Boost YouTube SEO with Better Video Descriptions

YouTube is no longer the simple video sharing app/website that it used to be. Instead, it has become more of a search engine, visited by more than 2 billion people every  day. There are few apps that can boast such activity! But even with activity levels being that high, you’ll find a ton of content creators struggling to get views on their videos. The problem? Poor search engine optimization.

With people watching videos on YouTube reaching an all time high, brands are trying to take advantage by trying to get their videos to pop on potential customer pages. But the question is how? It’s very easy to lay out a plan to follow, but the real problem lies in the execution, especially when it seems even more difficult considering everyone’s trying to get some fame on YouTube. However, that’s what we’re here to help you figure out.

Creating a compelling description doesn’t just improve your video’s ranking. Instead, it also boosts viewer engagement and retention. Let’s try breaking down the art behind integrating SEO within your YouTube descriptions.

What Do Video Descriptions Do For Your YouTube Channel?

It goes without saying that video descriptions often go unnoticed by many viewers even if it’s right there in their face. One question that many of you are going to be dealing with is: if people aren’t interested, then why are they placing so much emphasis on it? The real answer is that you’re not doing this for the viewers. It’s for YouTube’s Algorithm. Here are just a few ways that adding proper video descriptions can do wonders for your channel:

Improved Visibility

With a good YouTube video description, content creators can significantly boost the number of viewers they have. Understanding this isn’t rocket science. Imagine trying to find a good video on how to bake a carrot cake. This is where relevancy comes into play. When you search for the instructions on baking, YouTube isn’t going to end up suggesting videos that show how to bake a red velvet cake. If it did, YouTube wouldn’t be the go-to place for those looking to learn new things.

Whenever people search for something on YouTube’s search bar, the algorithm scans it to look for keywords. In our case, the key words would be “how to bake” and “carrot cake.” The algorithm then searches through its entire database, looking for videos that can help solve our issue. That’s how we are shown suggestions.

By adding a proper video description, your videos are going to be ranked better with the algorithm. So, whenever people are looking for informational videos on baking carrot cakes, your content is going to be the first that shows up.

Better Viewer Experience

People aren't tuning in to YouTube videos to read descriptions but that doesn’t mean that no one’s going to read it. You’ll always find people going through the description to get an idea of what’s in store for them. When you focus on adding video descriptions, you can capture the attention of this audience giving them an idea of whether they want to stick around or move on to a different video.

Build Anticipation

Video descriptions can also help build anticipation with your audience, which is closely linked to the better viewer experience advantage. When you have video descriptions that offer a brief/exclusive information, it’ll pique the curiosity of those tuning into your videos. Additionally, this also boosts the chance of getting more comments.

Improve Accessibility

YouTube is a place for inclusivity, and that’s why you’ll want your videos to accommodate all types of people. You’ll see that many content creators respond to this by adding captions to their videos. With good video descriptions, including summaries, you can make your videos more inclusive. In turn, you’ll also be able to reach out to larger audiences like those with auditory impairments.

Encourage Viewer Interaction

Adding a call-to-action or some interesting questions is a good way to optimize your video descriptions, and we’ll be elaborating on this later on. By ensuring these additions, you’ll be encouraging interactions and fostering good relations with your viewers in the comments.

What Do You Need to Create the Perfect Video Description?

Now that we’ve seen how creating a good YouTube video description is good for you, it’s time to move on to what you need. While we’ve researched a long list for you, you don’t need all of the details. Just pick out some that work best for you considering your niche and get to work!

Researching Keywords

Any good SEO strategy revolves around one key thing: keywords. Unless you have a long list of keywords that you’ll be using, you might as well stick to other marketing methods. But how do you find out what keywords fit your niche? To answer that question, you need to start doing some research.

To make a proper video description, you’ll need to add the right keyword. To get an idea of what keywords are used very often within your niche, your biggest help is the search bar on YouTube for a keyword. Taking our example of baking, you can see what people are looking for the most by typing out “How to bake” into the search bar. The autofilling feature will end up showing you the best keywords that you can revolve your content around. 

You can even make use of tools like Google Trends or YouTube Analytics to figure out what people are looking for in your niche. Always remember that keyword research never ends. If baking carrot cakes is famous right now, there’s no guarantee that people will still be looking at the same how-tos in the near future. By continuing routine keyword research, you can make the most of SEO advantages.

Write For the People and Algorithms

Keyword research is an important part of your video descriptions and from this research, you’ll find different keywords to use. But that doesn’t mean you should use all of them. While using keywords is an excellent strategy, overdoing it is certainly possible. If you use every keyword that you’ve found in the small description that you’ll be writing, it’ll make your work sound very robotic. It’s important to strike a balance. So, remember to ensure that your description sounds natural and engaging. Having your description sound robotic may end up negatively affecting your search rankings.

Keep a Proper Structure

A good video description is one that follows the layout that Youtube’s parent company has already laid down for you. Having a lacklustre description isn’t just going to confuse your viewers. Instead, it’ll also adversely affect the keyword usage which will end up lowering your SEO search rankings. According to Google, to be able to get the most out of the YouTube algorithm, here are the things you’ll want to ensure:

• Adding enough information about what your video is about: Google suggests that you should use the first few lines as a place to uniquely describe the video. This is because this is the first thing your viewers will see.
• Adding a description of your channel: The second half of your description refers to all the information that’ll be visible once viewers hit the “View More” option. Google suggests that you should use this space to give a brief intro to your account so that new viewers can get an idea about your account. This is something that you can easily autofill by adding a default description.

