Many video search engine optimization (SEO) guides offer checklists of basic steps for helping videos rank on YouTube. But truly effective video SEO needs a broader strategy targeting the surfaces with the highest potential for visibility today — not just YouTube, but also Google Search and AI search platforms.
This guide covers what this strategy is and how to apply video SEO best practices that maximize your videos’ presence across these three surfaces.
What is video SEO?
Video SEO is a connected strategy that helps your videos earn engagement on YouTube, visibility across Google Search, and citations in AI-generated answers.
Each surface provides a different opportunity for discovery: YouTube is where users actively look for videos to watch, while Google Search serves users seeking information in whichever format — video included — that best answers their questions. Meanwhile, AI search platforms reach users who want synthesized answers from trustworthy sources.
Each surface also responds to different signals, so the goal is to know what each one rewards, so you can maximize visibility across all three.
YouTube SEO vs. Google video SEO: What’s the difference?
The difference between YouTube SEO and Google video SEO is that YouTube SEO is the practice of improving videos’ YouTube visibility — like earning higher YouTube search rankings and more frequent recommendations.
In contrast, Google video SEO is the practice of improving videos’ Google Search visibility — both as video results and AI Overview citations. This increased visibility can also lead to more citations by AI search platforms like ChatGPT, which are known to tap into Google Search results for information.
Videos can have high YouTube visibility but lack Google Search visibility, and vice versa. This is because YouTube and Google Search use different signals to decide which videos to show users.
For example, YouTube ranks and recommends videos based on a video’s relevance, engagement, and quality, as well as user preferences. On the other hand, Google Search surfaces videos based on their relevance to the search query using signals from videos’ titles, descriptions, watch page text, and other metadata.
A comprehensive video SEO strategy therefore needs to incorporate YouTube SEO and Google video SEO to drive presence across YouTube, Google Search, and AI citations.
Now, let’s explore specific tactics that form an effective video SEO strategy.
How to choose the right keywords for video SEO
Choose the right keywords (search terms) for video SEO, so your videos appear for relevant topics and reach your target audience on YouTube, Google Search, and AI search platforms.
Relevant topics align with your target audience’s interests and have clear “video intent” — meaning, people want to watch a video about the topic rather than read about it.
A quick test for video intent: check if the topic triggers video results in Google Search.
If a topic doesn’t trigger video results, your video about it won’t appear in Google Search. So, prioritize keywords for topics that are relevant to your target audience and have video intent.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool helps you find these keywords. First, type your main topic and target country into the tool. If you’ll embed your videos on a site, enter your domain to get keyword data personalized to it. Then, click “Search.”
The tool will return keywords containing your main topic.
If the keyword suggestions are too broad, filter them by clicking the “Include keywords” drop-down > “Any keywords.” Enter relevant subtopics, and then click “Apply.”
Finally, filter the keywords to show only those that trigger video results — indicating they have video intent.
Click the “Advanced filters” drop-down > select the “Video,” “Featured video,” and “Video carousel” checkboxes under “SERP Features” > click “Apply.”
You’ll now be left with keywords worth creating videos for.
If you entered your domain into Keyword Magic Tool, consider prioritizing keywords with low Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) scores. Otherwise, prioritize keywords with low Keyword Difficulty (KD %). Your videos may rank in Google Search for these keywords more easily.
Other tools for finding keywords include:
- YouTube autocomplete: Do basic YouTube keyword research by seeing which keywords appear when you type your topic into YouTube’s search bar
- Keyword Analytics for YouTube: Identify high-volume and low-competition YouTube keywords
- People also ask: Google your main topic to get question-based keywords in the search results’ “People also ask” section
How to make videos that rank on YouTube
Make videos that rank on YouTube by ensuring they’re engaging, relevant, and of high quality — the three elements that YouTube’s ranking algorithm favors.
Videos are engaging when users watch them for longer and “like” them. High engagement also signals relevance — meaning, your videos’ titles, descriptions, and content fulfill user needs.
Finally, videos are of high quality if they:
- Demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, which signals to users that the video addresses their needs
- Have strong opening hooks to catch attention, so users are more likely to keep watching
- Answer users’ questions directly to hold their interest
- Have a clear, logical content structure that’s easy to follow
- Featuregood camerawork, audio, lighting, and editing, to provide a pleasant viewing experience
YouTube also considers users’ personal search and watch histories when ranking and recommending videos. The clearer your videos’ relevance to a topic, the more likely YouTube is to surface them to users interested in that topic.
