Before we look at what SEO is for YouTube, it is worth first understanding what SEO is.
Search Engine Optimization is the set of user experience optimization strategies , which aims to improve the positioning of a page in search engines.
It includes programming , design , content production and links to other websites , so that search engines consider that page to be the best result for what the user is looking for.
Of course, when we talk about SEO, we're aiming to conquer the top positions on Google. After all, that Internet giant dominates more than 90% of searches worldwide. Bing, Yahoo! and Baidu are other search engines that take up the rest of that number.
Google has a mission : "to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to everyone." In other words, by crawling, indexing and ranking web content, the search engine wants users to find the best results for their searches.
To do this, Google developed an intelligent algorithm capable of identifying pages that offer a good experience and eliminating from the results those that use spam, plagiarism or other malicious practices.
With that being said, let’s now understand what SEO for YouTube is.
Search engines exist in many other places on the Internet. When you enter a website, for example, there is usually also a search engine there that crawls the internal content. Likewise, on social networks , there is also an internal search engine .
This is also true on YouTube, which offers its own search system to make it easy for users to find the channels and videos they want .
And the platform has quite a bit of clout among Internet search engines. This 2017 study showed that YouTube had more searches than search engines like Yahoo! and Bing, for example.
main search engines
It is worth remembering that the video platform was bought by Google. That is why YouTube adopts the same search intelligence and has the same purpose, that of offering the best experience for the user .
When a user types a search term into YouTube , the platform's robots crawl channels and videos to deliver the best results, in order of relevance. And, to determine which are the best results for each person, the algorithm considers several factors.
The user's search and browsing history, as well as that of Google, are important factors in personalizing the results page. But for those who publish content on YouTube, it is important to know that the algorithm also adopts criteria of engagement and channel optimization to position the results.
For example, a video that properly fills out the title, tags and description fields tends to rank better than one that doesn't.
A YouTube channel that usually receives several nepal phone number list comments and likes also ranks better than one that does not have good engagement.
Why does this happen? Because the platform understands that these videos provide a more valuable experience to the user.
And that is also what Google's own algorithm understands. Since the search engine and YouTube belong to the same company, there is an integration between both platforms.
That's why when you do a search on Google, the search engine also presents you with video content, both from YouTube and from other platforms that are more relevant to that search.
Look at the following example:
Therefore, the SEO optimizations you make for YouTube are valid both within the platform and also for competing for space in Google searches .