Dominate Search Results: Essential Tips for Optimizing YouTube Videos

Improve Your YouTube Video Performance with Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

More than 85% of businesses use YouTube videos as a marketing tool. YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet, with users uploading over 500 hours of video content every minute. Because video SEO is constantly evolving, you need to stay current on optimization best practices to rank higher on search results.

Luckily, this article offers YouTube SEO tips to help you create a solid strategy that will help you rank your videos.

In this article

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

YouTube SEO is an excellent way to ensure your videos get more views. The main goal of YouTube SEO is to rank high for specific keywords in search engines. As such, it is crucial to know how YouTube SEO works if you want to boost the ranking of your videos.

Whether you are a blogger, market researcher, or video marketer, you need YouTube SEO to generate traffic to your videos. YouTube SEO involves optimizing your videos, channel, descriptions, metadata, and playlists. You can optimize videos for search within and outside YouTube.

Because search engine bots can’t watch YouTube videos, they depend on accompanying text data when indexing them. So you must also know how to harness the power of text in your video, which can positively impact SEO, viewership, engagement, and user experience.

Watch Video: YouTube SEO Tips 2022: Boost Your Video Ranking

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

Want to drive more traffic and increase your video views? Here are eleven YouTube SEO tips that will help you to boost your video ranking.

1. Conduct Keyword Research First

When it comes to YouTube SEO, keywords are crucial. YouTube uses these keywords to determine the subject of your video, index the content, and then associate it with what users are searching for. As such, you must add them to certain fields, including description, tags, and title, when you are uploading the video file. YouTube will then get this information and use it to rank your video.

For this reason, you have to know the keywords that best identify your videos and have the potential to attract viewers to your channel.

2. Use a Good Video Title

The title of your video is the first thing other people see, and it’s what decides whether or not they watch it. Given how important it is, you’ll want to make sure that your title accurately reflects the content of your video and includes all relevant keywords.

3. Link Your Videos Directly to Your Website

Each time you publish a new video, make sure you embed it on your website or blog. Not only will this encourage viewers to stay on your website instead of leaving immediately, but it will also make it easier for search engines crawlers to index your website.

4. Add Tags To The Video Description

When you upload your video, remember to add tags to the “About” section of the page. You can do this by adding some relevant keywords with each tag like you would with blog posts.

When planning your strategy for YouTube keywords, you need to find 10-20 single keyword tags you want to rank for; keep in mind that this platform limits the number of tags users can include in a video. So you should first add the most relevant keyword phrases then include specific multi-word tags that will easily rank on top of search results.

5. Edit The Filename

The filename of your video, or the “video URL,” can also affect its rankings. Including keywords in this section will help the crawlers index your video faster, which will increase its chances of ranking higher.

6. Add Subtitles and Closed Captions

Adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos is also a good idea, especially if you want the video’s ranking and viewership to improve. Subtitles make it easier for new viewers to understand your videos, especially if your audience comes from different linguistic backgrounds.

7. Select Video Category

When uploading a video, be sure to select the most appropriate category for it. Essentially, this helps with SEO optimization because choosing the right category means that YouTube’s algorithm will place your video in the proper search results. In turn, viewers will easily find your video and watch it.

8. Use a Compelling Thumbnail

Make sure you use the right YouTube video thumbnail image , as this makes a big difference in the click-through rate. You might want to use high-quality, high-contrast images with a 16:9 aspect ratio. YouTube will choose which frame it will display as the video thumbnail. The platform will present three screenshots that you can choose from; however, you can upload your image or select a shot of another moment in the video.

Remember that YouTube overlays the duration of the video in the corner of your thumbnail. So make sure it does not obstruct any relevant details in your thumbnail. Google also uses image recognition to filter out specific imagery, including the YouTube logo.

Ideally, you need an image that is a perfect visual representation of the keywords you are targeting. In turn, this is going to take your presence in relevant search results even further.

9. Make High-Quality Longer

Videos that are less than 2 minutes long often rank low. The duration of most of the videos in the first five positions is usually 11 minutes 44 seconds. Therefore, you need to invest in longer videos that are around 10 minutes long. These videos meet the expectations of many users seeking complete and in-depth content. Additionally, you should create high-quality videos to ensure your viewers will keep watching.