Engaging, relevant, and high-quality videos can enjoy higher visibility on surfaces outside of YouTube. For example, your YouTube video could prominently appear in Google Search if its title, description, and content are relevant to a Google search query. Its high Google visibility could also lead to a ChatGPT citation if ChatGPT searches Google for sources to cite.
How to optimize video titles
Optimize your video titles to signal their relevance to search queries and drive engagement.
Titles are your videos’ names, and they appear in YouTube and Google Search results and AI citations. Like so:
To optimize your video titles for relevance, ensure they:
- Align with the search query. For instance, if your video targets the “how to pronounce dachshund” query, the title should make clear that the video covers exactly that.
- Signal the video’s content to set user expectations on what your video is about. One example: titling your video “10 things to do in Paris” if it covers 10 — not five or 15 — things to do in Paris.
- Are under 60 characters, as search platforms may cut off longer titles, making it harder for users to gauge relevance
- Complement your thumbnails to paint a consistent picture of your videos’ topics
Then, optimize your titles for engagement by:
- Using language that sparks curiosity, like asking questions (“Why isn’t the Earth flat?”) or including emotive words (“This devastating mistake changed her life”)
- Including numbers where relevant to indicate the video’s value, like “7 tips for glowing skin” or “5 must-have tools for 3D printing”
Balance relevance and engagement in a single title. This is because purely curiosity-driven titles can drive views on YouTube but be too vague to appear for Google Search queries. The opposite is also true: intent-based titles can enjoy high Google Search visibility while failing to entice YouTube users.
Mentour Pilot, a YouTube channel that covers aviation incidents, shows how this balance works in practice. Many of its videos’ titles use this format: “[attention-grabbing statement] | [aviation incident name].”
Like this:
The attention-grabbing statement hooks YouTube users who may have never heard of the aviation incident. Meanwhile, the aviation incident name helps surface the video for users specifically looking for information about the incident on YouTube, Google Search, and AI search platforms.
Mentour Pilot also consistently titles its videos with the attention-grabbing statement first. This strategy suggests that the channel prioritizes YouTube visibility over visibility on other surfaces.
A/B test your video titles to learn which formats appeal to your audience. YouTube lets you A/B test up to three titles and thumbnails per (non-Shorts) video, where the combination with the highest watch time will be shown to all viewers after the test ends.
Meanwhile, third-party tools like TubeBuddy extend title A/B testing to metrics beyond watch time, including click-through rate and engagement.
How to write video descriptions that help SEO
Write video descriptions that help SEO by providing comprehensive information on your videos’ content, while leading with your target keyword and value proposition to signal relevance and encourage clicks.
Descriptions are text summaries of what your videos are about. Their first few lines appear wholesale in YouTube search results for your videos. Google also uses descriptions to generate search result snippets, rewording the description text for relevance as needed.
Given how both surfaces use video descriptions differently, your descriptions’ opening lines should work as standalone summaries for YouTube users, with the rest providing enough information for Google to generate accurate snippets.
To write your video descriptions like this, include your target keyword in the first sentence. Doing this helps users and search platforms determine your video’s relevance to a topic.
Your description’s opening lines should also contain bold statements related to your video’s topic — like its value proposition or a common user question — to entice clicks. (Case in point: Ryan Fernando’s video description above.) This is especially since only these first few sentences might appear in YouTube’s search results.
Use the rest of your description to detail what your video covers. Consider including excerpts of key talking points — or even the entire transcript — to help search platforms index exactly what was said in your videos.
The more text you provide, the more easily search platforms can feature your video for relevant searches.
How thumbnails impact click-through rates and video rankings
Thumbnails impact click-through rates and video rankings by getting users’ attention and driving clicks, which signal to search platforms that your videos are relevant and worth surfacing more widely.
Thumbnails are your videos’ cover images, and they appear in YouTube and Google Search results, and AI mentions. They carry the most weight on YouTube, where the thumbnail is often the main thing deciding whether someone clicks.
Tips for creating eye-catching thumbnails include:
- Ensure the thumbnail matches the title’s promise to give a coherent picture of what your video is about
- Prominently feature the video’s subject (like a face or product), which helps viewers identify the focus of the video
- Choose high-contrast colors so your thumbnail text and images stand out from each other and other videos’ thumbnails, and on users’ screens
- Use large text sizes to make your thumbnail text readable even on smaller screens
- Keep your thumbnail design consistent across all your videos to build brand recognition
Analyze thumbnails by top creators in your space to get inspiration for your own. For example, if you’re a tech reviewer, you could check out the video thumbnails by Marques Brownlee, a popular tech creator:
Marques’ thumbnails tend to feature close-up product shots taken from interesting angles. So, you could experiment with a similar approach.
