How Do You Optimize Videos for SEO?

How to Use Keywords and Hashtags in Videos to Increase Visibility

When you are looking for something specific online, what do you do? Typically, you go to Google or another search engine and type in a few words that sum up what you are looking for. The more specific you are, the more accurate and helpful the results will be. Each of the words or phrases that you use to find the results you were looking for are called keywords, and keywords are the basis for search engine optimization, or SEO. Optimizing pages on a website with the right keywords helps that site to get organic traffic and appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

This same concept is used on a smaller scale within social media platforms using hashtags, most importantly on Instagram, but also now on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest. Hashtags use the “#” symbol followed by a word or phrase with no spaces and people can search for specific hashtags to find posts and content related specifically to that phrase. By putting these two concepts together, you can leverage the best results for your videos.

In this article, we will discuss how keywords and hashtags can help your videos to reach a greater audience online. We are Movidmo and we create easy-to-use video ad templates for everyday people, small business owners, and freelancers, enabling them to make high quality video advertisements without spending too much time or money on it. Let’s explore how to optimize your videos!

Where to Use Keywords in Videos

Keywords can be used anywhere that text can be added, including the title of the video, the description of the video, and even on your channel or page itself. This is especially important on YouTube, which is the second most visited website in the world, only trailing Google, according to Semrush. By adding specific keywords to your video title and description, your videos are also more likely to get recommended by YouTube. If you are familiar with the platform, while you are watching a video there is a bar either beside or below your video showing a long list of related videos. So, even if your video is not the first one someone clicks on from their initial search, it is still possible that they will find it through recommendations.

Adding keywords into your video description and title has a direct impact on the SEO of the video.. Still, you can also add keywords in a way that has an indirect impact on SEO. For example, YouTube lets you choose the thumbnail image of your videos. If you add some easy-to-read text overlaid on an image for the thumbnail, these words are part of an image and have no direct impact on SEO, but since they might catch the eye of the viewer in recommend or “up next” video choices, this would result in organic views and have an indirect impact.

Where to Use Hashtags in Videos

Now, where to put hashtags in your YouTube videos. First, you can add hashtags in the video title. This tends to be more common with YouTube shorts than full length videos, but adding one or two in a title can be helpful for views. Next, you can add them in the description of your videos.

Since hashtags are for helping viewers find your videos and not informing those who are already watching your video, we recommend putting them down at the bottom of your video description. This way, they are out of the way of the main description, but are still present in your video posts to help your videos get more traffic. Also YouTube will disregard all hashtags if you use more than 15 to help prevent spam, so be sure not to use more than 15 and to be concise with your choices and ensure that they are relevant to the video and not just your business or page as a whole.

Considering that YouTube is owned by Google, it operates similarly to Google as a video search engine, so adhering to the correct use of hashtags and keywords is crucial. Be sure to check out Google’s hashtag use policies to ensure that your hashtags don’t violate any of their policies.

What Hashtags to Use for Videos

Hashtags are the lifeblood of Instagram. Without adding hashtags to your posts, you’re not going to get any organic traffic to your page and your content will only be seen by those who already follow you. Initially a site for photos, Instagram has been shifting its platform increasingly over the years to be more video-centric than photo-centric, especially with its Instagram Reels feature. If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, then you likely saw the ultimate guide for Instagram hashtags that we published last year.

As a reminder, here are some common categories for hashtags:

• Daily hashtags relating to the different days of the week
• Location hashtags relating to where your business is located
• Holiday or seasonal hashtags relating to specific holidays or seasons
• Industry hashtags relating to the specific industry of your business
• Relevant phrase hashtags for words relating to your products or services
• Emotion hashtags relating to specific emotions that the video evokes

Furthermore, platforms like YouTube allow you to create playlists for your videos, but using hashtags is an even simpler way to categorize all of your videos, especially if they fall into multiple categories. YouTube even has auto-suggested hashtags when your search starts with “#”. Take a look at what the other suggested hashtags are when you search for the one that you want to use, as this might give you ideas for others to use in your uploads.

Other suggestions for how to find hashtags for your videos:

• Research trending hashtags for your video’s topic
• Research popular hashtags used by your competitors
• Consider hashtags you have used on your most watched videos
• Consider using an AI hashtag generator tool for ideas

Take your time and have fun researching good keywords and hashtags, and remember that using the correct search terms can make a world of difference for the visibility of your videos.

Ready to Start Creating Marketing Videos?

In order for people to find your marketing videos, you need to make sure that they are optimized for SEO with the correct keywords and hashtags. Of course with paid ads, your videos are pushed to an audience, but you can tailor that audience based on their interests and the content of the video.

For organic views, however, you need to make sure you include keywords and hashtags that people search for to help ensure that your videos get found. The easiest way to create marketing video is with our Movidmo video ad templates. Create incredible marketing videos with stock video footage, music, text, call-to-actions, and more to help increase organic views or to use for your paid ads.

Contact us for any questions about our pricing or platform.

Thank you for reading!