How to Write Titles for YouTube Video (2021)

What is YouTube Video Title?

A YT Video Title is an assortment of succinct, intriguing, relevant, and saccharine information, summarizing your video content’s subject. It helps YT to co-relate, index and, ranks what kind of video you are producing and your target audience to understand whether it matches their query when searching similar interests.

A video title is an indispensable fragment of every YT video. In today’s video dominant world, you don’t only need prodigious content and quality videos alone to pull an audience, but master dominating YT SEO practices like promoting your content with informative & attention-grabbing YouTube titles and descriptions, thumbnail, and tags.

Importance of YouTube Video Title

Increase organic views

YT video marketing strategies mainly focus on generating views.  If you have a perfect title, it will grab the audience attention and your video will start generating a lot of views. Without a doubt, ‘Baby Shark Dance’ by Pinkfong became the most viewed video on this platform as of January 2021 (YouTube Trends) Conversely, if you have a meagre or mediocre one, you will lose your views because there are more thought-provoking videos out there. Thus, the title is one of the key fundamentals to gain organic views on this platform, as it can accelerate or retardate any video’s marketing success.

Helps shape your target audience’s decisions

The style and content of the title are influenced by the purpose of the video and the intended audience. There is a tendency towards catchy titles in, for the fathomable reason that YouTubers want to get clicks from their target audience. Hence, providing exact words for actions can really help!

Increase search presence & discoverability

YT is a destination designed for streaming video content, used by more than 2.3 billion active monthly users (Statista) who consume more than 5 billion videos every day, it is the title for YouTube channel which helps your content to stand in the fierce competition, ranked higher by the algorithm for relevancy purposes and boost their discoverability.

Reach target audience

With 38 million active channels on this platform of which 15 million are content creators (Tubics) use perfect & relevant video titles to influence their target audience to click and eventually 22,000 of them have crossed 1 million subscribers (Tubics). Many youtubers also choose to buy YouTube subscribers that are genuine people, in order to broaden their reach on the platform.

Increase click-through-rate

When a viewer finds your video in the search results, they look at your thumbnail and title to decide whether or not to open the video. According to Creator Academy, “well-written titles can be the difference between someone watching and sharing your videos, or scrolling right past it”. Hence, optimized or keyword-stuffed titles play as the game-changer by generating clicks via convincing algorithm for ranking and target audience for relevancy.

Titles are great to enhance your video’s discoverability. They play a contributory role in getting viewers to watch your videos.

In this ultimate guide, we are going to reveal all the factors and strategies, you need to focus on while creating the best YT video title!

Also Read: How to create a video that attracts audience in 2021

What are the YouTube video title best practices?

1. Include the primary or seed keyword in your title for YouTube channel

Titles have incredible SEO worth. You must optimize your video with a search-friendly title, that is the words or terms for aimed queries your target audience is already searching for. Keywords help them to find your video in search results. Hence, choose titles with keywords that the audience is likely to use when searching for your video.

2. Identify your target audience need & demand

The word “review” in the title of videos made them fetch more than 50,000 years of watch-time on mobile devices alone (Think with Google) You must understand the pain or thrust of your audience. “To write an engaging YouTube title for your video, you should put yourself in your audience’s shoes,” says Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers.

You may be interested in:- How to Start a YouTube Channel

3. Be within the perfect length

When searching, the best title for YouTube videos you need to take care that they are unique, catchy, do not exceed the optimal length of 70 characters. Titles that are longer than the recommended will get truncated in utmost search results.

4. Optimize your video title for ‘click-through rate’

According to StreamCreative.com, it makes titles much easier to read by the user because they have a stronger call to action. CTR is an important ranking factor of the algorithm. This means the more clicks your video gets (title derived) the more likely will it rank higher in search pages.

Some important tips to boost your CTR-

• Add a number:

  You can boost your CTR by including a number in the title. For example, if your video includes 10 Hacks, include the number “10” in your title.

• Use attention-grabbing phrases:

  If it makes sense for your video, include an eye-catching word of phrase. Examples of some video title ideas: “WOW”, “Amazing”, “Cheapest”, “I cried”, “Convenient” etc. Your goal is to trigger a psychological or emotional response from the target audience.

• Use brackets in your title:

  Adding brackets to your titles can make a huge difference by high pointing the hidden attributes.

