"In 2024, Skyrocketing YouTube Popularity Through SEO Know-How"

"In 2024, Skyrocketing YouTube Popularity Through SEO Know-How"

Joseph Lv13

Skyrocketing YouTube Popularity Through SEO Know-How

YouTube SEO Guide: How to Improve Search Rankings For Your YouTube Videos

author avatar

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

  • On Video (Metadata)
  • Recommendations
  • Channel
  • User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

author avatar

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

  • On Video (Metadata)
  • Recommendations
  • Channel
  • User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

author avatar

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

  • On Video (Metadata)
  • Recommendations
  • Channel
  • User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

author avatar

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

  • On Video (Metadata)
  • Recommendations
  • Channel
  • User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

author avatar

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Critical Components Affecting YouTube Video Scores

Create High Quality YouTube Video - Wondershare Filmora

An easy and powerful YouTube video editor

Numerous video and audio effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

Try It Free Try It Free

Few social media mediums have grown more vital than YouTube. In certain instances, a good YouTube presence could make or break a business or budding entertainment sensation.

Those with high YouTube rankings typically yield more returns from the said venue. Luckily, users might increase these vital statistics by paying close attention to several factors that affect YouTube video ranking.

In this article

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

Top 8 YouTube Rank Tracker

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

If you are a YouTuber, you have to understand how videos rank higher. In turn, this will allow you to ensure your content appears in top search results more often. With that in mind, here are some factors that affect your YouTube ranking.

Video Title

factors that affect youtube video ranking

YouTube videos number in the many millions. Therefore, users enjoy a significant deal of variety when choosing which ones to view. YouTubers may yield a more favorable ranking by creating a catchy title.

On-page YouTube ranking optimization is crucial if you want to get a higher video ranking. Metadata is one of the YouTube ranking factors; this includes your video title. Essentially, titles give the first impression of any video to end users, YouTube, and search engines.

A well-titled video attracts more traffic, which translates to more views. Experts recommend using short titles that immediately get to the meat and potatoes of what the video entails. Avoid long titles as some devices, browsers, and search engines can cut them off.

Video titles should have five words or less. Don’t forget to place keywords at the beginning of the title. The keywords should also be relevant to your video.

Video Description

factors that affect youtube video ranking - video description

When many videos on the same or similar topics exist, content can seem repetitive to prospective viewers. Therefore, YouTubers should offer a short but detailed description of the information contained within. And above all, address how their video stands out from similar content.

Because Google and YouTube cannot extract information from videos, they use text descriptions to define the content on videos. Therefore, if you do not include a description, search engines won’t know what your video is about: this might affect your ranking.

Make sure your video description is 250 words or more. Additionally, include relevant and suitable keywords.

When writing the description, you can place the main keyword in your first 25 words and then link to external URLs; for instance, you could link to related blog content or your social media channels.

Video Quality

Poor quality is an immediate buzz kill. Few people can bear to watch a video with poor sound or picture quality. In many instances, quality is one of the YouTube ranking factors. HD (high-definition) videos rank higher than lower-quality ones. YouTube often highlights HD videos in its top search results.

Filmora can help you improve the quality of your videos, which will make them rank higher. The software allows you to edit your video and change its hue, brightness, saturation, and contrast. You can also crop, cut, and trim your videos.

What’s more? Filmora allows you to adjust output volume, pitch, fade-in, and fade-out to make your video clear. Once you have finished creating your HD video, you can head to the Export tab and select Upload to YouTube to publish your video on your channel.

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Watch Time

factors that affect youtube video ranking - watch time

Watch Time is also among the YouTube ranking factors. According to YouTube, Watch Time is the total length of time people spend watching your videos.

YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes videos leading to longer viewing sessions over the ones with more views. You can use Audience Retention Report and YouTube Analytics Views Report to find out which videos have the worst and best view times. Doing this will allow you to plan for your future content accordingly

Using annotations and leaving links to other videos in your description box can help you increase the length of your viewing sessions.

Thumbnails

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Thumbnails

Thumbnails have a positive effect on click-through rates when used the right way. You can use them to maximize your views and YouTube video ranking.

YouTube generates thumbnails by taking screenshots from videos. However, you might want to go for customized thumbnails, as this will allow you to stand out from your competitors and outperform their videos.

Make sure the image you use as your thumbnail is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the attention of viewers. Also, it should be relevant to the content in your video. Keep in mind that thumbnails with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1280-by-20-pixel resolution generally perform best.

Number of Views

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Number of Views

Views are a vital YouTube ranking factor, as people are more likely to watch videos with a high number of views. The more views your video has, the higher it will rank, especially for competitive keywords.

