YouTube SEO fundamentals: What you need to know

Customer-centric approach to YouTube SEO

Now that you’ve unlearned what you learned, you’re ready to take a customer-centric approach to YouTube SEO.

“Customer centricity” is a business strategy that puts the customer at the center of a company’s philosophy, operations, and ideas.

It’s like “the Force, and a powerful ally it is.”

It involves anticipating a customer’s needs, wants, and communication preferences and then delivering on those expectations.

This can help build brand loyalty and lasting customer relationships.

A customer-centric approach also answers an updated set of five questions:

• Who?
• Discovers what?
• In which channel?
• From whom?
• With what effect?

Who: Audience research

The first step down this customer-centric path is conducting audience research to help you understand keywords or topics’ intent (e.g., needs, wants, and fears).

The best tool for this job is SparkToro. It provides a competitive advantage over other keyword research tools to craft more resonant, effective content.

For example, let’s say you’re the YouTube SEO for Visit Orlando.

SparkToro estimates that 4,000-5,000 people search for “visit Orlando” each month in the U.S.

As you can see below, 77% have an affinity for VisitOrlando.com.

They’re also searching for these keywords:

• “Best place for Thanksgiving dinner in Orlando.”
• “Restaurants west Orlando.”
• “Legoland Florida ticket.”
• “Things to do in Orlando besides theme parks.”

Finally, 53.5% are male, while 45.8% are female.

Or let’s say you’re the YouTube SEO for John Lewis & Partners, a British chain of high-end department stores.

SparkToro estimates that 3.5 million people visit JohnLewis.com globally each month.

As you can see below, 65% have an affinity for Argos.co.uk.

They’re searching for these keywords:

• “For wife Christmas gifts.”
  “Freestanding boxing bag stand”
• “Flight jacket women’s”
• “Funky tops.”
• “First gifts for girlfriend.

And 50.7% are male, while 48.9% are female.

Or let’s say you’re the YouTube SEO for the Sharp Knife Shop, which markets Japanese knives, and you want to target Canadian chefs.

SparkToro found 35,000 accounts with “chef” in their bios located in Canada. As you can see below, 71% have an affinity for Canadas100Best.com.

They’re searching for these keywords:

• “Top restaurants Canada.”
• “Spot prawns Granville Island.”
• “Canada top 100 restaurants.”
• “Best restaurants on Granville Island.”

Oh, 73.5% are male, while 26.3% are female.

SparkToro helps you build data-driven personas with provable customer behaviors and demographics better than keyword research tools can.

Discovers what: Content optimization

The second step in a customer-centric approach is learning how to optimize video content for maximum effectiveness.

A recent development in this space is DAIVID’s AI-powered self-service platform, introduced in October 2024.

This tool analyzes millions of human ad responses to predict their emotional, attentional, and brand impact.

Providing second-by-second insights into how content resonates helps marketers identify key moments that enhance brand recall, sharing, and purchase intent.

Designed for scalability, the tool eliminates the need for traditional audience panels, offering instant feedback on ad performance.

It helps marketers quickly adapt their creative strategies to produce more impactful campaigns.

YouTube SEOs can also use the platform to optimize their content.

For example, you’d discover 55.5% of viewers experiencing intense positive emotions after watching “The Gifting Hour | John Lewis & Partners | Christmas Ad 2024,” making it the most emotionally engaging John Lewis Christmas ad in six years.

In which channel: Programming strategy

The “messy middle” of a customer-centric YouTube strategy involves developing a robust programming strategy that extends beyond a simple content calendar.

This strategy must account for the diverse ways viewers can discover Shorts on the platform.

While effective in the past, the traditional “help, hub, and hero” content model is insufficient for today’s YouTube landscape.

The rise of Shorts has fundamentally altered how viewers consume content, necessitating a new approach.

By understanding how viewers discover Shorts – whether through the feed, search results, homepage, channel pages, subscriptions, or notifications – you can tailor an effective programming strategy.

To effectively leverage Shorts, consider using this approach:

