In this post, I’m going to show you EXACTLY how to rank your YouTube videos.

In fact, this is the exact process that I used to grow my channel to over 189K views per month:

So if you want to get more views, subscribers and traffic from YouTube, then you’ll love this in-depth YouTube SEO tutorial.

Let’s dive right in…

How I Grew My YouTube Channel From “Oh No!” to “Heck Yeah!”

Before we get into today’s video SEO guide, a quick backstory:

When I first launched my YouTube channel I struggled to get hardly ANY views.

Fast forward to today, and my videos rank for all sorts of competitive keywords, like “SEO”:

“Link building”:

Heck, I even rank in the top 3 for “YouTube SEO”:

And because I know how to rank my videos, my channel now generates over 189K views and 4.4K subscribers every single month.

Now that you can see that I know what I’m talking about, let’s dive into the steps that I used to get these results.

Step #1: YouTube Keyword Research

The YouTube SEO process begins with video keyword research.

Here’s exactly how to find the right keywords for your YouTube videos:

First, generate a list of keywords ideas.

Your first step is to generate a big list of potential keywords.

(In the next step I’ll help you find the best keyword from your list.)

One of my favorite strategies is to use YouTube’s Search Suggest feature.

All you need to do is head over to YouTube and pop in a word or phrase…

… and YouTube will hand you a bunch of keywords related to what you typed in:

These suggested keywords are GREAT.

Why?

Because these are terms that people actually type into YouTube.

So there’s no need to wonder if they’re popular or not. If YouTube suggests them to you, they definitely are.

You can also go to a popular video in your niche… and copy the same keywords that the video is optimized around.

As you probably know, keyword optimization is a KEY part of YouTube SEO. So if a video has lots and lots of views, chances are, that video is optimized around a popular keyword.

To execute this step, go to another channel in your niche.

Then, sort their videos by “Most Popular”

This will show you their videos that have generated the most views:

Next, choose a video from the list. Obviously, you want to pick a video that you can create an awesome video around (more on that in step #2).

But in general, if the video is in your niche, it’ll work.

Finally, see which keywords that video is optimized around. This is easy.

Just check out the keywords that video uses in its title, description and video tags:

Keyword in video title, description and tags

(To see a video’s tags, I recommend the VidIQ Chrome extension. It shows you a video’s tags right on the page.)

You can also find some excellent keywords in your YouTube “Traffic Source: YouTube search” report. This report shows you all the keywords that YouTube users have searched for to find your videos.

In many cases, these are keywords that you already know about (because you optimized your videos around them).

But sometimes you’ll find a handful of keywords that you never would have thought of.

For example, here’s an example of a keyword I found in my “Traffic Sources” report:

"seo tutorial for beginners" keyword highlight

This is a keyword I would have NEVER found using any other strategy. But I know that people are searching for it in YouTube, so it makes for a great keyword to add to my list.

Second, find the best keyword from your list

Now that you’ve generated a list of keywords, it’s time to choose the best one from your list.

Specifically, you want to target low-competition keywords.

This is ESPECIALLY important if your channel doesn’t have that many subscribers yet.

If you swing for the fences and go after competitive keywords, your video is gonna get buried in the search results.

Instead, you want to find keywords that don’t have a lot of competition.

How do you check?

All you need to do is:

Search for your keyword in Google.

And check out the “About results”:

This number represents the total number of videos on YouTube about that topic. The higher this number, the more competitive a keyword is. So you want to target keywords that have a low “About results” number.

(How low should you go? Every industry is different. So I can’t give you a specific number to shoot for. Just focus on choosing keywords that have low competition relative to other videos in your niche.)

For example, when I search for “YouTube SEO”, there are 15,000,000 results:

That’s a lot.

So if I was just starting out, I’d try a few other keywords, like “YouTube ranking factors”.

Bingo! That keyword only has 20,900 results.

Google SERP – Videos – YouTube ranking factors

And that means that this keyword is MUCH less competitive.

Finally, a bonus tip: search for your keyword in Google.

Here’s the deal:

Most views on YouTube come from within YouTube’s platform.

But don’t stop there. Your video can get 2-5x more views if you can ALSO get it to rank in Google.

How?

The trick is to optimize your videos around keywords that already have video results in Google.

You see, Google only includes videos in the search results for certain keywords.

Unlike a “normal” first page with 10 webpage results, Google sometimes reserves a good chunk of the first page for video results:

In general, Google tends to use video results for these types of keywords:

How-to keywords (“how to make cold brew coffee”)
Reviews (“beats by Dre review”)
Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)
Anything fitness or sports related (“Cardio kickboxing”)
Funny videos (“Cute animals”)

Why is this important?

Well, let’s say you optimize your video around a keyword that doesn’t have any video results in Google. In that case, you’ll ONLY get traffic from people searching on YouTube.

But if you optimize for a video keyword, you’ll also get targeted traffic to your video directly from Google’s first page.

The question is:

How do you find these magical keywords?

All you need to do is search for one of the keywords you found in the last step.

Then see if any of the keywords you searched for have YouTube video results, like this:

Simple, right?

Once you’ve found a Video Keyword, it’s time to see if there’s any search volume for that keyword. Otherwise, you might rank in Google for a keyword that only gets 20 searches per month. That’s not worth it.

So make sure target keyword gets at least 100-1k searches per month in Google (you can find this information using the Google Keyword Planner):

Why 100+ searches per month?

If you can get that video to rank in Google, then a lot of those searchers will click on YOUR video in the results.

That means you’ll get more high-quality traffic to your video, and ultimately, your site.

Here’s a real-life example:

Because Backlinko is in the SEO niche, I’m going to look for video keywords using searches like “keyword research tips”, “how to build backlinks” and “SEO tutorial”.

Bingo! The keyword “SEO tutorial” brings up 4 YouTube results in Google:

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