Hi Randy,
I am not an expert, but I do regularly cut my projects in Premiere for 1080p playback on Youtube.
The settings I aim for are:
Format: H.264
Width: 1,920
Height: 1,080
Frame Rate: 29.97
Field Order: Progressive
Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)
TV Standard: NTSC
Profile: Main
Level: 5.1
Bitrate: VBR 2 Pass with a target of 24Mbps and max of 25mbps
I usually use Media Encoder so that Premiere is not tied up exporting.
Hope that helps! I’m open to suggestions, too.
Cheers,
-Daniel