If you want to rank high for competitive keywords, ensure that your videos get loads of views. For this reason, you have to take steps and get your video content on other platforms. In turn, you will increase the visibility of your videos and view count.

You could embed your videos into your blog posts or share them on social media platforms to get more people to watch them.

Closed Captions and Subtitles

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Closed Captions and Subtitles

Adding captions to videos with spoken-word content can improve your YouTube video ranking. Essentially, it opens up your videos to a larger audience, including people who are deaf and anyone speaking a different language from the one in your videos. Search engines also crawl close captions, which can boost your rankings.

While YouTube offers automatic captioning, it is not perfect. So you may need to make some edits or upload the captions yourself.

How to Optimize Your YouTube Ranking

Focusing on User Engagement

One of the best YouTube ranking optimization practices that you can implement is asking users to leave comments, like your videos, and share them. YouTube analyzes these metrics to determine the quality of your content. Ergo, if YouTube sees your video is engaging users, it will rank higher than those with little or no engagement.

Using Video Hashtags

Hashtags help people to find content that provides answers to their questions across various platforms. Use related hashtags when creating your descriptions to ensure people find your videos when searching for specific hashtags.

Tags help drive search because they make main trends more visible. After adding a hashtag to the description, it will appear above the video title, and viewers will see it hyperlinked.

Categorizing Your Video

After uploading your video, you should categorize it by going to Advanced settings. By choosing a category, YouTube will group your videos with similar content. Viewers will find your quickly, as they will come in the right audience searches. In turn, this will help your videos to rank higher.

Conclusion

With 720,000 hours of video being uploaded every day to YouTube, getting your videos to rank high is challenging. But by paying attention to the above YouTube ranking factors, you can improve your video ranking.

Try It Free Try It Free

Few social media mediums have grown more vital than YouTube. In certain instances, a good YouTube presence could make or break a business or budding entertainment sensation.

Those with high YouTube rankings typically yield more returns from the said venue. Luckily, users might increase these vital statistics by paying close attention to several factors that affect YouTube video ranking.

In this article

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

Top 8 YouTube Rank Tracker

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

If you are a YouTuber, you have to understand how videos rank higher. In turn, this will allow you to ensure your content appears in top search results more often. With that in mind, here are some factors that affect your YouTube ranking.

Video Title

factors that affect youtube video ranking

YouTube videos number in the many millions. Therefore, users enjoy a significant deal of variety when choosing which ones to view. YouTubers may yield a more favorable ranking by creating a catchy title.

On-page YouTube ranking optimization is crucial if you want to get a higher video ranking. Metadata is one of the YouTube ranking factors; this includes your video title. Essentially, titles give the first impression of any video to end users, YouTube, and search engines.

A well-titled video attracts more traffic, which translates to more views. Experts recommend using short titles that immediately get to the meat and potatoes of what the video entails. Avoid long titles as some devices, browsers, and search engines can cut them off.

Video titles should have five words or less. Don’t forget to place keywords at the beginning of the title. The keywords should also be relevant to your video.

Video Description

factors that affect youtube video ranking - video description

When many videos on the same or similar topics exist, content can seem repetitive to prospective viewers. Therefore, YouTubers should offer a short but detailed description of the information contained within. And above all, address how their video stands out from similar content.

Because Google and YouTube cannot extract information from videos, they use text descriptions to define the content on videos. Therefore, if you do not include a description, search engines won’t know what your video is about: this might affect your ranking.

Make sure your video description is 250 words or more. Additionally, include relevant and suitable keywords.

When writing the description, you can place the main keyword in your first 25 words and then link to external URLs; for instance, you could link to related blog content or your social media channels.

Video Quality

Poor quality is an immediate buzz kill. Few people can bear to watch a video with poor sound or picture quality. In many instances, quality is one of the YouTube ranking factors. HD (high-definition) videos rank higher than lower-quality ones. YouTube often highlights HD videos in its top search results.

Filmora can help you improve the quality of your videos, which will make them rank higher. The software allows you to edit your video and change its hue, brightness, saturation, and contrast. You can also crop, cut, and trim your videos.

What’s more? Filmora allows you to adjust output volume, pitch, fade-in, and fade-out to make your video clear. Once you have finished creating your HD video, you can head to the Export tab and select Upload to YouTube to publish your video on your channel.

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Watch Time

factors that affect youtube video ranking - watch time

Watch Time is also among the YouTube ranking factors. According to YouTube, Watch Time is the total length of time people spend watching your videos.

YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes videos leading to longer viewing sessions over the ones with more views. You can use Audience Retention Report and YouTube Analytics Views Report to find out which videos have the worst and best view times. Doing this will allow you to plan for your future content accordingly

Using annotations and leaving links to other videos in your description box can help you increase the length of your viewing sessions.

Thumbnails

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Thumbnails

Thumbnails have a positive effect on click-through rates when used the right way. You can use them to maximize your views and YouTube video ranking.

YouTube generates thumbnails by taking screenshots from videos. However, you might want to go for customized thumbnails, as this will allow you to stand out from your competitors and outperform their videos.

Make sure the image you use as your thumbnail is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the attention of viewers. Also, it should be relevant to the content in your video. Keep in mind that thumbnails with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1280-by-20-pixel resolution generally perform best.

Number of Views

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Number of Views

Views are a vital YouTube ranking factor, as people are more likely to watch videos with a high number of views. The more views your video has, the higher it will rank, especially for competitive keywords.

If you want to rank high for competitive keywords, ensure that your videos get loads of views. For this reason, you have to take steps and get your video content on other platforms. In turn, you will increase the visibility of your videos and view count.

You could embed your videos into your blog posts or share them on social media platforms to get more people to watch them.

Closed Captions and Subtitles

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Closed Captions and Subtitles

Adding captions to videos with spoken-word content can improve your YouTube video ranking. Essentially, it opens up your videos to a larger audience, including people who are deaf and anyone speaking a different language from the one in your videos. Search engines also crawl close captions, which can boost your rankings.

While YouTube offers automatic captioning, it is not perfect. So you may need to make some edits or upload the captions yourself.

How to Optimize Your YouTube Ranking

Focusing on User Engagement

One of the best YouTube ranking optimization practices that you can implement is asking users to leave comments, like your videos, and share them. YouTube analyzes these metrics to determine the quality of your content. Ergo, if YouTube sees your video is engaging users, it will rank higher than those with little or no engagement.

Using Video Hashtags

Hashtags help people to find content that provides answers to their questions across various platforms. Use related hashtags when creating your descriptions to ensure people find your videos when searching for specific hashtags.

Tags help drive search because they make main trends more visible. After adding a hashtag to the description, it will appear above the video title, and viewers will see it hyperlinked.

Categorizing Your Video

After uploading your video, you should categorize it by going to Advanced settings. By choosing a category, YouTube will group your videos with similar content. Viewers will find your quickly, as they will come in the right audience searches. In turn, this will help your videos to rank higher.

Conclusion

With 720,000 hours of video being uploaded every day to YouTube, getting your videos to rank high is challenging. But by paying attention to the above YouTube ranking factors, you can improve your video ranking.

Try It Free Try It Free

Few social media mediums have grown more vital than YouTube. In certain instances, a good YouTube presence could make or break a business or budding entertainment sensation.

Those with high YouTube rankings typically yield more returns from the said venue. Luckily, users might increase these vital statistics by paying close attention to several factors that affect YouTube video ranking.

In this article

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

Top 8 YouTube Rank Tracker

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

If you are a YouTuber, you have to understand how videos rank higher. In turn, this will allow you to ensure your content appears in top search results more often. With that in mind, here are some factors that affect your YouTube ranking.

Video Title

factors that affect youtube video ranking

YouTube videos number in the many millions. Therefore, users enjoy a significant deal of variety when choosing which ones to view. YouTubers may yield a more favorable ranking by creating a catchy title.

On-page YouTube ranking optimization is crucial if you want to get a higher video ranking. Metadata is one of the YouTube ranking factors; this includes your video title. Essentially, titles give the first impression of any video to end users, YouTube, and search engines.

A well-titled video attracts more traffic, which translates to more views. Experts recommend using short titles that immediately get to the meat and potatoes of what the video entails. Avoid long titles as some devices, browsers, and search engines can cut them off.

Video titles should have five words or less. Don’t forget to place keywords at the beginning of the title. The keywords should also be relevant to your video.

Video Description

factors that affect youtube video ranking - video description

When many videos on the same or similar topics exist, content can seem repetitive to prospective viewers. Therefore, YouTubers should offer a short but detailed description of the information contained within. And above all, address how their video stands out from similar content.

Because Google and YouTube cannot extract information from videos, they use text descriptions to define the content on videos. Therefore, if you do not include a description, search engines won’t know what your video is about: this might affect your ranking.

Make sure your video description is 250 words or more. Additionally, include relevant and suitable keywords.

When writing the description, you can place the main keyword in your first 25 words and then link to external URLs; for instance, you could link to related blog content or your social media channels.