As a best SEO practice for YouTube videos, A/B test your thumbnails with YouTube’s built-in testing feature or a third-party tool like TubeBuddy to see which designs drive the most clicks.
What are key moments and why do they matter for video SEO?
Key moments are timestamps for the start of segments (or chapters) in videos, which users can click to skip to their corresponding segment. They matter for video content SEO because they help YouTube and Google Search surface your videos for keywords relevant to specific segments.
Case in point: the two platforms featured Allan Borch’s video review of the ActiveCampaign email platform in response to searches on “activecampaign pricing” because the video contains a segment on that topic:
Users can then click the “Pricing” key moment to jump straight to this segment, rather than scrubbing through the whole video to find it.
Although Google can automatically detect key moments, adding them yourself avoids ambiguity as to where your videos’ key moments start.
If you’re uploading your videos to YouTube, add key moments to their descriptions in this format: “[Timestamp in MM:SS format] [Label of key moment].”
List your key moments in chronological order, with each taking up one line. Keep their labels brief to avoid truncation.
Like this, for example:
If you’re self-hosting your videos, add either the Clip or SeekToAction structured data to your videos’ VideoObject schema. The Clip structured data lets you state your key moments’ start and end timestamps, while SeekToAction helps Google detect key moments automatically.
Here’s an example of Clip structured data:
Video hosting for SEO: YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted?
Choose whether to host your videos on YouTube, professional video hosting platforms like Vimeo and Wistia, or on your own server, as your decision affects your videos’ search visibility, viewing experience, and technical setup.
In general, YouTube helps maximize search visibility, a professional video hosting platform facilitates branded viewing experiences, and self-hosting gives you full control over traffic and conversions.
YouTube (recommended for most)
YouTube is the world’s most popular video hosting and search platform. Videos hosted on it can rank on YouTube and Google Search, plus appear in AI citations.
This, coupled with YouTube’s dominance of the video hosting market, makes the platform the recommended option for businesses that want their videos to get seen above all else.
Pros
- High potential for visibility on YouTube, Google Search, and AI search platforms
- Easy to embed your videos anywhere, including your site
- Uploading videos to YouTube is free
Cons
- YouTube’s watch pages may get ranked and cited over yours
- YouTube may serve ads on your videos, harming the user experience
Professional video hosting platforms
Professional video hosting platforms, like Vimeo and Wistia, provide the infrastructure for users to watch your videos in players customized with your branding. These platforms are suited for businesses that prioritize on-brand viewing experiences over search visibility.
Pros
- Get ad-free video players with strong customization options
- Your videos look more professional than YouTube-hosted ones
- Enjoy reliable video streaming performance without managing your own hosting infrastructure
Cons
- Lower search visibility potential, especially since these platforms aren’t video search engines
- These platforms charge monthly fees that scale as you upload more videos
Self-hosted
Self-hosting your videos involves uploading them to a server you own, and then building custom video players for embedding on your site. You have complete control over the viewing experience, which is vital if your goal is to boost conversions instead of visibility.
Pros
- Get full control over your video player’s branding, look, and behavior
- Your site retains all viewer traffic
- Deliver an ad-free viewing experience
Cons
- Setup, video storage, and maintenance require significant technical knowledge and investment
- Poor implementation can hurt your site’s page speed and overall search visibility
Organize videos into playlists
Organize videos into playlists to create one more discovery opportunity on YouTube and Google Search, and build relevance and engagement signals that boost YouTube rankings.
Playlists are groups of videos with a shared theme. For example, here’s a playlist of videos covering SEO essentials like local SEO, SEO for new sites, and on-page SEO:
YouTube playlists can rank for relevant broader queries in both YouTube and Google Search — giving your playlists’ videos more visibility beyond what they themselves earn.
Adding videos to playlists also encourages viewers to keep watching related content. On YouTube, these longer watch times signal relevance and can lead to higher rankings.
Create and manage YouTube playlists from your account’s YouTube Studio feature. Add relevant keywords to your playlists’ titles and descriptions to increase visibility for your target topics.
Add closed captions and transcripts
Add closed captions and transcripts to your videos to give search engines more text information about your videos’ contents, so they can surface your videos for a larger share of relevant queries.
Closed captions are text descriptions of a video’s audio — dialogue, music, and sound effects — that appear onscreen as the audio plays. Transcripts are documents of these text descriptions for people to read.
While YouTube can automatically generate closed captions and transcripts, add these yourself to avoid transcription errors. Manual transcription is especially important if your video features multiple speakers, uncommon names, or technical jargon.
