YouTube SEO Checklist for 2025
Find relevant keywords for your video
Do keyword research to find keywords that are relevant to your video, then decide which ones to optimize for. Here are a few recommendations:
- Use a free YouTube keyword tool to find all of the keywords that are relevant to your video.
- Stick mostly to keywords that have an appropriate difficulty level for your channel.
- Select the keywords that are most relevant, but still have high search volume (more art than science).
- Enter your primary target keyword & a few other target keywords in the fields above before continuing.
Optimize the video title for your primary keyword
Write a compelling title that follows these guidelines:
- Include your exact primary keyword, ideally near the beginning of your title.
- Include elements of 1 or 2 secondary keywords if you can do it naturally.
- Keep your title under 70 characters. Under 50 is even better.
- Be compelling — without resorting to inaccurately reflecting your video!
Write a keyword-rich video description
Write a description that follows these guidelines:
- Shoot for 200-300 words total.
- Include your primary keyword in the first 100 characters.
- Use your primary & secondary keywords throughout your description.
- Be careful not to sound spammy or use keywords unnaturally.
- Absolutely do not simply list keywords — it can result in a violation.
- Don't forget people actually see & read video descriptions!
Create a high-quality thumbnail with an intriguing hook
Create a well-designed thumbnail that follows these guidelines:
- Make sure your thumbnail's design will pop among existing search results.
- Use compelling imagery & text to optimize your video's click-through rate.
- Avoid clickbait! You won't earn watch time from people that feel tricked.
- On-image text is indexed, so optionally include your primary keyword in the thumbnail.
- Your thumbnail must be 1280x720 pixels or larger (but still 16:9).
Free YouTube SEO Extension
FAQ
Yes. You can use the YouTube SEO Checklist as many times as you like for free. Pretty sweet deal right?!
We highly recommend using ChannelStudio’s YouTube keyword tool to do your keyword research since it estimates YouTube search volume with 99% accuracy — and it’s free!
The explanation that appears below each item in the YouTube SEO Checklist highlights the most important things to keep in mind, but our matching YouTube SEO tips & best practices article dives much deeper into each topic.
The tips we recommend in that article are backed by reputable research and studies that have attempted to analyze (or even reverse-engineer!) YouTube ranking algorithms — so you can have confidence in the guidance they provide.
Although many items in the YouTube SEO Checklist are completed automatically for your convenience, the feature isn’t intended to be a comprehensive SEO checker.
Even in the cases where the item has been auto-checked for you, you’ll still need to educate yourself about best practices, then use your taste and intelligence to judge for yourself when the item has been sufficiently optimized.
No. The YouTube SEO Checklist currently only supports optimizing one YouTube video at a time.
If you want to optimize another video but still need your previous video’s worksheet answers, you can download them as a PDF, then reset the checklist to start optimizing your new video.
The beginner checklist covers the essential topics that creators need to know when optimizing their videos to rank on YouTube, without getting overwhelmed early on.
Once you’re comfortable with all of the checklist items in the beginner checklist, you can graduate to the advanced checklist to really dial in your YouTube videos' SEO.
No. The YouTube SEO Checklist saves your work automatically. As long as you don’t manually clear your browser cache, you can feel free to close the tab and return whenever you’re ready to pick up where you left off.