• Target emotional reach:

  Emotionally-triggered headlines get more viewership and consumer support.

• Short & sweet:

  Make it concise and comprehensible.

• Use doing words:

  Doing words activate emotions, and emotions fuel clicks.

• Involve a question:

  Ask the audience straight with a question that raises their interest.

• Be clear:

  The platform had more than 1 billion views related to ‘chess’ in 2020 (YouTube Trends). Abridge what your video is about with eloquent keywords.

Also read: Equipment required to start a Youtube channel in 2021

5. Avoid clickbait

John Frigo of Best Price Nutrition says, “Here’s the thing with YT titles. A good title, in my opinion, describes what the video is about, it doesn’t mislead and it’s not clickbait.” clickbait has the persistence of attracting the user attention and bribe users to click on the video. But sadly, they harm more your channel, by damaging your audience’s trust in your content in the long run. As they are misleading, they trick & annoy the user to drop off your content immediately after finding it irrelevant.

6. Create a FOMO-fear of missing out with your title

Matthew Paxton of Hypernia says, “Use words with urgency or make it sound like it’s urgent so that your audience will think or feel that they will miss valuable content if they skip your video.” You can create a fear of missing something very important. A good "video title example" is “You can’t miss these secrets”

7. Include a catchy hook to attract viewers’ attention

Kylie Moore of The Loop Marketing says, “Create an effective title by providing information at the beginning and a hook in the middle, which should pique curiosity with adjectives, lists, or questions. Titles must be attention-grabbing enough to augment click-throughs. Write eye-catchy titles to attract audience attention.

Tips:

• Questions, lists, expressive adjectives are operative to generate click-throughs. In the last two years, watch-time on YT has grown for videos with titles that include these words:

1. Shop with me (10x)

2. Does it work (12x)

• Everything you need to know (2x) (Think with Google, 2018)

• Show the viewers what your video has to deliver. In 2020, 94% of Indian YT users learned to do things by themselves by watching YouTube videos (YouTube Trends). Your title needs to be descriptive enough to hook the audience for its usefulness.

8. Leverage trending topics

You must get inspiration from the prevailing trend phenomenon, which already has an established vast audience. When you introduce the hint of the latest trend in your video title, it becomes exponentially more click-worthy!

Also read: How to find your Youtube Channel Niche in 2021

9. Use the word “video” in your YouTube titles

Searches for videos on Google must include the word “video.” When you search a video on Google about an explicit topic, you may end up typing in the word “video”. It increases your video’s discoverability when a certain user’s query contains the word “video.”

10. Study the efficiency of your title

You can use YT Analytics to analyse the success of your title. You can change it if you notice the title is not increasing your video CTR.

Tips:

• Study the audience retention graph. Investigate the first 15 seconds of the graph for audience drop-off. A hasty depression in the first few seconds could advocate that your title is not working with respect to your video quality.

• Then, study the YT search report under Traffic sources to identify keywords that are driving traffic to your video. Use the same keyword in your title, to boost search results.

Bonus strategies

Capitalize on Keywords

YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the planet. Hence, the keywords you include in your title play a crucial role in reaching more viewers. You will find YouTubers that decide to buy YouTube subscribers to extend their reach on the platform.

YT algorithm uses the information present in the title, description, and tags to better understand your content and show your videos in search and recommended sections to the right people. Of course, you have the option to buy YouTube comments and likes, but why not give the traditional methods a shot first.

Pay Attention to Title Length

It would help if you kept YouTube titles at optimal lengths. Anything above the set limit results in part of the text getting truncated when the video shows up in search results. However, a title that is too short can also work against you. It won't be descriptive enough to let your audience know what your content is all about. Although there is a 100-character limit, you can restrict your video title to 70 characters. In doing so, the title will be visible in its entirety without missing any vital details .

Use Power Words

Next, you can use powerful words to manipulate how users perceive your content. These texts are influential and are persuasive enough to compel your audience to take action.

There are many powerful words that you can use in your title; the following are some examples:

• Amazing
• Convenient
• Awesome
• Excellent

Let's look at an example of a heading with a compelling power word - "10 amazing ways to write an article". As you can see, just by adding one power, you can significantly influence a user's decision to click the video.

I hope you found this guide comprehensive to know, how to create a title that attracts the target audience.

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