Where videos appear
Google shows videos in a video block on many results pages, in its Videos tab, and sometimes with "key moments" that jump to the right part of the video. Most of those videos come from YouTube, but videos hosted on your own pages can appear too, if Google can find and understand them. Google explains the requirements in its video SEO best practices.
Choose topics people search
Video works best for searches where people want to see, not read: how a procedure goes, what a place looks like, how to use a product, a tour of a property or a riad. Start from the questions your customers ask, the same way as for written content, and check what Google already shows for them. If the results page has a video block, a video has a place there.
How YouTube ranks videos
YouTube says its search ranking weighs three things. Relevance is how well the title, the description and the video itself match the search. Engagement includes how long people watch a video after typing a given search. Quality covers the signs that a channel knows its subject and can be trusted. Results are also personal: YouTube takes each viewer's search and watch history into account, so two people can see different results for the same search.
The words in your title get the video considered, and the minutes people stay decide whether it keeps its place. A title that makes a clear promise, kept in the first seconds of the video, serves both.
Finding the words people search on YouTube
- The search bar: start typing your topic on YouTube and note the suggestions. They come from real searches, in the language and spelling people use.
- The Research tab: in YouTube Studio, under Analytics, it shows what your viewers and YouTube users in general search for on a topic, and marks the searches where viewers find little to watch.
- Google Trends: set the filter to YouTube Search to compare two phrasings, for example "riad marrakech" and "riad à marrakech", over time and by region.
How to optimize a YouTube video, step by step
- Title: put the words people search first, in the language of the video, and keep the promise the video keeps.
- Description: the first two lines show in search, so say what the video answers there, then add a link to the matching page on your site.
- Chapters: timestamps in the description split the video into sections that Google can show as key moments. YouTube explains how to add chapters.
- Captions: upload or correct the subtitles, in each language you serve. They help viewers watching without sound and give search engines the text. See YouTube's help on captions.
- Thumbnail: a clear image that says what the video shows, readable on a phone.
- Tags: YouTube says they play a minimal role in discovery. Add a few spelling variants and move on.
After publishing, YouTube Analytics shows what matters next: where viewers come from, the searches that found the video, and when they stop watching. A video that loses most viewers in the first 30 seconds needs a better opening, not more tags.
Videos spoken in Darija
Many Moroccan business videos are spoken in Darija, which reaches local customers well. The words people type in search, though, are often French or English. A French or English title and description, plus captions in French, help the video be found by those searches while the video itself stays natural for its audience.
On your own site
Embedding the video on a page of your site helps that page and keeps visitors with you. For Google to treat it as a video page:
- Put the video on a page about the same subject, near the top, with text that explains what it shows.
- Give each important video its own page rather than gathering ten on one.
- Add VideoObject structured data with the title, description, thumbnail and upload date.
- Make sure the page loads fast: load the video player only when needed, so it does not slow the page.
On your Business Profile
You can also add short videos to your Google Business Profile: the premises, the team, the work. They help people choose between you and the business next door on the map.
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