Create High-Quality YouTube Video with Filmora

Wondershare’s Filmora program allows you to edit your video content with trim, transitions, and overlays. You can also add cool effects to your videos to make them more captivating. It also includes advanced editing features like Key Framing, Motion Tracking and more. Learn about Filmora now!

Improve Your YouTube Video Performance with Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

10. Focus on User Engagement

Encourage your audience to like, comment, and share your videos. You should also respond to messages and comments. These engagement metrics strongly correlate with higher rankings.

Google cares about how people respond to your content because this is what keeps people on their platform.

11. Add End Screens and YouTube Cards

YouTube cards encourage viewers to take action during your video. The cards show up in the top right corner of your videos; users can click on and explore more. Using YouTube cards is an excellent way to boost your ranking. YouTube allows you to add a maximum of five cards to each video.

Conclusion

Using these YouTube SEO tips will ensure that your videos rank on top search results. That means more people will watch your videos and subscribe to your channel. Let’s start editing now!

Try It Free Try It Free

More than 85% of businesses use YouTube videos as a marketing tool. YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet, with users uploading over 500 hours of video content every minute. Because video SEO is constantly evolving, you need to stay current on optimization best practices to rank higher on search results.

Luckily, this article offers YouTube SEO tips to help you create a solid strategy that will help you rank your videos.

In this article

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

YouTube SEO is an excellent way to ensure your videos get more views. The main goal of YouTube SEO is to rank high for specific keywords in search engines. As such, it is crucial to know how YouTube SEO works if you want to boost the ranking of your videos.

Whether you are a blogger, market researcher, or video marketer, you need YouTube SEO to generate traffic to your videos. YouTube SEO involves optimizing your videos, channel, descriptions, metadata, and playlists. You can optimize videos for search within and outside YouTube.

Because search engine bots can’t watch YouTube videos, they depend on accompanying text data when indexing them. So you must also know how to harness the power of text in your video, which can positively impact SEO, viewership, engagement, and user experience.

Watch Video: YouTube SEO Tips 2022: Boost Your Video Ranking

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

Want to drive more traffic and increase your video views? Here are eleven YouTube SEO tips that will help you to boost your video ranking.

1. Conduct Keyword Research First

When it comes to YouTube SEO, keywords are crucial. YouTube uses these keywords to determine the subject of your video, index the content, and then associate it with what users are searching for. As such, you must add them to certain fields, including description, tags, and title, when you are uploading the video file. YouTube will then get this information and use it to rank your video.

For this reason, you have to know the keywords that best identify your videos and have the potential to attract viewers to your channel.

2. Use a Good Video Title

The title of your video is the first thing other people see, and it’s what decides whether or not they watch it. Given how important it is, you’ll want to make sure that your title accurately reflects the content of your video and includes all relevant keywords.

3. Link Your Videos Directly to Your Website

Each time you publish a new video, make sure you embed it on your website or blog. Not only will this encourage viewers to stay on your website instead of leaving immediately, but it will also make it easier for search engines crawlers to index your website.

4. Add Tags To The Video Description

When you upload your video, remember to add tags to the “About” section of the page. You can do this by adding some relevant keywords with each tag like you would with blog posts.

When planning your strategy for YouTube keywords, you need to find 10-20 single keyword tags you want to rank for; keep in mind that this platform limits the number of tags users can include in a video. So you should first add the most relevant keyword phrases then include specific multi-word tags that will easily rank on top of search results.

5. Edit The Filename

The filename of your video, or the “video URL,” can also affect its rankings. Including keywords in this section will help the crawlers index your video faster, which will increase its chances of ranking higher.

6. Add Subtitles and Closed Captions

Adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos is also a good idea, especially if you want the video’s ranking and viewership to improve. Subtitles make it easier for new viewers to understand your videos, especially if your audience comes from different linguistic backgrounds.

7. Select Video Category

When uploading a video, be sure to select the most appropriate category for it. Essentially, this helps with SEO optimization because choosing the right category means that YouTube’s algorithm will place your video in the proper search results. In turn, viewers will easily find your video and watch it.

8. Use a Compelling Thumbnail

Make sure you use the right YouTube video thumbnail image , as this makes a big difference in the click-through rate. You might want to use high-quality, high-contrast images with a 16:9 aspect ratio. YouTube will choose which frame it will display as the video thumbnail. The platform will present three screenshots that you can choose from; however, you can upload your image or select a shot of another moment in the video.

