11+ Youtube SEO Trends To Follow In 2023 To Rank Videos

Outranking
by Outranking
Updated On: October 3, 2023
11+ Youtube SEO Trends To Follow In 2023 To Rank Videos

With 800+ million videos and 2.6 billion users, YouTube is the second most visited site after Google. This means using YouTube for your business offers a wonderful opportunity to generate more leads. 

But due to the vast number of videos present on the platform, it’s extremely difficult to make your videos stand out and catch the attention of millions of users. This is where YouTube SEO and video marketing can help!

Trends in YouTube SEO are constantly evolving — so what worked in 2022 won’t help you rank better in 2023. The icing on the cake is the rise of the “Do More With Less” mentality. People now want to spend less time, energy, and resources in the YouTube video making process and AI technology is helping people make this mentality prosper. 

But is this mentality successful in the long-term? Watch the video below to get an idea about the latest YouTube SEO trends.

But for now, we’ve compiled a list of the most trending YouTube SEO techniques in 2023. With them, you can make your channel, and ultimately your business, top-ranking.

Drawing of a person standing between SEO and YouTube
For ranking and getting the maximum audience on your YouTube channel, YouTube SEO is the way. Image Source: 3Play Media

Top 12 YouTube SEO Trends in 2023

Similar to Google trends, YouTube SEO trends are changing rapidly. Take a look at these 12 trends and how they’re reshaping YouTube ranking magic. 

Drawing of the YouTube logo with YouTube SEO written on in and arrows pointing to different trends
Trends in YouTube SEO consist of AI tools usage, keywords, and user preferences.

1. More AI Content = People Looking for More Videos

The launch of generation tools like ChatGPT, Bing ChatBot, Google Bard, and other AI assistants allow businesses to get more video ideas — and even generate entire scripts — for their YouTube channels. 

Although this may not seem a problem for most businesses, it is for viewers and users. People prefer personalized content, and AI videos may not be something viewers want to see.

Videos are an extremely effective way of creating brand awareness. By using human-generated content, you show your viewers the real people behind your brand. In contrast, AI-generated content has no human connection, so your videos will start lacking depth. 

Viewers want to create an emotional connection with your business and they found you on YouTube because they wanted real human experience. Now they see your videos are generated by AI, they will skip and watch another video.

Competition on YouTube is fierce, so if you’re unable to provide for your viewers, someone else will. 2023 will unfortunately see YouTube flooded with AI content no one wants to watch. So to make it out on top, avoid relying on AI to guide all your video creation initiatives.

Image of people standing in front of two screens. one with human content and the other one with AI content. More people are standing in front of the human content screen
AI-generated content is faster and easier to produce, but users prefer watching a human-generated video to establish a connection.

2. Shorter Attention Span = Shorter Videos 

Human attention span has decreased drastically in the last decade and now, humans can give attention to a screen for 8 seconds only. As a result, if you upload long videos, the chances of people watching them entirely are slim — even if they’re created by humans. 

That’s why almost every social media platform today has made a short-form video category. This allows content creators and businesses to make shorter videos that quickly create brand awareness and engage viewers.

Short-form content is engaging, relevant, and provides digestible information. It’s also very easy to remember. This makes it good for your SEO as people will scroll on your channel for longer periods and this type of content yields the highest ROI.

According to HubSpot, 21% of marketers are planning to leverage short-form video content in 2023. 90% of marketers using short-form video content for marketing also plan to increase or maintain their investment for 2024. 

So if you aren’t leveraging short-form video content for your brand marketing in 2023, now is the time to start. 73% of viewers prefer to watch a short-form video to learn about a product or service.

Image of the YouTube Shorts logo greater than YouTube logo. YouTube Shorts are the future of YouTube video marketing.
Short-form videos are reshaping the future of video marketing.

3. AI Generation Tools = Easier to Make Videos

Gone are the days when businesses would search locations, buy filming equipment, and hire content creators, scriptwriters, video editors, and models to produce a single video. Now, AI tools for creating video content are growing and replacing humans rapidly. 