Adding closed captions and transcripts yourself also lets you control your text’s timestamps and formatting.
YouTube lets you upload closed caption files or type closed captions when uploading videos to the platform. To add a transcript, paste it into your video’s description.
Add video schema markup to pages with embedded videos
Add video schema markup to pages you’ve embedded videos in to help Google display rich results, which makes your videos’ search results more eye-catching and compelling to click.
Video schema markup is an HTML snippet that provides information about your video in a standardized data format. For example, this video schema markup states the video’s name (“How to bake sourdough bread”), description (“A step-by-step guide to…”), thumbnail URL, upload date, and publisher (“The Bread Studio”), among other details:
To add video schema markup to an entire video, implement the VideoObject structured data (like what’s shown above).
In contrast, to add video schema markup for just your videos’ key moments, use the Clip structured data (for setting up key moments manually) or the SeekToAction structured data (for helping Google generate key moments automatically).
Check out our dedicated video schema resource to learn how to add video schema, step by step.
After adding video schema markup, test each page with Google’s Rich Results Test. Or use Semrush Site Audit tool to scan your whole site for invalid schema markup — video or otherwise.
If invalid schema markup exists, Site Audit will show its source pages, so you can review and correct it.
Video sitemaps: Help Google find your videos
Submit a video sitemap to Google to help it find your videos, which is the first step toward visibility on Google Search and AI citations.
A video sitemap is an XML document that contains information about your pages’ videos. Here’s part of Apple’s, for example:
Video sitemaps help Google discover videos it may miss when crawling your site — especially for self-hosted videos, embedded videos, and JavaScript-heavy pages. It’s only when Google finds and indexes these videos that it can surface them for relevant search results, including AI Overviews. AI search platforms that reference Google Search results may then also cite your videos in their responses.
If you run a WordPress site, use a plugin like Yoast SEO to automatically build and submit video sitemaps to Google.
Alternatively, use this template to build a simple video sitemap manually:
Create new
: For your video thumbnail’s URL : For your video’s title : For your video’s description : For your self-hosted video’s URL. If you’re embedding a video player (for displaying a YouTube video, for example), use the tag instead.
Upload your video sitemap to your site’s server. Finally, submit your video sitemap to Google.
Embed your videos on relevant webpages
Embedding your YouTube-hosted videos on relevant webpages on your site creates two discovery paths — YouTube and your site — and also drives site traffic when search platforms direct users to your embedded videos.
For example, AppleInsider embedded its YouTube video review of the iPhone 17 Pro in its written review:
Both AppleInsider’s YouTube video and written review rank on Google Search. AI search platforms also cite the written review. Giving users at least three opportunities to find the video.
If you’ve hosted your videos on YouTube or a professional video hosting platform like Wistia, embed them by copy/pasting the platform’s embed codes into your pages’ HTML files.
To embed self-hosted videos (in MP4 format), customize this embed code for pasting instead:
Embed your videos higher up the page if they need more visibility — because they provide readers with key context, for example. Otherwise, embed them lower to avoid distracting readers from your written content.
Disable video autoplay to give users control over what they watch. Users on mobile data will especially appreciate this because videos can consume bandwidth quickly. Turning autoplay off also prevents your videos’ audio from startling users when your pages load.
Build links to video pages
Build links from other sites (i.e., backlinks) to pages featuring embedded videos, as Google may view these links as signals that your content is authoritative, credible, and worth referencing. These signals may then translate to higher Google Search visibility and consequently AI citations if AI search platforms source answers from Google search results.
Link building is especially valuable as YouTube videos can earn citations and embeds from other sites, strengthening video visibility and channel authority. Embedding these videos on your pages can drive referral traffic, branded searches, and more linking opportunities — supporting broader video marketing SEO efforts.
A common link building strategy involves reaching out to sites in your industry and asking them to link to your video-embedded pages. Use a tool like Backlink Gap to identify sites that have linked to competitors, because they’re more likely to link to yours.
Enter your domain and up to four competing domains into the tool, then click “Find prospects.”
The tool will display a report of sites that link to your competitor(s) but not you. Prioritize reaching out to sites with higher Authority Scores, as links from them may carry more weight.
How to track and measure video SEO performance
Track and measure video SEO performance across YouTube, Google Search, and AI citations, because each surface has its own metrics to watch, to see which efforts are paying off and identify areas for improvement.
YouTube
Track your YouTube videos’ performance by going to “YouTube Studio” > “Analytics” in your account.