Remember that YouTube overlays the duration of the video in the corner of your thumbnail. So make sure it does not obstruct any relevant details in your thumbnail. Google also uses image recognition to filter out specific imagery, including the YouTube logo.

Ideally, you need an image that is a perfect visual representation of the keywords you are targeting. In turn, this is going to take your presence in relevant search results even further.

9. Make High-Quality Longer

Videos that are less than 2 minutes long often rank low. The duration of most of the videos in the first five positions is usually 11 minutes 44 seconds. Therefore, you need to invest in longer videos that are around 10 minutes long. These videos meet the expectations of many users seeking complete and in-depth content. Additionally, you should create high-quality videos to ensure your viewers will keep watching.

Create High-Quality YouTube Video with Filmora

Wondershare’s Filmora program allows you to edit your video content with trim, transitions, and overlays. You can also add cool effects to your videos to make them more captivating. It also includes advanced editing features like Key Framing, Motion Tracking and more. Learn about Filmora now!

Improve Your YouTube Video Performance with Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

10. Focus on User Engagement

Encourage your audience to like, comment, and share your videos. You should also respond to messages and comments. These engagement metrics strongly correlate with higher rankings.

Google cares about how people respond to your content because this is what keeps people on their platform.

11. Add End Screens and YouTube Cards

YouTube cards encourage viewers to take action during your video. The cards show up in the top right corner of your videos; users can click on and explore more. Using YouTube cards is an excellent way to boost your ranking. YouTube allows you to add a maximum of five cards to each video.

Conclusion

Using these YouTube SEO tips will ensure that your videos rank on top search results. That means more people will watch your videos and subscribe to your channel. Let’s start editing now!

Try It Free Try It Free

More than 85% of businesses use YouTube videos as a marketing tool. YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet, with users uploading over 500 hours of video content every minute. Because video SEO is constantly evolving, you need to stay current on optimization best practices to rank higher on search results.

Luckily, this article offers YouTube SEO tips to help you create a solid strategy that will help you rank your videos.

In this article

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

YouTube SEO is an excellent way to ensure your videos get more views. The main goal of YouTube SEO is to rank high for specific keywords in search engines. As such, it is crucial to know how YouTube SEO works if you want to boost the ranking of your videos.

Whether you are a blogger, market researcher, or video marketer, you need YouTube SEO to generate traffic to your videos. YouTube SEO involves optimizing your videos, channel, descriptions, metadata, and playlists. You can optimize videos for search within and outside YouTube.

Because search engine bots can’t watch YouTube videos, they depend on accompanying text data when indexing them. So you must also know how to harness the power of text in your video, which can positively impact SEO, viewership, engagement, and user experience.

Watch Video: YouTube SEO Tips 2022: Boost Your Video Ranking

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

Want to drive more traffic and increase your video views? Here are eleven YouTube SEO tips that will help you to boost your video ranking.

1. Conduct Keyword Research First

When it comes to YouTube SEO, keywords are crucial. YouTube uses these keywords to determine the subject of your video, index the content, and then associate it with what users are searching for. As such, you must add them to certain fields, including description, tags, and title, when you are uploading the video file. YouTube will then get this information and use it to rank your video.

For this reason, you have to know the keywords that best identify your videos and have the potential to attract viewers to your channel.

2. Use a Good Video Title

The title of your video is the first thing other people see, and it’s what decides whether or not they watch it. Given how important it is, you’ll want to make sure that your title accurately reflects the content of your video and includes all relevant keywords.

3. Link Your Videos Directly to Your Website

Each time you publish a new video, make sure you embed it on your website or blog. Not only will this encourage viewers to stay on your website instead of leaving immediately, but it will also make it easier for search engines crawlers to index your website.

4. Add Tags To The Video Description

When you upload your video, remember to add tags to the “About” section of the page. You can do this by adding some relevant keywords with each tag like you would with blog posts.

When planning your strategy for YouTube keywords, you need to find 10-20 single keyword tags you want to rank for; keep in mind that this platform limits the number of tags users can include in a video. So you should first add the most relevant keyword phrases then include specific multi-word tags that will easily rank on top of search results.

5. Edit The Filename

The filename of your video, or the “video URL,” can also affect its rankings. Including keywords in this section will help the crawlers index your video faster, which will increase its chances of ranking higher.

