4 Ways To Boost Your YouTube Video Ranking On Google

4 TIPS THAT WILL IMPROVE YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEO’S GOOGLE RANKING

Google Video and YouTube are the two biggest video search engines on the internet. But while YouTube rakes in over 3 billion searches every month, Google matches that every single day! Boasting over 80% of the global search market share, it seems a pretty good idea to ensure that your Google video ranking looks just as rosy as your popularity on YouTube.

While many people still navigate directly to YouTube to search for video content on the platform itself, the vast majority use Google search to find video content too. Now, while people may still be able to find your YouTube content via a Google search, the platforms each use different algorithms to rank their results, meaning that a search on YouTube will reveal a different set of results than one on Google.

While Google receives significantly more enquiries than YouTube, there is also far more competition to deal with, like video from countless other streaming services, platforms and websites, not affiliated to YouTube. As such, it is just as important (if not more so) to ensure that your Google video rankings are just as good as your video performance YouTube.

We check out some of the most effective tips and advice for those looking to boost their Google search video rankings.

How to Improve your YouTube video Rankings on Google

1. Create Videos that Have “Traffic Potential”
   A video that performs well on YouTube may not see the same success on Google. This is because people browsing YouTube are interested in video-related content only, while with Google, they’re looking for multiple results, from text to websites, that go beyond video only.

   This means that your videos should boast “traffic potential” – essentially, they should be based on topics that people would prefer to see a video on rather than reading about. A quick session using a reliable keyword research tool will tell you which topics are better for video intent than others.

2. Refine Your Keyword SEO Data
   Sharpen up your SEO by including good quality text-based information with your video. Search engines aren’t yet able to watch a video and determine what it’s about, so you need to include relevant keywords within your title, video description and metadata. Make sure to keep things focused on your main keywords, use a keywork research tool and remember to add the appropriate tags to your content to improve searchability and Google’s ability to access it.
3. Add or Upgrade your Closed Captions
   YouTube’s automated closed captions (CC’s) have improved recently, but they’re still not perfect. Videos where you’re speaking quickly or with an accent can produce (often comical) auto-captions that just don’t work for viewers or ranking data.
   
   The internet is still text-based, and closed captions are a rich source of well…text. Google’s algorithms are heavily focused on high-quality content, and accurate CC’s are a crucial factor when the search engine is figuring out how to find videos to rank well. Many people are forced to watch videos on mute or struggle to hear well through shoddy speakers, and you’ll lose this audience without closed captions, hurting those ranking numbers.
4. Add in Your Timestamps
   Timestamps are the timeline of your video and are a fantastic way to seriously improve your Google rankings. They indicate the amount of time that has passed through certain moments and are automatically synced with your content on YouTube. Enriching your timestamps with labels in the YouTube Chapters feature improves your SEO by indicating to Google where the important points in your video are.
   
   This “Key Moments” feature works by telling Google where the most relevant or important points are located in your video so that the search engine can show browsers who may not want to see the entire video where to start watching from, boosting click rates and engagement.

Conclusion

YouTube and Google look for different things when ranking videos. YouTube’s algorithms value click-through rates and watch time. They love entertaining content that runs for longer periods. Google, on the other hand, prefers videos that are topic-specific and immediately helpful. It looks at the video’s title and description texts relative to the user’s search terms and values things like relevant content, accurate timestamps and reviewed closed captions.

While high-quality content that informs and drives engagement matters equally to Google and YouTube in terms of rankings, you can ensure that your videos are balanced and optimized to do well in the rankings columns on both of them by improving the metrics that matter.