How to Optimize Your YouTube Titles
One of the most important parts of YouTube is not the video: Titles, descriptions and tags are critically important to having your video found on YouTube.
The title of your YouTube video is probably the single most important SEO factor. However, most titles are not considered from the searcher’s perspective.
Every YouTube video title should include relevant keywords to ensure high rankings in Google, as well as searches in the YouTube universe. YouTube has a 100-character limit, but most suggest a shorter, 70-character as a maximum length guideline (Google adds the word “YouTube” to the end of your title, so 70 characters should be the absolute max.
According to many YouTube consultants, the first words of the title are critically important. For example, the title of a YouTube video for a hospital might read:
St. Mark’s Hospital in Idaho offers new skin cancer treatment for young and old
Optimized for YouTube:
Skin cancer breakthrough Sammy surgery now at St. Mark’s Hospital Idaho
It’s a subtle alignment change, but the key words (the words people are likely to search) go first in the title, followed by the specific treatment and then the hospital name and location. This alignment optimizes for search robots and searching people.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.