By You may have noticed YouTube Live results showing up in Google recently. In the past few weeks I’ve had a few clients ask if “going live” on YouTube was good for their SEO or guaranteed a number one position. They all say they read it somewhere that “going live” on YouTube was the best SEO ‘hack’ or ‘growth hack’ today.
There hasn’t been official word yet, but I highly doubt that YouTube Live is a ranking signal. Google MIGHT use it to temporarily replace the top of search results and/or a video result but a live video could be considered temporal and likely wouldn’t stay in Google’s results for long unless the resulting on-demand video created by the live video had generated enough to edge out other videos that would appear in the SERPs. This means while YouTube Live isn’t exactly beneficial to your SEO, it could help your YouTube channel gain views and subscribers.
I have yet to even see YouTube Live in Google results for a query that wasn’t already highly specific to the video stream itself and rarely for a live video that is no longer live.
For your YouTube Live stream to rank in Google for a keyword the trick is that Google has to already show videos for the target query AND the Live video has to have enough viewers and votes to be worth temporarily jumping over the other videos in the search results.
Once the live stream is finished there is a chance the video is no longer visible in Google for the target query.
To understand how Google is treating YouTube live in the SERPs a bit more I examined a few live videos last week and this week I am revisiting them to see how their appearances in Google changed.
Example #1 – Saddest Ending Ever Video Game Stream
This live video ranked #1 in Google for “saddest ending ever”.
But more than a week later, well after the live stream stopped, the video is no longer at the top of the video pack for the query and rests at #3. The YouTube channel that produced this video has over 6 million subscribers and at the time had 13,000 concurrent viewers of the Live video. Today, 9 days after the video was live, the on-demand recording of the video has 273,185 views. The on-demand video that takes the number 1 position is by a channel with 17 million subscribers and the video itself has 3,917,403 views at time of writing
While the video was live it ranked #3 for the query “A way out ending”. After the live steam was over though the video pack dropped in the rankings and the “Saddest Ending Ever” live video was no longer visible in the video pack part of the SERPs. This may be due to the fact that the video game ‘A Way Out’ which the video is of was released very recently on March 23rd, 2018 on a lot of new content is being produced around it or this could be the normal behavior for Google showing YouTube Live videos.
What Changed: The video appeared lower (or not all) for both queries after the live stream ended.
Example #2 – Watch Me Work Artist Stream
This Live video was titled “Watch me work” and was of an artist drawing. It did not rank #1 for its title, another YouTube video did, that video was a music video, completely unrelated to the Live stream. This steam did rank #3 after the very large music information box Google uses to try and force all organic traffic away from this query to keep it on YouTube or something that makes Google money.
After this live video stream ended on YouTube Google did not rank the resulting on-demand video for the query “watch me work” highly as a link and did not include it in the video pack for the query.
What Changed: The video did not appear on page 1 of Google for the same query.
Example #3 – Hip Hip Radio
Another Live video that was running during my test was for for LoFi Hip Hop Radio.
The live stream did not rank for the head term “hip hop radio” during my test.
However the live stream (Which is still live) is still running and ranks for the query “lofi hip hop radio”, or the full title of the stream.
What Changed: Technically these types of streams (which are really just online radio stations) never end, the rankings did not change for the live video because it is still live.
Example #4 – Southwest Florida Eagle Cam
This live stream had about 2,200 viewers when I checked.
The video did not appear in Google for the target query, even though it appears purpose built to show eagles live. The query “southwest florida eagle cam live” returns a YouTube result in the top 5, but that link goes to the main YouTube channel page and not directly to the live video. Checking a week later and the results are the same.
What Changed: Nothing has changed, the live stream remains unlisted in Google’s index.
Example #5 – Fortnite Road
This stream was not ranking for the game ‘Fortnite’ when I checked last week. The live stream was ranking for “Fort Road”, which is unlikely to have a large volume of searches.
What Changed: The live video was ranking #1 for the query “fortnite road”, the on-demand video no longer ranks #2 or on page 1 for that query. The resulting video still does not rank in Google for “fornite” either on page 1.
How to Rank in Google With a YouTube Live Video (At least temporarily)
- Start off by performing keyword research. Use Tools like Moz’s Keyword Explorer, SEMRush, Keyword Guru, and Answer the Public to find keywords around your topic.
- Whittle down your list of keywords to small group that fit the video you’re going to make
- Look at the keywords and see if YouTube video thumbnails appear anywhere on page 1 of Google and that there is no big highlight box at the top of the results (i.e. Example #2 above with a music video)
- Take all of the keywords that meet the criteria and run them through a keyword tool to get estimated search volume in Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool (note Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool is attempting to restrict this data, you may need to use a secondary source).
- Select the Keyword with the highest volume, that matches your live video, and currently shows videos in the SERPs
- Use that keyword / phrase as the starting keyword / phrase in the title of your live stream
- You’ll likely need anywhere from 90,000 to 100,000 channel subscribers already to get the ranking advantage while your stream is live (this is only based on observational evidence my team and I have collected so far.)
- You’ll also likely need between 3,500 and 5,000 concurrent viewers on your live stream to have the stream rank in Google