AI tools like Synthesia, Pictory, DeepBrain AI, InVideo, etc., help businesses generate content easily in a matter of minutes and less resources are used. These tools also contain AI avatars that appear in videos, and can support a lot of languages. They can convert text to videos and provide accessibility to businesses.

You can use AI tools for Content Writing, content optimization, creating SEO content briefs, SEO descriptions, SEO content strategy, SEO keyword strategies, SEO content editing, and SEO content auditing.

In 2023, more and more businesses and creators will turn to AI video-creating tools and expand their video content to reach their marketing goals. So, if you leverage AI smartly and maintain the human aspect in your videos, you’ll save a lot of time and money on your video marketing campaigns on YouTube.

4. AI and ML in Voice Overs = Less Money Spent on Voice Actors

You’ve created a video. Congratulations! Now comes the next difficult step, finding a voice over artist who can talk over your video. You may have to search high and low to find a voice actor with a specific gender, language, voice tone, and style to suit your video. 

With advanced features, AI and ML are now replacing voiceover artists. Technologies like deepfake are on the rise and they can mimic any human’s voice easily. These technologies are advancing so rapidly that no one can distinguish if the voice is real or AI-generated.

These tools use a deep learning process to create text-to-speech content. In 2023, businesses will experiment with different AI voice over software to find the one that resonates with their brand.

Image of robot using a microphone to talk to a person. Saying AI and ML are now used for voiceovers.
Many businesses now use AI and ML for voiceover purposes.

5. Google Looking for Trust Signals = Better Chances to Rank (Website to Youtube, Youtube to Website)

So many people are watching your channel, how great is that! But it’s so much better than that to see your audience increase even more because your video is ranking on Google SERP! 

Google aims to provide the best and most valuable content to its users in the form of different types of content. Due to Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trust) concept, you can rank your video on SERP using trust signals. Trust signals are the pieces of information related to your business that you put out there so that people can trust you.

These trust signals can increase your content’s ranking. So if you’re linking your YouTube channel with your brand website or vice versa, both users and Google will find your business trustworthy, and Google will rank your content.

In 2023, businesses will finally start to understand the importance of trust signals because they can improve your rankings and help generate more leads.

Image of establishing trust signals from YouTube to Website. Website to YouTube.
Linking your YouTube channel to your website improves the ranking of both.

6. Text in Videos = Higher Viewership

Over 5% of the world population have some kind of hearing disability, and by 2050, 700 million people will have hearing disability. That’s why Google and YouTube emphasize accessibility. The more audience you reach through your content, the better. 

Putting text in your video is important because viewers can read this text when their sound is off, and even if they have a hearing problem. Putting captions on your video also comes in handy when people are watching your videos in a crowded place and they can’t raise the volume to properly hear you. 

Text is also useful as it conveys the message clearly, gives depth to the video, and engages the user. Text in a video also increases the video viewing time by up to 40%. And because crawlers can understand your text, using it in videos will help boost your YouTube content SEO ranking.

In 2023, having no text in your videos equates to losing a lot of audience, potential customers, and revenue. So take the extra time to write what you’re saying on your video to reach your video marketing goals.

7. Video on a Webpage = More Valuable Webpage

Research suggests that people can better retain information when you stimulate their senses — mostly the visual and auditory ones. If a web page contains written content with an embedded video, people will remember it. Additionally, the presence of a video on a webpage builds credibility, strengthens business relationships, and generates a greater number of leads.

If your business has a YouTube channel and a website, strive to embed relevant and valuable YouTube videos to your website. This will improve your website’s SEO, as well as the rankings and views on your YouTube channel. 

2023 will be the year of businesses embedding videos in web pages to pass their SEO assessments with flying colors. As an added bonus, this Website to YouTube correlation also helps increase customers’ trust!

Image of rankings increasing with video embeds. "Adding video to a webpage increases its value"
Add a relevant video to a webpage to make it more valuable.

