YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google. With over 2 billion active monthly users, it is the second-most visited online platform. These facts make YouTube one of the most competitive platforms in the virtual world.

As a creator, if you wish to grow your YouTube channel and beat the competition, you have to put in lots of effort and time. If you want to know how to increase YouTube views, using search engine optimization techniques, running ad campaigns, and sharing links on social media platforms are the best options. All these methods are effective and result-driven, but all are vain if you didn’t pick the right keywords.

Keywords are the most crucial to rank your channel on the YouTube results. They help increase your channel’s visibility, reach your target audience, and boost the number of viewers and subscribers on your channel.

In order to pick the right keywords for your YouTube videos, comprehensive keyword research is a must. It is a process of utilizing various keyword sources to find the most searched and relevant keywords for your videos.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Every day, a large number of people use YouTube Search to find videos of their interests. They type different sentences and phrases on the search bar many times a day. Thus, billions of searches are done every day on YouTube, which shows that countless keywords are available on the web.

Choosing the right keywords from those countless keywords is obviously one of the most challenging tasks. That’s where the keywords research methods are crucial.

Keyword research helps in selecting the most appropriate keywords for your videos from thousands of similar keywords.

In this article, we have put together five best ways to conduct keyword research for your YouTube videos. Check them out below!

YouTube Auto Suggest or Autocomplete

When you type something on the YouTube search bar, you must have noticed a few suggestions right below the search bar. This is called the YouTube auto-suggest or autocomplete feature. Sometimes, it is also called predictive text.

Whenever a user types on the search bar, this feature detects the first few words or characters of the sentence and then shows some keywords related to it right below the search bar. The best thing about this feature is that it only shows the most searched and most popular keywords.

With this feature, you can easily find several relevant keywords for your videos. You can make a list of those keywords and strategically use them in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and meta tags. This is the simplest and easiest way to conduct keyword research.

Exploring Competitors’ Popular Videos

It is always a good idea to explore your competitors’ websites before you start your keyword research from scratch.

Here is how you can find some high-quality keywords from your competitors’ websites:

Titles- Head over to your competitor’s YouTube channel and explore the video section to find out the relevant videos. Check out which keywords they have used and how they have structured their videos’ titles. It will give you many keyword ideas that you can effectively use in your videos.

Descriptions- Check out their videos’ descriptions and the keywords used in them. If the keywords are ranked well and generated massive traffic, you can use them in your videos.

Meta Tags- You cannot find meta tags in the video’s description section as YouTube does not reveal them publicly. You will have to go to the page source to check out all the meta tags used in a video.

To do that, you can either use shortcuts keys (CTRL+U) or simply right-click on the page and then click on the “View Page Source” option.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the best way to find the most appropriate keywords. With this tool, you can get a complete report of keywords, including the traffic, traffic source, trends, etc.

To utilize this tool, you need to go to YouTube Studio, click on “Analytics,” and then head over to “Reach Viewers.” In this option, you can see the top keywords your channel is already optimizing for. You should make the most of those keywords.

Google Video Result Keywords

Google does not show videos for every keyword. Instead, it shows videos for only certain keywords. You need to find out those keywords and target them.

To do that, you need to search some relevant keywords on the Google search bar and check which keywords are showing videos on the SERP. Make a list of those keywords and strategically use them in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and meta tags. This will surely give you the desired result.

Using a Keyword Research Tool

Many free and paid keyword research tools exist on the web, such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Semrush Keyword Magic Tool, etc. All these tools give you a comprehensive report on keywords. They show:

• An estimated volume of web traffic
• Trends
• Keyword difficulty
• Click per cost (CPC)

Using these tools, you can get an idea about which keywords have the potential to drive more and more web traffic to your videos.

Conclusion

Selecting the right keywords can be a little complex, but it is easier than ever with the keywords research methods included in this article. You can find the most appropriate keywords for your videos using these keyword research methods.