For any given time frame, you’ll see metrics like:
- Impressions: The number of times YouTube showed your videos’ thumbnails to users
- Views: The number of times users viewed your videos
- Click-through rate: The percentage of users who clicked your videos after seeing their thumbnails
- Watch time: The amount of time users spent watching your videos
- Subscribers: The number of users who subscribed to your YouTube channel
Analyze the data to identify possible reasons for underperformance and ways of improving the situation.
For example, getting high impressions but low click-through rates suggests that few users click after seeing your video thumbnails. So, you could update your thumbnail designs to be more compelling to click.
Google Search
Check if Google has indexed your videos and video pages correctly, and then track their performance in Google’s search results.
Google Search Console (GSC) provides indexing reports and click and impression metrics. In GSC, go to “Indexing” > “Videos” to open the video indexing report:
Scroll down to the “Why videos aren’t indexed” section to see reasons for Google not indexing certain videos. Then, click any reason to view the affected videos.
After applying fixes, validate them in GSC to let Google know you’ve fixed the issues.
To check whether Google has indexed your video pages, repeat these steps while navigating to “Indexing” > “Pages” instead.
GSC also reports on your videos’ and video pages’ visibility in the main web search results and “Videos” search tab. First, here’s how to check your video pages’ and videos’ visibility on the main web search results:
Go to “Performance” > “Search results.” Then, with the “Search type” still set to “Web,” click “+ Add filter” > “Page.”
Use the filter to display only your video pages’ URLs in the visibility report. For example, if all your video pages’ URLs contain the word “video,” set the filter to “URLs containing” and enter “video” into the filter field. Then, click “Apply” to apply the filter.
The report will update to display your video pages’ clicks and impressions.
Next, view your videos’ visibility on the main web search results. Remove the filter you set up earlier for your video pages’ URLs, and then click the report’s “Search appearance” dimension below.
This dimension’s “Videos” row shows the clicks and impressions for your videos on Google’s main web search results and Discover.
Finally, view your videos’ and video pages’ performance in Google’s “Videos” search tab. Click the “Search type: Web” drop-down menu, change the search type to “Video,” and click “Apply.”
Then, click the “Pages” dimension below to view the videos and video pages with the highest clicks and impressions from the “Videos” search tab.
Separately, Semrush’s Position Tracking tool tracks your videos’ and video pages’ organic search rankings for your target keywords. When you set up your domain and keywords in the tool, you’ll see which of your site’s content ranks for these keywords and in which position.
AI citations
Check which of your video pages have gotten AI citations with a tool like Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. Enter your domain, and then click “Check AI Visibility.”
Scroll down to the “Topics & Sources” section and click “Cited Pages” to view the pages on your site that AI search platforms have cited. Then, click any page to view the prompts that led to these citations.
Enter your video pages’ URLs into the “Filter by URL” search bar to filter the report for these pages.
Video SEO and AI search: YouTube’s role in brand visibility
In view of AI search, YouTube plays a larger role in video SEO and building brand visibility than ever before.
Apart from citing text pages, AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Gemini increasingly cite videos in their responses — especially for explainer and how-to queries. But whether these platforms cite your videos depends on how well you’ve implemented SEO for video.
Among other optimization methods, targeting the right keywords, writing descriptive titles, including meaningful descriptions, and adding key moments make your videos more accessible to AI search platforms reviewing them for relevance.
Then, embed your videos in articles on identical topics to amplify your videos’ discovery on multiple surfaces. For example, users may see your YouTube video in an AI citation, and then come across your article on the same topic in Google Search.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit shows you how AI search platforms mention and cite your brand across all your content sources — including your site and YouTube — and where gaps exist.
Agentic search is still an emerging discovery layer. As methods of measuring AI visibility improve, brands that invest in search-optimized videos today will build an early-mover advantage.
FAQs
How do thumbnails impact video rankings and click-through rates?
Thumbnails impact video rankings and click-through rates by determining whether users click their accompanying videos. Compelling thumbnails get more clicks, signaling your videos’ relevance to search platforms, which may then rank them higher.
What tools can help with video SEO?
Tools that can help with video SEO include Semrush Keyword Magic Tool for researching keywords with video intent, YouTube Studio for A/B testing your YouTube videos’ titles and thumbnails, and the AI Visibility Toolkit for monitoring your video pages’ AI mentions and citations.
With these tools, you’ll find it easier to create videos relevant to your target audience, optimize them for higher engagement, and measure their AI visibility.
Can I rank a video on Google without uploading to YouTube?
Yes, you can rank a video on Google without uploading to YouTube. Google can rank videos hosted on professional video hosting platforms (like Vimeo) or your own server as long as the search engine can discover and index them.