A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Perfect YouTube Keywords

YouTube is no longer just a place to watch videos for fun. It’s now a huge resource for businesses, marketers, and people who make videos.

YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users, so to get the most out of it, you need to do more than just post videos. Mastering YouTube SEO is essential to truly stand out in the crowd. And at the heart of YouTube SEO lies keyword research.

In this detailed guide, we’ll go over all the different ways you can find the best keywords to make your YouTube videos more visible and get more views. 

Understanding the Importance of YouTube Keywords

For any SEO strategy to work, keywords are essential. This is also true for YouTube.

They are the words or phrases that people put into the search bar to find things. You can make it more likely that your videos show up in search results and suggestions by strategically adding relevant keywords to the titles, descriptions, tags, and even the content itself. Effective phrase optimization not only makes you more visible, but it also brings your ideal customers to your channel naturally.

Step-by-Step Guide to Finding YouTube Keywords

Brainstorm Seed Keywords

Start by coming up with a list of broad topics that are related to the niche of your channel. These are your seed keywords, which are the words you’ll use to start your keyword research. Write down any words or phrases that come to mind that your readers might be looking for.

Let’s say you have a fitness and nutrition YouTube channel. To come up with seed keywords, do this:

Identify Your Niche: Start by writing down your channel’s important topics or themes. It could be “fitness,” “nutrition,” “workouts,” “healthy eating,” or something else.

Expand on Each Topic: Once you know what your main points are, go into more detail about each one. Below “fitness,” for instance, you could come up with subtopics like “strength training,” “cardio workouts,” “yoga,” “weightlifting,” and so on. Within the category “nutrition,” you could also include subtopics like “meal planning,” “healthy recipes,” “superfoods,” “diet tips,” etc.

Use Tools and Resources: To find seed keywords in your area, you can also use online tools and resources like Google Trends, forums, social media groups, and even magazines.

Utilize YouTube’s Search Suggestions

Type one of your seed keywords into YouTube’s search bar. As you type, pay attention to the search terms that come up on their own. These suggestions come from the most common searches that are related to your keyword. This gives you a good idea of what people are really looking for.

Enter Seed Keywords: Start by typing one of your seed keywords into the YouTube search bar. For example, you could type “strength training” if that’s one of the topics you’re focusing on.

Observe Auto-Suggested Queries: As you begin typing, YouTube will generate a dropdown list of auto-suggested search queries related to your keyword. Take note of these suggestions as they represent popular search queries that users are actively looking for.

Explore Related Searches: Scroll down to the bottom of the search results page to find the “Related Searches” section. Here, you’ll find additional keyword ideas related to your initial query. For instance, under “strength training,” you might see related searches like “strength training for beginners,” “strength training exercises,” “strength training at home,” etc.

Analyze Search Volume and Relevance: Look at the suggested keywords’ search volume and relevance to see which ones fit your content and community the best. Tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEO tools made just for YouTube can give you more information about how often people search for each keyword and how much competition there is.

By doing these things, you can come up with good seed keywords and use YouTube’s search suggestions to help you narrow down your keyword research. This will improve the SEO of your YouTube videos in the end. 

Explore Related Keywords

Scroll to the bottom of the search results page to find the “Related Searches” section. Here, you’ll discover additional keyword ideas related to your initial query. Take note of these related keywords as they can help expand your keyword pool and uncover new content opportunities.

Here’s how you can do that: –

Using YouTube Search Results: After entering your seed keyword, take a look at the videos that appear in the search results. Pay attention to the titles, descriptions, and tags of these videos to identify additional related keywords that you may not have thought of initially.

Analyze Content and Comments: Watch some of the top-ranking videos in your niche and read through the comments section. Look for recurring themes, questions, or phrases that viewers are mentioning. These can provide valuable insights into topics or keywords that resonate with your target audience.

Utilize Keyword Research Tools: Use tools for keyword research, such as TubeBuddy, VidIQ, or Google Keyword Planner, to make a list of keywords that are related to your seed keywords. These tools give you information about search traffic, competition, and related terms, which can help you come up with more keywords.

Use Keyword Research Tools

Some keyword research tools, like Tubeforces, VidIQ, and Keyword Tool, are made just for YouTube. These tools give you useful information about search volume, competition, and similar keywords. This helps you narrow down your keyword choices and find high-potential keywords with low competition.

TubeBuddy: Install the TubeBuddy browser extension and navigate to the Keyword Explorer tool. If you type in a seed keyword like “strength training,” TubeBuddy will come up with a list of related keywords along with search volume, competition score, and overall competitiveness. This information can help you choose keywords that have a good mix of good search volume and manageable competition.

VidIQ Keyword Research: In the same way, you can enter your seed keyword into VidIQ’s Keyword Research tool and see related keywords along with their overall score, search volume, and amount of competition. Look for keywords that fit with your content strategy and could bring in the people you want to reach.

Google Keyword Planner: This is a useful tool if you want to learn more about keywords that aren’t just related to YouTube. To find high-potential keywords for your YouTube videos, enter your seed keywords and sort the results by relevance, search volume, and competition.

