10 Ways To Write A Killer YouTube Video Description
YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform in the world, with more than 2 billion users per month. That’s probably why so many brands, marketers, Influencers, and individual creators flock there.
Some use it as a marketing platform and have established themselves as industry experts. Others simply want to create entertaining content and hope it goes viral and becomes famous.
Regardless of what purpose you use the platform for, you need more views on your videos if you’re out there. That’s the whole point of content creation. And that’s why you need to optimize your descriptions, titles and other YouTube elements to boost your target keyword rankings.
This article is specifically about optimizing video descriptions to rank for relevant search queries and get more views on your videos.
Here are ten top ways to improve your YouTube channel description.
10 steps on what to put in YouTube description to make it perfect
Use keywords with a long tail
Your Youtube video descriptions, if properly optimized for keywords, can help viewers find it. Using relevant keywords in video descriptions is crucial because it directs the right audience to your content. It’s not just the title where keywords should be added, but all the other elements, including the description.
And, since users mostly search in natural conversational language, it makes sense to include long-tail keywords and write descriptions in similar language.
Here are some tips to help you optimize your video description with keywords:
- Always use the main keyword in the first sentence, as this is what is visible at first glance.
- Use keywords as naturally as possible; write your descriptions in conversational language as the user will search for similar content.
- You can use Google Trends and Keyword Planner to find popular keywords that you can target.
- Maintain the right keyword density, but don’t overdo it.
Make descriptions relevant
Your descriptions should be completely accurate when it comes to the content of your videos. Viewers often read the first line to determine if the video is relevant to them or not. Therefore, it is important to give a clear definition of the video in the first line.
Also, don’t fill your video description with unnecessary information just to fill space. If you add any links, make sure they are related to the video and are not completely irrelevant.
You can divide the clip description into two parts. The first part is the text that people see before they click on “Show More”. The second part is the further definition.
The first few lines should be all about the video and what it covers. The rest can be used to provide more information about the video or other useful resources.
Lure curiosity
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to tell your viewers what the video is about in the first few lines. However, you shouldn’t reveal all the cards in the description and it’s better to leave some things secret for them to watch the video.
When piquing users’ curiosity, allude to the fact that there is something else to be found that actually encourages people to watch your video. If you spell out all the points in the description itself, they won’t need to watch the video.
Add a call to action
Like any other type of content you create, it is an effective practice to include an active link in the description of your video. If the video is about a product, you can convince people to view it on the site and give them a link. If you are viewing products from other brands, you can add links to their sites along with a screaming call to action that encourages clicks.
Even if your video is not related to the product, there must be some desired action you’d like your viewers to take. Think about that and add a clear and concise overlay that encourages people to take that action.
Your overlays can also ask viewers to subscribe to you on other platforms.
Provide timestamps for long clips
Another useful thing you can include is timestamps. This is especially useful for long videos that cover many subtopics.
In such cases, viewers may only be interested in watching a particular section rather than the entire video. Let them see what they want. That way, viewers can go directly to the section they are interested in.
Using timestamps can increase convenience for your viewers, as well as increase the number of views.
Promote your other videos
YouTube description blocks have more than enough space to write all about your video and then some others. You can use this extra space to promote other relevant videos or resources to your viewers.
Many YouTubers use video descriptions to share a link to other similar videos or other useful resources. They have added links to other relevant videos, encouraging viewers to check them out. If you still doubt your abilities as a marketer, promote youtube video with prodvigate.
Use characters wisely
YouTube gives you plenty of room to write text underneath your videos and you should use it to your advantage. In addition to talking about your video, you can add links, encourage people to follow you elsewhere, promote other content, and more.
For long videos, you can also create subheadings and provide a summary of all the topics/sections of the video. You can also use this space to share your story and talk about what your brand represents.
You can add a lot of useful information to your video description, so use that space wisely. The worst thing you can do as a creator is not to write text under the video or just write a line or two. That reeks of laziness and a waste of a good opportunity.
Use hashtags
As with any other social media platform, hashtags are a great marketing tool to use on YouTube as well. Hashtags help the right people find your videos and help them emphasize what the video is about.
Often people click on a hashtag and search for videos that have used them. This way, your videos can also be detected if you use the appropriate hashtags in the descriptions. These should be clickable links that will direct viewers to all videos associated with this hashtag.
You can use hashtags between sentences to highlight key names, events, or other important details.
Make descriptions mobile-friendly
Many people use YouTube with an app on their mobile devices or mobile browsers. The percentage of YouTube viewers who watch videos on smartphones is quite large, and you need to take care of it.
When you’re writing descriptions for videos you need to keep smartphone users in mind as well. That means you shouldn’t write very much text with huge unstructured blocks. People who read the text on mobile devices will be discouraged by this.
Write short sentences and structure descriptions in appropriate sections to make the text mobile-friendly. If you can not write the text yourself, use the services of copywriters. It does not matter what language the text should be in. Both ENL or ESL authors will do the job according to your requirements.
Use YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics provides a lot of useful information that you can use to write better video descriptions. The traffic source section, particularly the search keywords, is the most useful for you. Here you will find the keywords that people use to search and watch your videos.
If a certain search keyword gets a lot of views, you can create more videos on that topic and use that keyword in your descriptions.
Conclusion
Here are some of the best tips for optimizing YouTube video descriptions to get the benefit of them. Video descriptions are much more than just information about a video. If used effectively, they can get leads, conversions, more subscribers on other social media platforms, and more.
Use these tips to compose effective YouTube video descriptions and you will surely see results.