6. Add Subtitles and Closed Captions

Adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos is also a good idea, especially if you want the video’s ranking and viewership to improve. Subtitles make it easier for new viewers to understand your videos, especially if your audience comes from different linguistic backgrounds.

7. Select Video Category

When uploading a video, be sure to select the most appropriate category for it. Essentially, this helps with SEO optimization because choosing the right category means that YouTube’s algorithm will place your video in the proper search results. In turn, viewers will easily find your video and watch it.

8. Use a Compelling Thumbnail

Make sure you use the right YouTube video thumbnail image , as this makes a big difference in the click-through rate. You might want to use high-quality, high-contrast images with a 16:9 aspect ratio. YouTube will choose which frame it will display as the video thumbnail. The platform will present three screenshots that you can choose from; however, you can upload your image or select a shot of another moment in the video.

Remember that YouTube overlays the duration of the video in the corner of your thumbnail. So make sure it does not obstruct any relevant details in your thumbnail. Google also uses image recognition to filter out specific imagery, including the YouTube logo.

Ideally, you need an image that is a perfect visual representation of the keywords you are targeting. In turn, this is going to take your presence in relevant search results even further.

9. Make High-Quality Longer

Videos that are less than 2 minutes long often rank low. The duration of most of the videos in the first five positions is usually 11 minutes 44 seconds. Therefore, you need to invest in longer videos that are around 10 minutes long. These videos meet the expectations of many users seeking complete and in-depth content. Additionally, you should create high-quality videos to ensure your viewers will keep watching.

Create High-Quality YouTube Video with Filmora

Wondershare’s Filmora program allows you to edit your video content with trim, transitions, and overlays. You can also add cool effects to your videos to make them more captivating. It also includes advanced editing features like Key Framing, Motion Tracking and more. Learn about Filmora now!

Improve Your YouTube Video Performance with Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

10. Focus on User Engagement

Encourage your audience to like, comment, and share your videos. You should also respond to messages and comments. These engagement metrics strongly correlate with higher rankings.

Google cares about how people respond to your content because this is what keeps people on their platform.

11. Add End Screens and YouTube Cards

YouTube cards encourage viewers to take action during your video. The cards show up in the top right corner of your videos; users can click on and explore more. Using YouTube cards is an excellent way to boost your ranking. YouTube allows you to add a maximum of five cards to each video.

Conclusion

Using these YouTube SEO tips will ensure that your videos rank on top search results. That means more people will watch your videos and subscribe to your channel. Let’s start editing now!

Try It Free Try It Free

More than 85% of businesses use YouTube videos as a marketing tool. YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet, with users uploading over 500 hours of video content every minute. Because video SEO is constantly evolving, you need to stay current on optimization best practices to rank higher on search results.

Luckily, this article offers YouTube SEO tips to help you create a solid strategy that will help you rank your videos.

In this article

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

How Does YouTube SEO Work?

YouTube SEO is an excellent way to ensure your videos get more views. The main goal of YouTube SEO is to rank high for specific keywords in search engines. As such, it is crucial to know how YouTube SEO works if you want to boost the ranking of your videos.

Whether you are a blogger, market researcher, or video marketer, you need YouTube SEO to generate traffic to your videos. YouTube SEO involves optimizing your videos, channel, descriptions, metadata, and playlists. You can optimize videos for search within and outside YouTube.

Because search engine bots can’t watch YouTube videos, they depend on accompanying text data when indexing them. So you must also know how to harness the power of text in your video, which can positively impact SEO, viewership, engagement, and user experience.

Watch Video: YouTube SEO Tips 2022: Boost Your Video Ranking

11 Useful YouTube SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Video Ranking

Want to drive more traffic and increase your video views? Here are eleven YouTube SEO tips that will help you to boost your video ranking.

1. Conduct Keyword Research First

When it comes to YouTube SEO, keywords are crucial. YouTube uses these keywords to determine the subject of your video, index the content, and then associate it with what users are searching for. As such, you must add them to certain fields, including description, tags, and title, when you are uploading the video file. YouTube will then get this information and use it to rank your video.

For this reason, you have to know the keywords that best identify your videos and have the potential to attract viewers to your channel.

