Video SEO and optimising for YouTube (& AI Overviews)

That being said, YouTube uses a variety of signals when ranking videos, which can be divided into two main categories:

1. Personalisation: This includes activity history, liked videos, and search terms that users input. 
2. Performance: user satisfaction surveys, total watch time, user behaviour while watching a video, likes and comments, and more. 

YouTube places different emphasis on these signals depending on which feature the video appears, such as recommended videos, shorts, the subscriptions tab, etc. 

On YouTube, there are two features that drive the most video source traffic: homepage videos and YouTube search. We’ll run you through the signals that matter most for both of these features: 

• Homepage videos: recommended videos on the homepage consider activity history, topics of interest, video quality and user satisfaction.
• YouTube search: This resembles organic SEO more traditionally, considering query relevance, video engagement statistics, and EEAT signals. 

Now that this is covered, what practical actions can you take to enhance your ranking within YouTube’s algorithm? 

Optimise your video titles and descriptions so users and search engines can better understand your content. Including keywords will be important; however, place more emphasis on user experience, as the key ranking factor relates to how the user responds to your video title and description. 

An eye-catching thumbnail may be the deciding factor on whether a user clicks on your YouTube video or scrolls past it. This directly affects engagement metrics and hence can improve your video’s ranking on YouTube. 

TIP: You can use A/B testing to discover whether your audience is engaging with your thumbnail.

If your video involves speaking, plan what you’d like to say such that it includes key messages and keywords early in the video. To further elevate viewer engagement, consider using an AI music generator to create background soundtracks that match your content tone and pacing, ideal for intros, tutorials, or promotional clips. YouTube automatically creates transcriptions if you don’t produce one yourself, which are used as indications for YouTube and Google search to understand what your content is about, potentially improving ranking and visibility.

Preferably, you should produce your own transcript as the AI can make mistakes when creating its own. Additionally, ensure the content of your transcript aligns with your video title and description.

As part of giving YouTube and Google’s algorithm more context about your video, it’s crucial to create timestamps on your video that divide your video into sections, with the timestamp defining each one. 

Google’s algorithm can pull this information directly and recommend a specific relevant portion of your video to users, potentially increasing click-through rate. 

Creating high-quality content, providing as many clues as possible, and ensuring your videos are genuinely tailored to your audience’s interests is the most important part.

TIP: uncover what your audience is already watching, as most of YouTube’s traffic sources come from the homepage and suggested video features.

Announced in April 2025, YouTube is currently testing displaying carousels of YouTube videos for certain keywords, giving the user a snapshot of the video by pulling through the most relevant portions of the clip. This is intended to help users with researching products and exploring travel options, but is currently only available to U.S YouTube Premium users.

While it is too early to offer a definitive strategy to appear in AI Overview’s video carousels, the points mentioned in the previous section may very well give you a head start. Adding timestamps on videos to divide content sections helps YouTube and Google’s search engine better understand your content, increasing the chances of ranking in this new feature.

Google has given a recent update regarding the importance of adding XML video sitemaps, and assured that this implementation is still recommended for Google to access and understand video content on a website. There are a couple of methods Google supports for accessing video content on your site, including having an mRSS feed, or adding video tags to an existing sitemap. 

Adding XML video sitemaps also increases the chances of Google ranking your video in rich results.

• Ensure all the included files are accessible by Google, this means they should not be disallowed, blocked by a firewall, etc.  
• Only add videos that are strongly related to the content of the host page.

Read the full list of best practices for adding video XML sitemaps.

• In addition to XML video sitemaps, there are a couple of actions you can take to support embedded videos on your website ranking in Google’s search results.
  • Add schema markup (structured data): specify relevant information in the ‘thumbnailURL’, ‘description’, and ‘name’ properties. 
  • Watch Pages: For videos that carry the main message and are not just supplementary to a page, create a dedicated “Watch Page” page. This boosts your eligibility of appearing in search results, including Video Mode and Key Moments. 
  • Use HTML elements such as <video>, <object>, and <iframe>. 

  For a full list, read Google’s Search Central guide on video SEO best practices.

• When optimising YouTube videos, prioritise understanding your target audience and conducting audience research, provide context by adding timestamps and descriptions, and create high-quality keyword-optimised videos.
• The recent rise in YouTube videos appearing in AI overviews, as well as the newly introduced carousels feature, highlights a greater importance in understanding the most affected industries and keywords, and optimising accordingly. 
• XML video sitemaps are still recommended by Google and can help videos appear in search results.
• Enhance your chances of appearing in Google’s search results, including rich results, by providing as much context as you can about your video and making Watch Pages where it is relevant.

Get in touch with our expert team today to get your videos visible on YouTube and Google’s AI Overviews.