As part of the Google family, YouTube has an important yet often overlooked part to play in SEO. Not only can YouTube videos rank in Google Search, they offer another way for your audience to engage with your content and an additional place to build a committed community.
There are three primary reasons for using YouTube for keyword research.
Number 1: if you use video as part of your marketing strategy – especially if you upload them onto YouTube – on-platform keyword research can help you get your video seen more widely.
Number 2: Even if you don’t use YouTube, keyword research on the platform can help you identify topics that can be covered in other areas of your marketing strategy such as TikTok and your own website.
Number 3: If certain keywords are popular on YouTube, it indicates that users want more visual content on that subject (i.e. instead of written content). This can guide your strategy, helping you choose the right format for your content.
Before diving into this guide, take a look at my beginner’s guide to SEO for YouTube, then come back for a deeper look at YouTube keyword research specifically.
Table of Contents
Why is YouTube keyword research useful?
When on YouTube, users will often be looking for specific types of videos. And the social platform has a huge range of content to choose from, from film trailers and comedy to how to guides and news stories. A visitor to the platform can use the search function to find what they’re looking for and, like on Search, Google tracks this information and builds a picture of user behaviour. YouTube keyword research helps you tap into this data, leading to more visibility and sales.
Keyword research on YouTube gives your videos and channel more chance of being seen in a number of places. That includes in YouTube search results and Google search results, and as recommendations on the home feed and sidebar, where account holders are presented with videos relevant to their interests.
Although the keyword research process on the video platform is similar to keyword research for Search, the type of content users are looking for will differ. Looking for keywords that are more popular on a specific platform will help you fine tune your content.
How to do keyword research on YouTube
Pick a starting phrase
Firstly, select a small number of short phrases relevant to your business. Remember: keywords don’t have to be single words, and are more often phrases.
If you’re starting from scratch, then it’s not too important what these are, as you’ll gradually narrow them down into more niche topics. If you have a particular focus topic in mind right now, then start with a phrase relevant to that. Don’t overwhelm yourself with lots of topics at once.
Remember that YouTube users are unlikely to be looking to buy straight away. They’re more likely to be in the research stage or completely cold (i.e. not even thinking about buying). So consider this when choosing starter phrases and the goals of this SEO work.
A hardware store, for example, may start with the following types of keywords.
- Reviews: Top 10 drills
- How to videos: How to hang a picture or DIY vlogs
- Single product keywords: Hammers
YouTube keyword research tools
There are a number of companies out there – like SEMRush and ahrefs – that have specific tools for YouTube keyword research. Keep in mind that free options are quite limited and you will need a paid subscription to do more than very basic research.
There are other tools that are completely free, like RyRob and, though they won’t provide as much useful data as the paid tools, they’re a good place to start, especially if budget is tight.
Each tool will work differently, but the general process involves entering your starter phrase and hitting search. You will then be presented with a list of related keywords. There may also be other data such as how difficult it is to rank for such keywords, and approximately how many times that keyword is searched each month (search volume).
Make a note of any phrases that you think are relevant, plus search volume and other useful metrics. We’ll come back to these later.
You can also take any of the most relevant results and enter those into the research tool to dive deeper into more niche topics. For example, starting with hammer, you may find types of hammer, which leads to best types of hammer for breaking rocks.
This method can take you down a rabbit hole, so remember to remain focused on your current goals.
YouTube auto complete
While the above tools make research easier, the cost can be prohibitive to some businesses. In those cases, you can manually research keywords on the platform itself.
It’s best to open YouTube on a browser that you don’t usually use, clear all cookies and search history, and log out of any Google accounts. This will prevent results being influenced by your own search history.
Begin entering your starter keywords into the search bar at the top of the page. As soon as you do this, you will get a list of suggested searches, which will change as you type more. These auto complete suggestions reflect popular searches related to the words you’re typing, so start looking out for relevant topics and make a note of them.
As with the keyword research tools, you can also enter any newly found keywords into the search bar to niche down your research.
