How to Write a YouTube Title

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How to Write a YouTube Title

Creating YouTube videos is easy right?

You just set your camera up and go. But what about gaining the traffic to your video? From a search engine perspective, the title and description of your YouTube video is equally as important as the actual video content.

A professionally written title can be the decision as to whether someone clicks to watch or keeps on scrolling

YouTube categorizes it’s video like any other web page on the internet, each video has its own unique URL and meta tags are created to help search engines like Google categorize your video and make them searchable.

The title of your YouTube video becomes the title tag for search engines. A bad title will mean you will not show up in search engine results and therefore traffic will not find you. A good title will hugely improve your click through rate and traffic.

So how do you write a good YouTube title?

How to Write a YouTube Title

Title Length is crucial

Before you begin creating your title you need to consider that Google truncates titles around the 60-character mark simply due to the pixel width limit. They attempt to truncate at the nearest word break to 60 characters.

What you need to remember in regards to YouTube is that every video that appears in search also contains the phrase “YouTube – “ which uses up roughly 10 characters leaving you 50 characters to play with to create a compelling clickable title

Do your keyword research

Creating your YouTube title will require a small amount of research to make it as successful as possible. To begin this, have a good idea of what keywords you want to include, what words you want your video to appear for on google search.

For example let’s say you’ve created a cookie recipe video you probably want to rank for the words “cookie recipe” plugging that into Google’s Keyword Planner shows that there are roughly 100k – 1M searches a month and a whopping 2642 related keyword searches.

Utilise this to find keywords with low competition, ideally a search between 1k and 10k to begin with as this will be easier to rank for. Use various keyword tools such as Google Trends and Keyword Sh*tter to help you define a title with a distinct identity that you think will rank

A little tip if you do have extra characters remaining is to include the word ‘video’ – this really helps search engines distinguish that your content will contain a video, and in certain niches such as cooking, baking, how to guides many people will search specifically for a video so it can help you rank higher and get high quality click throughs from people intending to watch a video.

Boost your click through rate (CTR) on your YouTube Title

You have a solid idea of the keywords and phrases you want to use in your title, you know how long your title needs to be and you know to add the word video if you have the character space.

Now you need to create the full title that will increase the chances of people clicking into your content.

Include your keyword as close to the beginning of your title as possible, YouTube places more weight on this and therefore your video will appear higher in searches for that phrase and increase the likelihood that searchers are actually looking for the content you’ve created.

For the remaining characters in your title there are other tools such as including a number in your title – this has been proven to increase CTR.

Using emotive language and descriptive adjectives will compliment your keywords and increase the likelihood that your audience will want to click into the video.

One thing you need to avoid is clickbait titles, YouTube has cracked down on this in a huge way if you get a high number of clicks and then drop offs YouTube will assume your title is misleading and viewers are not actually finding what they expected.

It is highly likely YouTube will then bury this video and think twice about recommending your videos to new viewers in the future so play by the rules and keep on the right side of emotive when creating your title.

If you need help with mastering the right keywords, descriptions and tags to help you rank your videos higher on YouTube why not try TubeBuddy and VidIQ – Since I added them to my tool kit I have tripled my channel growth.

Learn from others in your niche

If you are struggling with your YouTube title why not look around your niche?

Plug into YouTube what you think you would search to return your video and take a look at the competition, are the views what you would like on your own video? What about videos that have not performed as well is there something you can learn from their mistakes?

Do not ever directly copy your competitors but I recommend doing this for each video you upload, it’s a good learning exercise on what titles and keywords are working in your niche and what are not

Analyse your YouTube Title

By this point you should have a fully optimized YouTube title of approximately 50 characters, this should contain the keywords you want to rank for and descriptive emotive language around this keyword. Ready to publish? Wait right there. Before you hit publish why not use a Headline Analyser to check over your YouTube Title.

The CoSchedule Headline Analyser is a free tool which is perfect for helping you craft the best YouTube title possible.

The Headline Analyser gives you a whole heap of data to work through, it gives your current headline a score and helps you improve it by explaining which type of words you’re missing with categories of common, uncommon, emotional and power.  It also demonstrates a preview for both Google search and Email results to help you craft the best Title.

As you continue creating and crafting YouTube Titles the keywords research should become easier and you’ll start getting analytics results to understand which words and phrases are working well for you and which words you should continue using.

Each niche is different, so it is important for your first few videos you follow the above steps and then combine the advice with your analytics to reach your perfect audience every time

If you need more help with your channel why not check out my resources page where I list all my secret tools and websites I use to super charge my channel growth.

By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert

UK Based - YouTube Certified Expert Alan Spicer is a YouTube and Social Media consultant with over 15 years of knowledge within web design, community building, content creation and YouTube channel building.

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