6 Essential Steps When Uploading a Video to YouTube

Picture this: you've just finished editing a new video that you're super proud of and you're eager to publish it online to see how your audience will respond. With more than a billion users, YouTube is likely to be your chosen hosting platform of choice. And it's a great choice. But as YouTube is a bustling platform, it is crucial that you do everything possible to give your content the best chance of succeeding.

Step One: The Title

You already know that every great video needs a great title, but did you know that it can directly affect the performance of your video? As well as being descriptive and clear, your title should also seamlessly incorporate your primary target keyword or phrase.

Top Tip: Keeping things concise is critical as both Google and YouTube truncate titles after the 66th character.

Step Two: The Description Box

The description box is there for a reason but so many people fail to properly utilise its full potential. Although the description field is capped at 5,000 characters, filling just 2,000 of those characters with important information will give your video the best chance of ranking well and securing those precious, precious views.

We totally appreciate that bashing out a few thousand characters is easier said than done but even if individual users don't end up reading it, both YouTube and Google will use it to accurately rank and index your video.

Top Tip: Don't stuff your description with keywords. YouTube is wise to those tricks and will penalise you if you're caught.

Step Three: Tags

Say hello to another prime keyword opportunity! With 500 characters available here, we always recommend using as many of those as possible, provided that they are relevant!

Top Tip: Use YouTube itself to help you identify valuable tags for your video. Open a private or incognito window (so that your past searches won't influence anything) and start entering a search term into YouTube's search bar.

Step Four: The Thumbnail

Let's be real, no one is going to click on a video with an automatically generated thumbnail. Your custom thumbnail should obviously be visually pleasing and engaging, but we recommend focusing on creating something that is simply impossible not to click on!

Top Tip: Creating a 1280px x 720px image will ensure that your beautiful creation looks great on every device.

Step Five: The End Screen

If your channel houses multiple videos, the end screen is a prime opportunity to direct your viewers towards more of your content. You can choose a specific video, or you can let YouTube make a suggestion based on the preferences of your viewer.

Step Six: Cards

It's best to think of YouTube cards as another opportunity to promote other relevant videos to your viewers.

Top Tip: To avoid coming across as spammy, don't put it in a card if it's not one million percent relevant to the content or themes of your video.

Video content is the future. And no, that's not an exaggeration. If you'd like some personalised advice on how to ensure you're giving your content the best chance of being found, give us a call!