Keyword/key phrase research is important if you need your video to rank successfully in the search engines.

Start by brainstorming keyword/key phrase ideas

 See this guide to brainstorming

1. To develop a range of possible keywords/phrases to use (that initially maybe not be that obvious) discuss the things that your prospects like to do, read, or watch.  Use your own bookshelf and search history as inspiration. What have you purchased recently online? How about a related hobby?

   Note that key phrases commonly rank higher than most keywords

2. Take a look at some of the popular websites like Amazon and look in the bestseller area for terms in a similar product that are popular or trending.
3. Make an initial list of keyword ideas in a few broad areas that you think might work, and then next to each keyword expand a little more and see what you come up with. At this point you should have a list of options to consider.
4. Move to the next step which is seeing how often your target keywords (and related ones) are being searched for in Google.

Using the Google keyword tool

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1. The starting point for your keyword research will be Google’s own Keyword Research Tool. To find the tool, just Google “Google Keyword Tool”.
2. Using this tool, potential keywords can be researched and the average monthly searches can be found along with some other relevant data such as the estimated average Cost per Click (CPC).
3. Start off with one of your narrower keyword sets and enter them and hit search to see some results.
4. Use a keyword with between 500 and 1,000 local searches a month to target a keyword with enough traffic to make it a minimum for viability. Some may consider this level to be too low, but the lower the numbers of searchers, usually, the less competition and the higher your odds of getting on page one of Google’s results.
5. Understand the difference between 'broad', 'phrase', and 'exact match' and how knowing this will affect your keyword analysis.

Next let’s take a look at some competition analysis.

Competition analysis

Having reviewed the keywords on your list, hopefully a few of them will have passed an initial screening and acheived a minimum level of searches.

You now need to analyse the competition to rank highly for this keyword. 

There are multiple tools to do competition analysis available on the internet. Traffic Travis is free to use (although they will try to upgrade you to the paid-for tool).

Use the keyword tools section to give you an average daily search result including multiple search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) as well as the totals.  This will show you what other search engines may bring you in addition to Google (these are broad match results).

Make sure you review the SEO analysis section.  Enter your chosen keywords and the programme will take the top 10 or 20 search results for that phrase and provide you with an analysis of the relative difficulty of ranking for the keyword, as well as details on the competing sites in the top 10 or 20 results.

The programme will give you its rating of the difficulty of ranking for the keyword, and you can also see some of the key data on the top ranking results for your analysis.

Ideally name your video file according to your keyword

The name of your video file directly relates to its ranking and relevancy in YouTube so name it using the keyword you want to rank for.

You have to change the video’s name on your computer before you upload it to YouTube. Just click on the folder until the folder name is highlighted, and type in the keyword.