If you thought you could just put up your videos on YouTube and wait until people discover them, guess again. You also have to think about how to get the most visibility on Youtube’s search function as this will make a big difference in how much traction your videos get. This is especially true if you don’t have a large embedded audience yet. Let’s take a look at a few ways in which you can optimize your videos for search.

Use a Keyword in the File Name

One thing you should know is that YouTube can’t actually watch videos to know what they’re about, but it can identify keywords wherever you insert them. But there aren’t many places where you can insert this keyword without it looking spammy on your video viewing page. One of the places where you can and should insert it, however, is in the file name. This will be extra information YouTube can use to classify your videos and choose on which searches it will pop up and how high.

Add the Keyword in the Title

Besides the file name, the most important place to add your keyword is your title. But only do this if it feels natural. You don’t want the keyword to take away from the title’s readability. One study found that titles that had the exact term people were searching for in the title had a slight advantage over the rest. The goal is to try to insert the keyword seamlessly in the title but making sure that it remains concise and gives an accurate description of what people are about to watch.

Use Tags Wisely

You also have to make sure that you use your tags, and that you use them wisely. This is so that you can inform not only the viewers of what the video is about, but YouTube as well. As we said earlier, YouTube has no way of really telling what a video is about, and tags are one of the ways it can. In addition to helping classify videos, it will also help associate it with other videos and increase the chance that yours get recommended.

You have to make sure that you use your most important keywords in the first tags followed by variations and long-tail keywords. One thing you should never do, however, is use irrelevant keywords in an attempt to get more attention. This could backfire as Google may penalize the video for that.

Use Custom Thumbnails

If you’ve noticed videos from top creators, it’s common for many of them to have a thumbnail with text in them. And that’s because they work. It has been estimated that around 90% of all top-performing videos on the platform have a custom thumbnail, and yours should too. It will catch people’s attention when scrolling down and tell them exactly what the video is about.

These are all a few things that you can do to make sure that your video gets all the visibility it can on YouTube. We suggest you use all of these tips, and always try to find new ways to make your videos stand out.