YouTube analytics and competitor research
If you already have a YouTube channel, your Channel Analytics includes an Inspiration tab that will show top searches for specific topics. Add any relevant ones to your keyword list.
The Inspiration tab will also provide you with a list of popular videos – that is, videos that perform well within a particular topic. Looking at these in more detail can provide clues and suggestions for keywords. Analyse the titles and descriptions, as well as the type of content in each video, and look/listen out for similar and repeat phrases that can be added to your keyword list.
How to use your new YouTube keywords
Identify and group
By now, you might have quite a long list of keywords. It’s not practical or advisable to use all of them, so the list needs narrowed down.
Start by dividing into topics clusters. These are groups of keywords that are related to similar content. Groups can be quite broad (e.g. “how to” guides) or more specific (e.g. keywords related to hanging picture frames at home). Broad topics can be broken down into smaller clusters.
When you have clusters, pick out a smaller number of keywords in each that will be your focus – for a video you may not need more than two or three. Look at the data you have gathered such as search difficulty and number of monthly searches to help you decide which keywords are best to target.
Remember: it’s not necessarily the keywords with the highest search volume that you want to use. Broad topics will often have a higher number of keywords, but also a lot of competition. They may also be too wide a subject to cover in just one video.
If you have existing videos, assign relevant keywords to the videos – ideally no more than one video per keyword.
Consider intent
Just because a keyword is relevant to your business doesn’t meant it’s relevant to your goals. Before finalising which keywords to use, search for them in YouTube and see what kind of content comes up. Is it the type of content than you want to produce? Or is it completely irrelevant? If it’s irrelevant, there’s no point trying to target a keyword because, even if you do rank, it’ll be for the wrong audience and won’t have much benefit.
Content creation and inspiration
Keywords are also good for inspiring new content. They can provide you with ideas and guide how content is presented.
Look at the YouTube keywords from your research and think about the type of content that would fulfil the user need or want. You could create short-form videos to answer very specific questions, or a longer-form video that’s broken down into sections, each covering a different keyword cluster.
You don’t have to stop at YouTube either: if people are searching for videos around these topics, there’s a good chance they would find video content useful on your website, too. Consider creating website landing pages with embedded videos, or linking to your new videos from an FAQ page on your site. Remember: the more useful content you can provide to your audience, the more likely you are to be seen.
Video titles and descriptions
Your main keyword(s) should be front and centre in your YouTube video title and description. Don’t try and stuff too many in, but use your primary keyword in the title, and try and use that, as well as a few other secondary keywords, in the description.
Filenames
As for website images, naming your video file before you upload it can have a small but important positive effect. A descriptive filename that utilises a keyword provides a good idea of what your video is about, which in turn helps YouTube serve it to appropriate users. Use a filename with 4 or 5 words at the most, with each word separated by a hyphen.
Transcripts and closed captions
Video transcripts are often overlooked, but are a vital part of YouTube SEO and accessibility. Transcripts and closed captions are another place to include keywords and can help your videos rank better. When writing a script for your video – and even if you record off the cuff – incorporate keywords naturally and then create closed captions and transcripts. YouTube can automatically generate closed captions, and sites like Tactiq can generate transcripts. Or, you can manually write them up yourself – if you started with a script, this should be fairly straightforward.
Hashtags
Hashtags have minimum effect on rankings, but SEO is often about small gains. If a keyword makes sense as a hashtag, use two or three in your video descriptions.
When selecting keywords as hashtags, stick to one-or two-word phrases that aren’t too specific. #DIYguide is a good hashtag, whereas #HowToGuideHammerNailWall is unlikely to be that successful.
YouTube Channels
Keyword research isn’t just about promoting your individual videos. Incorporate them into your channel descriptions too in order to reach an audience that is interested in the broader subject of your business.
Conclusion
Keyword research on YouTube can help your videos and channels be seen more regularly on the homepage, in recommended video lists, in YouTube Search, and even on Google Search. It can also provide inspiration for future content and improvements to existing content. Research can be undertaken both on-platform and with external tools. Incorporate your chosen phrases into video titles and descriptions, captions and transcripts, and filenames to boost your YouTube SEO.