The Importance of the First Few Lines

Google has already suggested what you should have in the first few lines but we cannot stress the importance of this. The first 2-3 lines are what viewers will see before they hit the “Show/View More” option. You should consider these few lines to be prime real estate to try and hook the readers.

Always Proofread

Once you’ve created the perfect description, you should treat it as any English school assignment. There’s one important rule that you need to follow: Proofreading. You’ll want to avoid spelling errors and clunky phrasing as this can end up undermining your credibility. You never want that to happen, especially if you’ve spent all your time trying to get viewers to read your video descriptions.

Adding LSI Keywords

LSI keywords are slightly different from the keyword research that we talked about earlier. These keywords work the same way. You’ll need to do your research and try using them in your video descriptions to improve your SEO rankings as much as possible. However, the difference between LSI and normal keywords arises when we talk about the nature of the keywords. LSI refers to keywords that are similar to your niche. For example, if you’re talking about baking a cake, “vanilla extract” may count as an LSI keyword.

Linking Geographical Locations

Geotagging your videos isn’t possible for everyone. If your videos specifically revolve around a certain area, then you should consider linking locations in the video description. Adding locations in the description has the potential to promote your content to a local audience. 

Mentioning Partners

If you’ve been on YouTube a lot, you’ve probably noticed other content creators linking with different creator channels. The reason for that is simple: Increasing your reach. If your niche involves collaborating with different YouTube creators, then adding their accounts to the description can boost your SEO ranking. To get an idea of how this works, imagine a viewer searching for a content creator whom you’ve collaborated with. The YouTube algorithm will then work to promote your video to the viewer even though they were searching for someone else. This is because your video has details about the content creator that they’re looking for. 

Update Regularly

Updating your video description regularly may seem like a tiring task but it’s one that needs to be done if you’re looking to maximize the views that you get. This closely ties in with changing viewer focuses. We gave an example of this earlier in the keyword research section. In the near future, people may not be searching for the same keywords. Thus, you’ll have to go back and edit your descriptions to ensure that it includes the new widely used keywords.

Experimentation

One thing that you’ve probably already realised by now is that you're not the only person looking to optimize their video descriptions, which means that it may feel like you’re going to have to follow a very general and widely used video description. Truth be told, the description is going to be similar to others in your niche. But just because similar video descriptions are working doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experiment. Depending on your niche, you can try and play around with keywords to try and get your content across to more people.

What Does a Good YouTube Video Description Look Like?

We’ve talked a lot about how video descriptions can help your videos. Now, it’s time to see what having a good video description looks like:

Good Keyword Placement

A good video description is one that does a good job at using keywords. The key is that you want to use as many keywords as you can without sounding robotic. Descriptions that gather a lot of views are those that sound engaging and conversational, even though they are using unconventional keywords.

Provides a Brief Overview of Your Video

Descriptions providing viewers an overview of what they’re going to be seeing will bring in more views. That's because when people search on YouTube, they’ll be reading the first few lines of your description before clicking on your video. If they come across something that grabs their interest, they’re more likely to click on it.

Makes Use of Timestamps

A lot of the times when people are looking for videos, they’re often looking to find a quick and easy fix to the problem at hand. For that, you’ll often see videos like how-tos come with multiple timestamps. This makes navigation easy, improving viewer retention and satisfaction. After all, you don’t want to be stuck watching a 20 minute video, especially when it could’ve been answered in a few minutes.

Adding Call to Actions

A key task of video descriptions is to improve viewer engagement and the best way to do that is through call to actions. CTAs are statements that encourage the reader to take action. In your video descriptions, you can encourage viewers to subscribe, like, and share your videos.

Making Use Of External Links

Once you’ve got people reading your video descriptions, that opens up the door to a bunch of opportunities. The aim of SEO marketing is to make sure that people are tuning in to view your videos. But what about your other social media accounts? These accounts can be linked at the end of your video description to ensure that the new viewers also know about your account on apps like Instagram. Always remember one thing: the links must be relevant. Spammy links can ruin all your efforts.

Measuring the Impact of Your New Descriptions

SEO optimization requires a lot of hard work because it needs to be reviewed a lot. We’ve talked a bunch about how you should create the perfect descriptions, and by now, you probably have. But how do you know if the descriptions are working? Let’s see some ways you can check your progress:

Click-Through Rates

Once you’ve created the perfect description, you’ll need to start looking at YouTube analytics. One of the data points in YouTube analytics is CTR. CTR tells you how many people are reaching your content through searches/recommendations. You can use this feature to track whether or not the number of viewers you’ve been getting has increased or not.

Keyword Ranks

Another feature that you need to keep track of is how well your videos are ranking according to the keywords that you’re using. By tracking this, you’ll be able to tell whether or not you should be switching the focus onto different keywords.

The Bottom Line

Optimizing your video descriptions is one of the most cost effective ways to boost your YouTube SEO. Doing this can help you reach the right audiences which can also help improve viewer engagement. 

If you’ve been reading closely, you’ve got all the info you need to start creating your own descriptions. Our suggestions? Experiment and start small! Pick a few of your older videos and start playing around with the descriptions. Once you start monitoring the results, you’ll be surprised at how much a few changes can do for your views. Now that you know all that you have to, let’s get to writing!