of the funnel and nurturing them to the first/next purchase.

In an age where social organic reach is on life support, YouTube is one of the few platforms where you can genuinely create and reach an organic, highly-engaged audience.

The challenge with YouTube SEO is that you need to publish quality video content consistently. Ideally, you want to post at least one video and several shorts every week. Of course, this involves a lot of work but the payoff is huge for brands that get it right.

The good news is, that the pros and cons of YouTube advertising and YouTube SEO complement each other perfectly. With YouTube advertising, you can instantly reach your target audience and only pay when they watch the first 30 seconds or more of your ads.

Meanwhile, YouTube SEO helps you build a community audience that actively watches your content and engages with your brand. Crucially, your videos will keep racking up views and growing your audience (while ads stop showing the moment you stop bidding).

How does YouTube’s algorithm work?

YouTube incorporates three core algorithms designed to maximise video views and engagement:

1. Homepage: A personalised mix of videos from channels users are subscribed to and relevant recommendations.
2. Recommendations: Personalised suggestions on the homepage, video sidebars and next video suggestions.
3. Search results: A search algorithm that analyses keywords and returns the most relevant results, plus personalised results based on users’ viewing and engagement history.

Personalisation is central to the YouTube experience and we’ll discuss this in more detail shortly. First, though, let’s discuss YouTube ranking factors.

Todd Beaupre, Product Lead for YouTube homepage and recommendations, says the algorithms prioritise audience satisfaction by analysing user engagement.

“Everyone knows that watch time is one of the factors we look at. But we’ve realized that not all watch time is equal. We also need to understand the value an audience derives from a video. To do this, we run surveys about recommendations and specific videos, feeding those responses into the recommendation system. This helps the algorithm identify patterns of satisfying content, looking at various signals like likes, dislikes, watch time, and survey responses.” – Todd Beaupre, YouTube Product Lead

Recommendations and search results are the two key channels for content discovery on YouTube.

First of all, the algorithm needs to show the most compelling/relevant recommendations and results. Then, it needs to determine the audience satisfaction with individual videos, recommendations and search results.

To do this, it analyses a wide range of relevance and engagement signals, including:

• Relevance: Topical relevance, mostly based on keywords, video titles, descriptions, video chapters, hashtags, etc.
• Engagement: All user interactions (positive and negative) are fed back into the algorithm to help determine audience satisfaction.
• Click-through rate: This is a key indicator of how compelling your video is, how much it interests individual users and how relevant it is to keywords, interests, etc. (both for recommendations and search results).
• Watch time: How much of your video users watch in a single sitting.
• Likes: Likes tell the algorithm to push your video to more users with similar interests/behaviours.
• Dislikes: Although the dislike button remains, YouTube has taken steps to protect creators from unfair “dislike attacks” and studies suggest they no longer impact video performance.
• Comments: This is one of the strongest engagement signals.
• Next video: Do users watch another video from the same channel when the current one ends?
• Subscribers: Channels with higher subscriber counts are more likely to show in recommendations and rank high in search results.
• Subscriptions: Users that subscribe off the back of watching one of your videos.
• Notifications: Does the user enable notifications for alerts when the channel publishes future videos?
• Recommendation surveys: YouTube asks users for feedback on its recommendations of individual videos – and their response matters.
• Feedback actions: Users can click “Not interested” or “Don’t recommend channel” on any individual video.

Crucially, YouTube’s algorithm is geared towards individual users and individual videos. While positive signals help to push your video to a wider audience, negative signals (eg: feedback actions) mostly help personalise the experience for individual users.

As Todd Beaupre explains, this means creators can concentrate on maximising the performance of each video and experiment freely with different ideas.

The algorithm doesn’t put unnecessary emphasis on historical data or channel performance. So, even if one video performs poorly, your next video starts with a clean slate to satisfy audience interests.

YouTube SEO best practices to maximise reach & visibility

Keep Todd Beaupré’s words in mind when optimising for organic visibility on YouTube. The platform prioritises viewer satisfaction above all else. This means engagement is the most important factor in driving reach and visibility.

Implement these best practices into your YouTube SEO workflow:

• Determine your target audience and their interests
• Identify your target keywords
• Rename video files to include primary keywords
• Optimise titles and video descriptions to include your primary keyword
• Tag your video with relevant keywords
• Select the most relevant category for each video
• Add relevant hashtags to increase reach
• Test thumbnails to maximise CTRs
• Test video lengths to balance watch times with engagement
• Add subtitles and captions to increase watch times
• Add chapters/timestamps to give the algorithm and users contextual information about your video
• Add cards and end screens to increase channel viewership
• Remind viewers to like and subscribe
• Prompt comments with questions, talking points, etc.
• Create playlists for groups of relevant videos to encourage multiple views

Take a look at the official YouTube Creators page for more tips and best practices on maximising organic visibility on the platform.

Reach a wider audience with YouTube SEO

YouTube SEO connects you with one of the largest online audiences. This is the world’s biggest video platform, the second biggest search engine and the second most used mobile app around the world. Purely from a visibility standpoint, this isn’t a platform brands can afford to overlook. And, this is before we even talk about audience engagement, brand advocacy and the ability to build active communities.

To reach a wider audience with YouTube SEO, get in touch with our search marketing team. Call us on 023 9283 0281 or fill in the form below and our team will get back to you.