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Currently the first result in Google for "youtube keywords" is a video claiming to do video keyword research using WordTracker. The problem with doing keyword research for videos this way is that the most popular queries in WordTracker, which takes its data from meta search engines, are not necessarily the most popular queries in YouTube. In fact, in most cases they're probably entirely dissimilar. Fortunately for video SEOs, last week brought a better video keyword tool for YouTube queries: YouTube itself. Using the new YouTube Suggest tool I discovered some of the most popular YouTube queries and categories. The results aren't entirely surprising, but can be used to justify Arts and Entertainment spend in YouTube, or to find alternative subjects that still bring in a lot of search volume.YouTube Suggest, like Google Suggest, is a user interface improvement that uses popular search queries to predict what the searcher will type next. Predictive text is good for the user because it means less typing to get to the result, and it's good for the marketers who want to connect their content to queries because it gives them a glimpse into the typical user's search behavior. These queries can then be added to relevant fields in the video to put the video in front of the largest possible relevant audience when the user is looking for it.To opt into YouTube Suggest, follow the "advanced" link to the right of the search box.
Next, select the box that reads Display Query Suggestions as I Type.
That's it. From now on, the predictive text system will show you popular queries with every character you input. When researching a particular topic, this tool will show you popular queries, most likely in order of relative search volume. Incorporating these keywords into your relevant video can help increase visibility of that video.
Characteristics of Popular YouTube Queries
Unlike Yahoo Suggest, which won't predict the next query without 3
characters inputted, Google Suggest (and this YouTube version) starts
predicting when a single character is entered. It is therefore possible
to get a good sense of the most popular queries on YouTube by entering
the alphabet one character at a time and transcribing what comes up.
When I did this, I discovered some of the most popular YouTube queries
and categories.
Category
By far the most popular category on YouTube was Arts and Entertainment,
of which music searches made up the bulk. No real surprises here.
Nonetheless, there are popular categories outside this category that
brands looking to get into video SEO should consider. This is also a
study of head queries, so the long tail of video SEO could vary.
Category breakdown is below.
Top 100 YouTube Suggest Queries by MSN April Search Volume
For the same reason that it doesn't make sense to use WordTracker for
YouTube keyword research, it doesn't make much sense to give MSN search
volume for YouTube queries. It's unlikely, for example, that YouTube
would be the most popular query since the users are already within
YouTube. The fact that YouTube even shows up in the suggest tool is kind
of astonishing for that fact. Nonetheless, to give my readers a sense of
the most popular queries in YouTube as reported by this predictive text
tool, this is a list of the top 100, sorted by MSN search volume for
April. Find the full list, along with categorization data here.
