YouTube Keyword Research Ideas

JumpShot confirms that after Google, YouTube is the most popular search engine. If you have a YouTube channel and are seeking to get more views for it, your main target is to focus on the keywords with search demand. This YouTube keyword research technique helped Ahref grow their YouTube channel from 10,000 to over 200,000 monthly views in a year.

 ahref-ytk

Source: Ahref

Note: Ahref also earned approximately 50,000 new subscribers in that same period.

Let us discuss a few simple YouTube keyword research techniques that will help us find relevant and high search volume keywords.

YouTube AutoSuggest

  • YouTube has a feature called autocomplete.
  • This feature suggests only popular keywords.
  • With the suggestion, when you type a keyword relevant to your niche, you will receive a list of suggestions related to the term.

For example, if you type "digital marketing," then you get suggestions like "digital marketing," and "digital marketing for beginners."

dm-beginners-ytk

Note: According to WordStream, YouTube autocomplete is useful to find long-tail keywords

Use Keyword Tool.io

Instead of manually if you want to search keywords with the help of a tool, we suggest you check out KeywordTool.io.

keyword-tool-ykp

This tool helps marketers identify hundreds of autocomplete suggestions for YouTube, Google, and other search engines.

 keyword-suggestion

Keep a Track of Your Competitors

  • Study your competitors' campaigns by finding new profitable keywords.
  • Search for phrases or keywords that are used by your competitors in their video title and description.

Here come's the important question: How to spy on the keyword?

  • Go to your competitor's channel and click on the videos tab, then sort by the "most popular" option. This way, you will find a list of top videos.
  • Now, choose a video and take a look at the keywords used in the title and description of the video.

 simplilearn-kw

  • As a result, you have a list of keywords that you can optimize your videos around.

list-keywordsytk

  • Now, let us have a look at video tags. Video tags of YouTube can be viewed on the HTML page.
  • To check video tags, right-click on the web page and select view page source.

 ml-basics-ytk

  • Search for "keywords" (using CTRL+F shortcut). The terms that appear next to the "keywords" are the video tags used by your competitor.

search-keywords-ytk

  • Also, there is another way to find your competitor's video tags.
  • Install Chrome Plugins–Using this, an individual can see video tags on the web page itself.

 install-chrome

  • For example, VidIQ and TubeBuddy's extension give you the exact tags that your competitors use for their videos.

According to an industry study, using keywords in video tags helps you to rank well on YouTube.

 keyword-tag

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Important Factors of YouTube Keyword Research

  • Well-chosen keywords (primary and secondary) help your video to rank well on YouTube.
  • We should do keyword research based on:
  • Search volume - Choose keywords with high search volume as they drive more traffic to your video.
  • Competition–Keywords with low difficulty rank well on YouTube.
  • Relevancy–Always prefer keywords that are relevant to your content.
  • Primary keyword–Choose a keyword that defines the nature of your business.
  • Secondary keyword - Prefer keywords that are highly relevant to your primary keyword.

For example, if you have a machine learning video, you can choose your primary keyword as and secondary keyword as the following:

 mlbasics-2

Check Out Google Search Results

  • When doing YouTube keyword research, opt for keywords that Google shows on the video results page (as they have high search volume), which means your video can get more views if you rank on Google as well.
  • According to Backlinko, Google ranks videos with keywords like, "how-to" and "Tutorials".
  • For example, On Google, when you search for a machine learning tutorial or how to become a machine learning engineer, you get results for the following.

 gsr

Ahref Site Explorer Using Scraper Extension

  • Identify high traffic YouTube videos using Ahref site explorer.
  • Identify your competitor channel on YouTube and select the "Videos" tab to check their uploads. 
  • Now, Copy and paste the video URLs into Ahrefs Site Explorer.

site-explorer.

Source: Ahref

  • If you want the process to be done quickly, we suggest you use the Scraper extension. Right-click anywhere on the page and hit "Scrape similar," then add this code in the "Selector" field:

//h3/a

  • Now, under the columns section -> XPath name, type:

concat ('https://www.youtube.com', @href)

  • On the right-hand side, you will get a list of videos that have high traffic. So, select "Scrape" and "Copy to clipboard."
  • Now, paste the results into the Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool, select the URL mode -> run the search -> sort by the "Traffic" column from high to low.
  • To see the keywords for the list of videos, select the down arrow (from target domain), and hit "Organic keywords."

 26-domain

Source: Ahref

That was all about the YouTube Keyword Research tool.

Master many facets of SEO including keyword research, technical SEO, link building, analytics, with the Search Engine Optimization training course.

Final Thoughts

So, we have come to the end of the article on YouTube Keyword Research. In this article, we discussed the top six techniques that will help us find top-ranking keywords.

Are you an experienced Digital marketer or planning to start your career in this interesting industry? We can help you with both scenarios if you choose to enroll in our Digital Marketing Master’s program. This certification will help you master all levels of experience in Digital Marketing techniques and strategies. 

Have you got any questions about the article YouTube Keyword Research, please feel free to share them with us in the comments section of this article; our experts will get back to you as soon as possible. 

To gain more knowledge, watch the following tutorial video: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U-cRxgJFfio

About the Author

Sana AfreenSana Afreen

Sana Afreen is a Senior Research Analyst at Simplilearn and works on several latest technologies. She holds a degree in B. Tech Computer Science. She has also achieved certification in Advanced SEO. Sana likes to explore new places for their cultures, traditions, and cuisines.

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