YouTube Video Title Best Practices - Rank More Videos

YouTube video title best practices

Isn't it time to start writing clickable video titles? This article will cover the best practices on how to title your YouTube videos.  

​How To Title YouTube Videos

​One of the best ways to optimize video on YouTube is to provide it with a great title that "wins the click". But what is the best way to title your YouTube video to maximize it's effectiveness in search results? No matter what niche your channel is in or whether you're a gamer, vlogger, or how to specialist - these tips for titling your videos will help you win the click and dominate search results. 

Before video production even begins, it's essential to start thinking about the title.  And actually, it's the keyword research that goes into crafting the title that's the first step. If you're looking to learn more about keyword research for your video titles and tags, then check out the VideoZeus video titled DIY Keyword Research Tool for YouTube. 

Aligning your titles and tags with actual key phrases people are searching for is a winning video marketing strategy to grow your channel. Once you know the keywords you're targeting, it becomes much easier to produce that video and write compelling copy like titles, descriptions, and tags.

Let's look at what makes a great title. Think of the video title as a headline, like a headline you'd see in a magazine or on a blog site you frequent. Keep your title engaging and descriptive. The title is what grabs your attention and leads you to want to learn more. It makes you want to click. 

When crafting a new title, start the title with the targeted keyword phrase which will tell YouTube exactly what this video is about and where to place it in search results. For example, this title is "How To Title Your YouTube Videos" and that's it. Sometimes you may choose to place a dash and then add a descriptive phrase to help round out the title, but it is recommended to stick with one core keyword phrase to title your video.

It's important to note - you'll want to avoid stuffing your title with keywords. Doing that makes your title appear more cluttered and it's not best practice. Instead target one unique keyword in your title and describe it to sound natural and engaging.

YouTube has a 100-character limit for titles, anything longer than 70 will be truncated in search display listings, meaning users won't see your full title in the listings, the title you've worked so hard on. So aim to keep your title within 70 characters or ideally under 66 characters. When typing out your title avoid using ALL CAPS, it's common to capitalize the first letter of each word in the title.

Announce the video title in the introduction part of the video; this reiterates to the viewer that this video is indeed a video in relation to the title. This will help with your viewer retention and watch time, by acknowledging to the viewer in your video that this is the right video for them.

As a bonus nugget, once you have your title set in stone, prior to encoding your video in your editing program, it is best practice to title your video file itself with the title of the video, exactly as you'd type it on the upload page. Labeling your video file with the targeted keyword phrases enhances your video a tad more for proper placement and rank on YouTube and even in Google.

To review - a great video title consists of a well-researched keyword phrase, written to be a short and engaging headline, and most importantly super relevant to the actual video itself. Do this for your next video, then repeat it for every other video to come.

Hey if you've enjoyed this article and want to get more resources just like this one, then consider downloading my "Before You Shoot" guide. This guide will prove as a useful resource for each and every one of your video creations. Once again thanks for joining us on VideoZeus, where we help you spend less time making more videos.