• Highlights
  • Repurpose existing long-form content into engaging Shorts, extending their reach and potentially driving traffic back to the original video.
  • This is a cost-effective way to maximize the value of your existing content library.
• Help
  • Optimize your Shorts for discoverability by crafting compelling titles, descriptions, and eye-catching thumbnails.
  • Tap into YouTube’s AI-powered Inspiration Tab to generate ideas, outlines, titles, and thumbnails.
  • Use Gert Mellak’s “DESCRIBE framework for effective YouTube descriptions.”
  • Utilize YouTube’s automatic captioning on long-form videos and Shorts.
• Hub
  • Establish a consistent content schedule to keep your audience engaged and returning for more.
  • Utilize end screens within your Shorts to promote other videos, encourage subscriptions, and guide viewers through your content ecosystem.
  • By building a loyal following, you can increase the visibility of your future content.
• Homepage
  • Personalize your channel’s Home tab to showcase your best work and direct viewers to the content that matters most.
  • By strategically organizing your content, you can improve discoverability and drive engagement.
• Hype
  • Leverage YouTube’s dedicated “Shorts” section to maximize the visibility of your short-form content.
  • By optimizing your Shorts for this section, you can reach a wider audience and attract new viewers.
• Hero
  • Continue to create high-quality, long-form content for significant events and product launches.
  • Consider supplementing these efforts with a series of Shorts to build anticipation and generate excitement.
  • By combining the power of long-form and short-form content, you can create a more impactful and engaging viewing experience.

By taking this multidimensional approach, you can navigate YouTube’s changes and make the most of your Shorts.

From whom: Evaluate options

The fourth step on this customer-centric path presents a fork in the road.

Creating great content is challenging, so many marketers turn to AI video generators or influencer marketing as shortcuts to engage viewers.

To explore one of these options, read “Evaluating 7 AI video generators while waiting for OpenAI’s Sora.”

Here are the key takeaways from the article.

Advantages of AI video generators

• Efficiency and speed: These tools can quickly generate videos, providing a solid foundation for further development.
• Ease of use: Many students found them user-friendly, requiring minimal technical expertise.
• Versatility: AI tools offer a wide range of customization options, including different languages and dialects.

Limitations and challenges of AI video generators

• Human oversight: AI-generated content often needs human review to ensure accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and emotional depth.
• Pronunciation and expression: AI voices, especially in non-native languages, may lack proper pronunciation and emotional nuance.
• Content originality: AI tools can struggle with generating truly original and creative content. Human creativity remains essential for adding unique elements.

If you take the other fork, you’ll quickly discover that the hardest part of influencer marketing is finding the right influencers.

Not all will add value to your brand, and some may use fake followers, so it’s crucial to verify the quality and engagement of their audience.

There are several tools that can help you find and vet influencers, including:

• HypeAuditor.
• Traackr.
• Tubular DealMaker.

You can also use SparkToro to identify high-affinity websites and sources of influence for your audience as well as YouTube channels, podcasts, and subreddits that your audience follows.

For example, searchers for “visit Orlando” in the U.S. are most likely to watch or subscribe to these YouTube channels:

• Top Villas.
• UndercoverTourist.com.
• VISIT FLORIDA.
• TUI UK.

And these podcasts are likely to be listened to or subscribed to by people with “chef” in their profile in Canada:

• The Voice4Chefs Podcast.
• Recipe For A Good Day.
• What’s Cooking With Chef Noel.
• Raging And Eating.

Advertisers can use YouTube BrandConnect, a self-service platform, to find the right creators, set up branded content marketing campaigns, and track their performance.

Whichever tool you select to find compatible collaborators and relevant influencers, “To be Jedi is to face the truth and choose.”

With what effect: Business outcomes

The last step in this customer-centric path is starting to measure business outcomes.

Now, different YouTube SEOs have different campaign objectives, so they’ll need new KPIs to measure:

• Awareness and consideration.
• Website traffic, leads, and sales.

How do you measure awareness and consideration?

Use a modified version of Brand Lift, a “free” tool for measuring the effectiveness of video ads.

Through surveys shown to groups of people at different times, Brand Lift studies can measure the effectiveness of your YouTube SEO campaign on:

• Brand awareness.
• Consideration.
• Favorability.
• Purchase intent.

You can also:

• Try Google Forms to create, share, and analyze your surveys.
• Use Google Surveys to ask customized questions for 1¢ per response or $5.00 for 500 responses.
• Create “YouTube Community Posts” and choose to add polls.

So, how do you measure website traffic, leads, and sales?

Start by reading “How to use GA4 to optimize your digital marketing strategy.”

GA4’s metric, engaged-view conversions (EVCs), tracks conversions from users who watched a YouTube ad for at least 10 seconds and then convert on the advertiser’s website within three days.

This aligns with consumer behavior: people often watch YouTube ads and may delay their purchase decisions until after their viewing session.

YouTube SEOs can use EVCs to explain why 68% of YouTube viewers ultimately make purchases after discovering brands on the platform.

Then, read “Why the shift from ‘conversions’ to ‘key events’ in GA4 is a game-changer.”

GA4 has a default channel for Organic Video, which tracks users who arrive via non-ad links on sites like YouTube.

But a substantial portion of traffic marked as “direct” in GA4 was likely sent by “dark social” networks.

That’s what you need to know about YouTube SEO today. The future?

“Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”