The YouTube rank tracker is among the commonly used tools for YouTube searches that show an indication of how millions of hours of video content are consumed every day. Although video marketing is still in its young stages today, it continues to catch up with SEO marketers as a key category of content for multimedia messages. The key to video SEO is getting videos ranked in both Google and YouTube searches as the main search engines for video content, as well as social media. Before you worry too much about how to handle the SEO for your videos, read on for 7 incredible tips on how to successfully rank your videos in Google and YouTube searches:

1. Create videos of appropriate length

In recent years, YouTube has changed the algorithm for ranking videos, where the duration viewers take to watch your video counts for boosting your rank. This means that short videos are not advantageous as regards video SEO, and though there are not any written rules on how long an ideal video should be, consider one that is not less than one minute. Anything lesser than that will likely be considered spam and not do anything for your ranking. If your content is interesting, viewers will watch your videos to the end and thus increase your second’s count.

2. Use social media marketing

Video SEO cannot rely on itself for visibility and ranking and that’s the role that social media should play. For video-based content, views, likes and shares are major for ranking. If people are talking about something on social media, it is relevant, and if your videos are found relevant by people, they rank higher on search. Create content that can conveniently be shared on social media platforms and prompt a conversation, because that step will give you a higher ranking on Google and YouTube.

3. Use custom thumbnails

Upon uploading content in YouTube, there is a provision for screenshots that is upon the user to pick out sections of the video that will feature. Use and upload thumbnails customized to depict your brand, which is exercising control of the first impression viewers get of your channel. For all your thumbnails, choose an optimal size for images in agreeable formats like JPEG, PNG or GIF. Ensure you also choose brighter colors that are eye-catchers which will drift people’s attention to your content.

4. Add appealing video descriptions

A description is how your viewers are able to get more information on what your video is about, even before watching it. More importantly, the importance of video description is that it provides a platform for using text-based content, where you can create targeted keywords that will give you a ranking in both Google and YouTube. It is an opportunity to lure your viewers into not only watching but liking, commenting, and sharing. Ensure to keep away from redundancy in your description by writing a unique intriguing description for each of your videos.

5. Correctly name each of your videos

Wrongly naming videos is a tragic SEO mistake for video-based content. Unfortunately, YouTube does not have the artificial intelligence to automatically know what is contained in your video, so it picks up on the raw file and video naming. Since it is up to you to wisely direct what names Google and YouTube obtain from your content, be keen on selecting names with consideration of keywords that will help people find your content. Ensure you also name your videos differently depending on the content, keeping the naming interesting, to make it easy for search engines to pick up on those keys words as per people’s searches, especially because Google distastes and averts duplicate content.

6. Fully optimize your channel page

The channel page is the landing page where your viewers find you when they search, which also helps notify search engines of the existence of your content. Make sure you completely fill out all aspects of your channel page information, ranging from links, descriptions, subscriptions, profile images among others: For profile pictures and background images, there is more room to optimize the images and improve user experience, which represents you well on Google search. Subscriptions, on the other hand, serve the role of optimizing by association. By subscribing to other content creators with similar content as your videos, you create an authoritative feel for your audience, but also create a deeper understanding of the industry you are in.

Links built to your videos’ URL followed by embedding HTML on other sites may be the approach to SEO that you have needed to take your site to the next level. While links have the potential to throw your channel off the bus if wrongly done, they tend to work as well as backlinks on other sites. Relevantly, choose to use small numbers of links on your videos from blogs, Pinterest, among other sources, and stretch this over a period of time, instead of using many wrong links at a time that puts your channel at risk of being spammed by YouTube. This, unlike all other tips, will rank you for competitive keyword searches on both YouTube and Google. Many individuals and businesses alike have tried out video-based content but given up shortly after because they did not receive the anticipated views or likes. There are notable differences between text-based SEO and video-based SEO, which is generally why marketers have had some struggles with optimizing for this kind of content. However, video SEO may be a newer space for marketers, but with these 7 tips, it is safe to say the journey to video content marketing and higher ranking for search engines is possible and convenient for all users. Why not give video content one more try?