By using these keyword research tools, you can get useful information and ideas that will help you choose better keywords and find high-potential keywords that fit with the content of your channel and the tastes of your audience. This planned method will help you get the most views and comments on your YouTube videos.

Analyze Your Competitors

Take a closer look at the keywords your competitors are using in their video titles, descriptions, and tags. You shouldn’t just copy their method, but looking at their keyword strategy can help you come up with ideas for your own content.

Identify Competitors: To begin, look for other YouTube channels or content creators in the same niche as you that make similar videos. Look for channels with a similar audience and focus on material, like those with fitness trainers, nutritionists, or wellness influencers.

Examine Titles and Descriptions: Look at Titles and Descriptions: Go to your competitors’ YouTube channels and look at the titles and descriptions of their most popular videos. Pay close attention to the keywords they use and how they use them in the titles and descriptions of their videos.

Inspect Tags: Use browser extensions like TubeBuddy or VidIQ to view the tags that other creators have used, even though YouTube no longer shows them. Visit the video page of a competitor and add one of these extensions to see the tags they’ve used. Take note of the keywords that show up a lot in their videos.

Look for Trends: Find out what themes or topics your competitors keep talking about in their videos. Are there certain keywords or sentences that seem to be getting people to interact with and view your content? Think about how you can use similar keywords in your own content strategy based on these trends.

Assess Performance:  Look at how well your competitors’ videos are doing in terms of views, likes, comments, and general activity. Are there certain topics or keywords that always work well for them? Learn what kinds of content their viewers like best and think about how you can change your keyword strategy to fit those needs.

Identify White Space: While analyzing the keyword strategies of your competitors, look for chances where they might be missing out on or underusing particular keywords or topics. These “white spaces” are possible spots where you can set your site apart and get more visitors by focusing on keywords that aren’t as popular but are still important to your audience.

For instance, if you see that one of your competitors has a lot of popular videos about “high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts,” you might want to make your own videos about the same topics but with a different angle or twist, like “HIIT workouts for beginners” or “30-minute HIIT routines for fat loss.”

Consider Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are phrases that are longer and more detailed. They tend to have fewer searches but more intent. Long-tail keywords can help you reach a more specific audience and make it more likely that your content will rank higher in search results.

Here’s how you can incorporate them into your keyword strategy:

For example, instead of going after the broad keyword “weight loss,” you might want to go after “healthy meal plans for weight loss” or “low-carb recipes for weight loss.” These keywords may not be searched for as often as broader terms, but they are more specific and can bring in people who are interested in your content.

Prioritize Relevance and Search Volume

Prioritize keywords that are relevant to your content and audience when choosing them. While having a high search volume is ideal, it’s also crucial to pick keywords that properly describe the content of your videos. To get the most out of your keyword strategy, find a balance between how relevant the keyword is and how many times it is searched for.

Here’s how you can prioritize effectively:

So, let’s say you want to make a video about “yoga for beginners.” A keyword like “yoga” might have a high search volume, but it’s not very specific, so it might not draw the right audience. But “yoga for beginners” is more detailed and fits better with your content, so it’s a better keyword to focus on, even though fewer people are searching for it. 

Implementing Keywords in Your YouTube Strategy

Once you’ve compiled a list of targeted keywords, it’s time to strategically implement them into your YouTube content:

Title: To increase exposure and click-through rates, place your main keyword towards the beginning of the title of your video.

Description: Write a detailed description that easily includes the keywords you want to rank for. Make sure that both people who watch your video and search engines can learn useful things from it.

Tags: Use tags that are important and include both your main and secondary keywords. Tags help YouTube understand the content of your video and can help it be found.

Content: Throughout your video content, including in the script or conversation, naturally incorporate your keywords. Don’t use too many keywords in your content; it can hurt both SEO and user experience.

Let us say you’re making a video called “10-Minute Full Body Workout at Home.” This time, you should put your goal keyword “full body workout” right in the title to make it more relevant and easy to find.

To make the video even more SEO friendly, you can add related keywords like “home workout,” “quick workout,” and “bodyweight exercises” to the description and tags. 

Monitoring and Iterating

Keyword research is an ongoing process, and it’s important to keep an eye on how your chosen keywords are doing over time.

After you post your video, use YouTube Analytics to keep an eye on how it’s doing. To see how well your selected keywords are performing, keep an eye on metrics like views, watch time, and engagement. If you see that some keywords are getting more traffic and interaction than others, you might want to focus more on those keywords in future content. Be willing to iterate and change your keyword strategy if some keywords aren’t performing as well as you had hoped.

Conclusion

To sum up, learning how to use YouTube keywords is important for making your channel more visible. You’ve learned how to come up with ideas, do research, and use the right keywords by following the steps in this guide.

You’ve learned a lot about keyword optimization, from learning the fundamentals to examining tools and analyzing competitors.

Remember that it’s all about being relevant and improving all the time. To stay ahead in the YouTube game, keep testing, keeping an eye on, and making changes to your keyword strategy.

Now that you know these things, you can confidently optimize your videos. Wishing you the best with your show!