Stabilized footage is essential for the success of any top video. Because shaky footage not only looks unprofessional but also strains your audience's eyes.  

We suggest you either get a hold of a camera with built-in image stabilization or purchase a tripod to fix this. Tripods usually work when the subject is still, but that may not be true for all video types.  

Good lighting is one of the critical pieces of equipment you need to make good videos. You want to capture whatever you're filming in the best light possible—good lighting is the key to making your videos better.  

The easiest way to do this is to film in a room with natural sunlight coming through the window.  

Make sure the room you are filming in is as quiet as possible. With today's technology, recording your first YouTube video with a smartphone or laptop's built-in mic is definitely an option, especially if you are doing a voiceover on top of soundless footage.  

Alternatively, you can buy a microphone for your smartphone or laptop to get great-sounding audio which can make a tremendous difference. 

The best video format for YouTube is MP4, and for your video to look as good as possible, crop it to a 16:9 aspect ratio.  

Tags are descriptive keywords you can add to your video to help viewers find your content. In other words, you need to describe your video with keywords. Search engines can’t figure out what your video is about. As students use keywords to search out videos, Google and YouTube algorithms will scan tags to help determine what results to show. Max 400 characters. Each tag should be no more than one to three words.  

For example: if your video shows how to add and subtract numbers, then the possible tags would be: algebra, addition, subtraction, add and subtract numbers in your head, how to add, how to subtract, how to, tutorial on addition and subtraction, fast way to add and subtract, etc. 

Your description is much longer than the tags, so you can really go to town with your YouTube/Google keywords here. You’ve got up to 5,000 characters to fill in, and we strongly advise that you aim to use every single one. This is a golden opportunity to get people motivated to watch all of your videos and be indexed correctly through well-researched YouTube and Google keywords.  

Your video title plays a big part in the ranking factors for search. That means you’ve got to think about what people who most likely want to see your video will type into the search bar and the words that accurately describe your video.