8. More Product Reviews and Demos = More Support for Your Website Content

Businesses want to sell their products and services without letting people realize they’re being sold to. This method generates more leads as people are genuinely impressed with the products or services a business offers. 

By creating video content that focuses on product reviews or product demos, businesses can improve their sales and reach new audiences. Product reviews and demos provide detailed instructions and information as well as the benefits and features of a product. Using videos, businesses can demonstrate their products’ unique selling points.

Product reviews and demos are an effective method of engaging viewers. And even better, making videos and uploading them to YouTube and websites helps increase website content while also selling the product. This does wonders for both YouTube and website SEO, because after all, content is king! Below is an example of a product demo:

In this extremely competitive era, businesses will finally realize you can sell a product without actually selling it. This realization can yield greater leads, improved rankings, and larger audiences.

9. Updates in Youtube SEO Guidelines = Safer Space and Better UX

Similar to any search engine, YouTube wants to answer the user’s query with the most unique, relevant, and valuable videos. For this reason, YouTube constantly updates its SEO and community guidelines to provide the best user-experience. YouTube also enforces these guidelines using both human reviewers and ML. 

YouTube removes any content that violates its community guidelines. But they don’t just stop here. To up their game, YouTube’s Intelligence Desk monitors any trending news or inappropriate content and its ML technology detects patterns and removes any content even before someone views that content.

In 2023, businesses will finally understand that YouTube is also a search engine, just like Google, with specific SEO guidelines. They will no longer try to game the YouTube system and will invest in proper white hat SEO techniques to get long-term successful results.

10. Time on Video = Higher Rankings 

One of the many ranking factors for a website is the dwell time — or how long a user spends on a webpage without going back to Google. If users spend a long time on a website, this means the website is according to the user’s intent. 

Just like Google, YouTube has a similar ranking factor, which is the time users spend watching a video. This means a business should invest in long-form video content too, so the “dwell time” on a video is greater. But businesses should also keep relevancy, preciseness, and engagement in mind.

YouTube ranks videos that people watch fully. So, on top of investing in short form content, focus on making your long form content great. Provide the most attention-grabbing, personalized, and valuable content in your videos to defeat short attention spans and boost your rankings. 

11. Floods of Crap Video Production = More Penalties on Content

Just like AI boosted the creation of articles and written articles, video production will also increase massively. This means poor quality, copyrighted videos will flood YouTube. Some people may also start generating videos using AI to diversify their sources of income. They may get results at first, but in the long term, AI generation will prove to be useless for them.

AI video generating tools provide very little value to the users. They lack personalization and creativity. To make matters worse, businesses may end up with plagiarized, inaccurate, and invaluable scripts. Still, businesses will rely on AI to generate content and produce videos, but YouTube will be quick to mark the videos as spam — as soon as it finds out the video is AI-generated. 

So in 2023, beware of the generative AI tools that use copyrighted material for video production, or else, YouTube will take no time in de-ranking your video or channel.

Image of robot generating content.
Quantity over quality in YouTube video production is always a bad idea.

12. Right Keywords = Better Ranking YouTube Videos

Amidst all the evolving SEO guidelines, AI-generated content flooding, and the never-ending race to the top, one thing will remain constant — keywords. Identifying the right video keywords and optimizing your video for the right ones is important to improve YouTube SEO. To identify the right keywords, follow the below steps:

  • Conduct proper keyword research using tools as well as competitor channels
  • Use your focus keyword in the video title 
  • Change the video File name to the title or focus keyword.
  • Add the focus keyword to the video description
  • Avoid keyword stuffing as it will only give short-term benefits
  • Stick to white hat techniques

Keywords aren’t going anywhere in 2023, so if you want your videos to perform well, don’t forget to optimize your content with your focus keywords! 

Make Your Business a Top YouTuber

YouTube SEO is changing rapidly due to technological advancements and user preference to short-form videos. For 2023 and beyond, businesses can only succeed by providing the best, most relevant, personalized, and valuable content while focusing on user experience. By planning a flexible video SEO strategy, and staying on top of the latest trends, you can achieve long-term results in your video marketing.