2. Use a Good Video Title

The title of your video is the first thing other people see, and it’s what decides whether or not they watch it. Given how important it is, you’ll want to make sure that your title accurately reflects the content of your video and includes all relevant keywords.

3. Link Your Videos Directly to Your Website

Each time you publish a new video, make sure you embed it on your website or blog. Not only will this encourage viewers to stay on your website instead of leaving immediately, but it will also make it easier for search engines crawlers to index your website.

4. Add Tags To The Video Description

When you upload your video, remember to add tags to the “About” section of the page. You can do this by adding some relevant keywords with each tag like you would with blog posts.

When planning your strategy for YouTube keywords, you need to find 10-20 single keyword tags you want to rank for; keep in mind that this platform limits the number of tags users can include in a video. So you should first add the most relevant keyword phrases then include specific multi-word tags that will easily rank on top of search results.

5. Edit The Filename

The filename of your video, or the “video URL,” can also affect its rankings. Including keywords in this section will help the crawlers index your video faster, which will increase its chances of ranking higher.

6. Add Subtitles and Closed Captions

Adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos is also a good idea, especially if you want the video’s ranking and viewership to improve. Subtitles make it easier for new viewers to understand your videos, especially if your audience comes from different linguistic backgrounds.

7. Select Video Category

When uploading a video, be sure to select the most appropriate category for it. Essentially, this helps with SEO optimization because choosing the right category means that YouTube’s algorithm will place your video in the proper search results. In turn, viewers will easily find your video and watch it.

8. Use a Compelling Thumbnail

Make sure you use the right YouTube video thumbnail image , as this makes a big difference in the click-through rate. You might want to use high-quality, high-contrast images with a 16:9 aspect ratio. YouTube will choose which frame it will display as the video thumbnail. The platform will present three screenshots that you can choose from; however, you can upload your image or select a shot of another moment in the video.

Remember that YouTube overlays the duration of the video in the corner of your thumbnail. So make sure it does not obstruct any relevant details in your thumbnail. Google also uses image recognition to filter out specific imagery, including the YouTube logo.

Ideally, you need an image that is a perfect visual representation of the keywords you are targeting. In turn, this is going to take your presence in relevant search results even further.

9. Make High-Quality Longer

Videos that are less than 2 minutes long often rank low. The duration of most of the videos in the first five positions is usually 11 minutes 44 seconds. Therefore, you need to invest in longer videos that are around 10 minutes long. These videos meet the expectations of many users seeking complete and in-depth content. Additionally, you should create high-quality videos to ensure your viewers will keep watching.

Create High-Quality YouTube Video with Filmora

Wondershare’s Filmora program allows you to edit your video content with trim, transitions, and overlays. You can also add cool effects to your videos to make them more captivating. It also includes advanced editing features like Key Framing, Motion Tracking and more. Learn about Filmora now!

Improve Your YouTube Video Performance with Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

10. Focus on User Engagement

Encourage your audience to like, comment, and share your videos. You should also respond to messages and comments. These engagement metrics strongly correlate with higher rankings.

Google cares about how people respond to your content because this is what keeps people on their platform.

11. Add End Screens and YouTube Cards

YouTube cards encourage viewers to take action during your video. The cards show up in the top right corner of your videos; users can click on and explore more. Using YouTube cards is an excellent way to boost your ranking. YouTube allows you to add a maximum of five cards to each video.

Conclusion

Using these YouTube SEO tips will ensure that your videos rank on top search results. That means more people will watch your videos and subscribe to your channel. Let’s start editing now!

Explore 6 Alternative Platforms for High-Quality YouTube Graphics

6 Completely Different Places to Get Icons and Logos for YouTube Videos

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.

We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.

• Flaticon.com
• Freepik.com
• Seeklogo.net
• IconArchive.com
• Logaster.com
• Icons8.com

You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .

1. Flaticon.com

Key Points:

• Great selection of icons/logos
• It’s easy to change the colors before you download

I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.

You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.

These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.

I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.

You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.

I never apologize for puns.

Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.

After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.

Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.

Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.

2. Freepik.com

Key Points:

• Good selection of icons.
• No way to customise them on the site.
• Attribution requried.

On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.

A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.

You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.

You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.

3. Seeklogo.net

Key Points:

• Logos from major brands
• Great for channels that do product reviews

Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.

In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.

I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.

Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).

4. IconArchive.com

Key Points:

• Site has an office/business slant.
• Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.

IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.

Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?

My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.

Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.

The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.

Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.

Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.

5. Logaster.com

Key Points:

• You’ll have to pay for larger images.
• Focused more on businesses.
• Incorporates your channel name.

Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.

You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.

When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.

In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.

My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:

There are 10 pages of suggestions!

You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.

After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.

I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.

6. Icons8.com

Key Points:

• You need to link back to them to use their icons.
• You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
• There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)

At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.

You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).

To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:

Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.

After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:

You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:

You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:

You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.

I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:

However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.

Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .

After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.

We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.

• Flaticon.com
• Freepik.com
• Seeklogo.net
• IconArchive.com
• Logaster.com
• Icons8.com

You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .

1. Flaticon.com

Key Points:

• Great selection of icons/logos
• It’s easy to change the colors before you download

I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.

You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.

These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.

I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.

You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.

I never apologize for puns.

Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.

After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.

Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.

Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.

2. Freepik.com

Key Points:

• Good selection of icons.
• No way to customise them on the site.
• Attribution requried.

On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.

A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.

You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.

You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.

3. Seeklogo.net

Key Points:

• Logos from major brands
• Great for channels that do product reviews

Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.

In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.

I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.

Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).

4. IconArchive.com

Key Points:

• Site has an office/business slant.
• Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.

IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.

Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?

My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.

Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.

The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.

Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.

Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.

5. Logaster.com

Key Points:

• You’ll have to pay for larger images.
• Focused more on businesses.
• Incorporates your channel name.

Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.

You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.

When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.

In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.

My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:

There are 10 pages of suggestions!

You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.

After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.

I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.

6. Icons8.com

Key Points:

• You need to link back to them to use their icons.
• You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
• There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)

At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.

You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).

To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:

Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.

After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:

You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:

You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:

You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.

I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:

However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.

Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .

After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.

We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.

• Flaticon.com
• Freepik.com
• Seeklogo.net
• IconArchive.com
• Logaster.com
• Icons8.com

You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .

1. Flaticon.com

Key Points:

• Great selection of icons/logos
• It’s easy to change the colors before you download

I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.

You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.

These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.

I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.

You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.

I never apologize for puns.

Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.

After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.

Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.

Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.

2. Freepik.com

Key Points:

• Good selection of icons.
• No way to customise them on the site.
• Attribution requried.

On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.

A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.

You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.

You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.

3. Seeklogo.net

Key Points:

• Logos from major brands
• Great for channels that do product reviews

Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.

In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.

I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.

Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).

4. IconArchive.com

Key Points:

• Site has an office/business slant.
• Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.

IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.

Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?

My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.

Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.

The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.

Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.

Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.

5. Logaster.com

Key Points:

• You’ll have to pay for larger images.
• Focused more on businesses.
• Incorporates your channel name.

Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.

You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.

When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.

In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.

My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:

There are 10 pages of suggestions!

You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.

After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.

I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.

6. Icons8.com

Key Points:

• You need to link back to them to use their icons.
• You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
• There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)

At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.

You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).

To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:

Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.

After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:

You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:

You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:

You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.

I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:

However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.

Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .

After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.

We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.

• Flaticon.com
• Freepik.com
• Seeklogo.net
• IconArchive.com
• Logaster.com
• Icons8.com

You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .

1. Flaticon.com

Key Points:

• Great selection of icons/logos
• It’s easy to change the colors before you download

I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.

You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.

These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.

I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.

You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.

I never apologize for puns.

Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.

After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.

Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.

Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.

2. Freepik.com

Key Points:

• Good selection of icons.
• No way to customise them on the site.
• Attribution requried.

On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.

A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.

You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.

You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.

3. Seeklogo.net

Key Points:

• Logos from major brands
• Great for channels that do product reviews

Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.

In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.

I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.

Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).

4. IconArchive.com

Key Points:

• Site has an office/business slant.
• Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.

IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.

Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?

My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.

Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.

The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.

Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.

Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.

5. Logaster.com

Key Points:

• You’ll have to pay for larger images.
• Focused more on businesses.
• Incorporates your channel name.

Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.

You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.

When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.

In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.

My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:

There are 10 pages of suggestions!

You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.

After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.

I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.

6. Icons8.com

Key Points:

• You need to link back to them to use their icons.
• You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
• There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)

At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.

You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).

To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:

Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.

After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:

You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:

You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:

You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.

I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:

However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.

Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .

After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Also read: