Seven Ways to Write YouTube Titles That Lift Clicks and Views

Plenty of people run a YouTube channel these days, whether for a company or for themselves.
In video production, the title matters as much as the thumbnail it sits next to.

Many people title their videos on a whim, but following the rules in this article can lift your click rate, and the views that follow, by 1.5 to 2 times, so do give them a try.

1. Why the thumbnail matters

1.1 The title drives the click rate

An earlier article covered the YouTube algorithm and the nine measures worth watching.

Nine measures to watch if you want to grow on YouTube

How to become the thumbnail people choose on YouTube

That article used the figure below. The title is important enough to move three of those nine measures: the click rate, and then view count and total watch time.

A poor title holds back both the individual video and the growth of the channel itself, so take care over it.

The click rate in particular turns on the title.
The click rate is the share of the times a video thumbnail was shown (impressions) that resulted in a click.

YouTube works by taking videos that existing subscribers respond well to (a high click rate and high audience retention) and showing them on the home screen and among related videos, spreading them to people who are not subscribed.
So however many views you get from existing subscribers, a poor click rate (CTR) and poor retention make it harder to be shown to non-subscribers and harder to grow views. That is why the title matters so much for the click rate.

1.2 The title decides whether you appear in recommendations and related videos

There is a second reason the title matters.
A poor title keeps the video out of two of its five placements: recommendations and related videos.

Appearing in recommendations and related videos raises your chances of more clicks and more views, so it is well worth getting there.
But if the title does not reflect the keywords people search for, or uses none of the keywords common to the genre, it is unlikely to show up in recommendations or related videos.

2. Seven ways to choose title keywords

So what should you do about it?
This work is also known as video SEO, or VSEO. VSEO stands for video search engine optimisation and refers to the techniques used to rank YouTube videos higher in search.
The most important part of VSEO is choosing the title keywords. Get that right and your video turns up when people search on Google or on YouTube.
Even so, many people are unsure how to go about it. Below are five ways to choose keywords.

2.1 Researching suggested keywords

Suggested keywords are the related keywords people search for most often.
For example, if you are building a channel or a video about dieting, type “_diet” into the search box (putting an underscore before the keyword makes the list easier to read).
YouTube will show you a list of suggested keywords closely related to dieting, so use it as a guide for your title.
For dieting, the most closely related suggestions appear to be “dance”, “meals”, “strength training” and “motivation”.

2.2 Checking monthly search volume for each keyword

You need a tool to check monthly search volume.
Here are the ones we recommend.

▼Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool is one such keyword research tool. It pulls a list of high-volume keywords out of YouTube’s autocomplete.
Select YouTube, type your main keyword into the search box and you will find a range of candidates. Well worth a look.

Site URL:https://keywordtool.io/youtube

▼The Ahrefs YouTube keyword tool
Ahrefs is another useful tool. Again, select YouTube and enter a keyword, and it shows search volume alongside the suggested keywords.

Site URL:https://ahrefs.com/ja/youtube-keyword-tool

This is the kind of thumbnail you often see on routine videos, cooking videos and videos by stylish YouTubers. It is also worth knowing in advance that when you want photography to lead, the suggested keywords and the search volumes can differ from tool to tool, so treat these tools as a guide only.

2.3 Looking at how keywords relate to each other

The suggest network feature in MIERUCA collects suggested words and at the same time maps how they relate to each other as a network diagram.
Pull the data for “diet” again and the keywords closely related to “diet soup” come out as “recipe”, “kimchi”, “consomme”, “tomato”, “seasoning”, “no celery”, “miso”, “shop-bought” and “homemade”. Branching off “diet soup recipe”, “popular” also turns out to be closely related, which tells you that a great many people search with the intent of finding which diet soup recipes people like. Relationships like these can shape the videos you decide to make.

2.4 Using power words

Think about power words in your video titles.
A power word is one that lands hard and sticks in the memory. They are usually short and catchy.
Power words do a lot to make people click, so include them where you can.
Do not overdo it, though. One is enough.
Be careful, too, that extreme wording does not get your video marked as clickbait by YouTube or by viewers.
Below is a set of power words by genre for you to draw on.

2.5 Researching the titles of videos in the same genre

Once you have looked at suggested keywords and search volume, check how videos in the same genre are titled.
Use the keywords and phrasings that come up often in that genre in your own titles.
Look in particular at YouTubers and influencers with large subscriber counts or high view counts on a single video.
That raises the chance that your video appears among the related videos or recommendations when someone watches a well-known influencer’s diet video.

2.6 Mind the length

YouTube allows up to 60 full-width characters, but 15 to 30 is ideal. Anything past 32 characters is cut off with an ellipsis, so viewers cannot read the title to the end.
Within those 15 to 30 characters, put the point of the video and what you want to say as near the front as you can.

2.7 Put the keywords at the front

When you set a video title, always place the keywords you have researched at the front.
Search engines such as Yahoo! and Google give more weight to the keywords at the start of a video title.
Neither Yahoo! nor Google states this officially, but across a number of keywords and videos we found that top-ranking videos tend to have the search keyword at the front of the title.
So when setting a title, keep the important keywords as far forward as you can.

A title such as “Engineering jobs? Go to 〇〇. Over ○○ vacancies. More than ○○% of users get an offer.” puts the keywords “engineer” and “job change” at the front, which helps with SEO.

When people scan a results page, the text runs horizontally, so the eye moves from left to right. They also read down from the top-ranked title, which adds a top-to-bottom movement to the left-to-right one. Lower-ranked titles tend not to be read to the end, which shows the eye following an F-shaped path.

So the further forward you place an important keyword, the more likely it is to register with people as well as with search engines.

4. In closing

We hope that was useful.
This article has covered why video titles matter and the rules for writing them.

To summarise what we have covered:

①Why the title of a video matters (two reasons)
　1. Because the title drives the click rate
　2. Because the title decides whether you appear in recommendations and related videos
②Seven ways to choose title keywords
　In particular,
　how to research keywords / how to choose keywords
　/ using power words / title rules

were the points we covered.

We hope you find it useful. Thank you for reading.