Video Quality

Poor quality is an immediate buzz kill. Few people can bear to watch a video with poor sound or picture quality. In many instances, quality is one of the YouTube ranking factors. HD (high-definition) videos rank higher than lower-quality ones. YouTube often highlights HD videos in its top search results.

Filmora can help you improve the quality of your videos, which will make them rank higher. The software allows you to edit your video and change its hue, brightness, saturation, and contrast. You can also crop, cut, and trim your videos.

What’s more? Filmora allows you to adjust output volume, pitch, fade-in, and fade-out to make your video clear. Once you have finished creating your HD video, you can head to the Export tab and select Upload to YouTube to publish your video on your channel.

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Watch Time

factors that affect youtube video ranking - watch time

Watch Time is also among the YouTube ranking factors. According to YouTube, Watch Time is the total length of time people spend watching your videos.

YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes videos leading to longer viewing sessions over the ones with more views. You can use Audience Retention Report and YouTube Analytics Views Report to find out which videos have the worst and best view times. Doing this will allow you to plan for your future content accordingly

Using annotations and leaving links to other videos in your description box can help you increase the length of your viewing sessions.

Thumbnails

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Thumbnails

Thumbnails have a positive effect on click-through rates when used the right way. You can use them to maximize your views and YouTube video ranking.

YouTube generates thumbnails by taking screenshots from videos. However, you might want to go for customized thumbnails, as this will allow you to stand out from your competitors and outperform their videos.

Make sure the image you use as your thumbnail is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the attention of viewers. Also, it should be relevant to the content in your video. Keep in mind that thumbnails with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1280-by-20-pixel resolution generally perform best.

Number of Views

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Number of Views

Views are a vital YouTube ranking factor, as people are more likely to watch videos with a high number of views. The more views your video has, the higher it will rank, especially for competitive keywords.

If you want to rank high for competitive keywords, ensure that your videos get loads of views. For this reason, you have to take steps and get your video content on other platforms. In turn, you will increase the visibility of your videos and view count.

You could embed your videos into your blog posts or share them on social media platforms to get more people to watch them.

Closed Captions and Subtitles

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Closed Captions and Subtitles

Adding captions to videos with spoken-word content can improve your YouTube video ranking. Essentially, it opens up your videos to a larger audience, including people who are deaf and anyone speaking a different language from the one in your videos. Search engines also crawl close captions, which can boost your rankings.

While YouTube offers automatic captioning, it is not perfect. So you may need to make some edits or upload the captions yourself.

How to Optimize Your YouTube Ranking

Focusing on User Engagement

One of the best YouTube ranking optimization practices that you can implement is asking users to leave comments, like your videos, and share them. YouTube analyzes these metrics to determine the quality of your content. Ergo, if YouTube sees your video is engaging users, it will rank higher than those with little or no engagement.

Using Video Hashtags

Hashtags help people to find content that provides answers to their questions across various platforms. Use related hashtags when creating your descriptions to ensure people find your videos when searching for specific hashtags.

Tags help drive search because they make main trends more visible. After adding a hashtag to the description, it will appear above the video title, and viewers will see it hyperlinked.

Categorizing Your Video

After uploading your video, you should categorize it by going to Advanced settings. By choosing a category, YouTube will group your videos with similar content. Viewers will find your quickly, as they will come in the right audience searches. In turn, this will help your videos to rank higher.

Conclusion

With 720,000 hours of video being uploaded every day to YouTube, getting your videos to rank high is challenging. But by paying attention to the above YouTube ranking factors, you can improve your video ranking.

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Few social media mediums have grown more vital than YouTube. In certain instances, a good YouTube presence could make or break a business or budding entertainment sensation.

Those with high YouTube rankings typically yield more returns from the said venue. Luckily, users might increase these vital statistics by paying close attention to several factors that affect YouTube video ranking.

In this article

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

Top 8 YouTube Rank Tracker

Factors that Affect YouTube Video Ranking

If you are a YouTuber, you have to understand how videos rank higher. In turn, this will allow you to ensure your content appears in top search results more often. With that in mind, here are some factors that affect your YouTube ranking.

Video Title

factors that affect youtube video ranking

YouTube videos number in the many millions. Therefore, users enjoy a significant deal of variety when choosing which ones to view. YouTubers may yield a more favorable ranking by creating a catchy title.

On-page YouTube ranking optimization is crucial if you want to get a higher video ranking. Metadata is one of the YouTube ranking factors; this includes your video title. Essentially, titles give the first impression of any video to end users, YouTube, and search engines.

A well-titled video attracts more traffic, which translates to more views. Experts recommend using short titles that immediately get to the meat and potatoes of what the video entails. Avoid long titles as some devices, browsers, and search engines can cut them off.

Video titles should have five words or less. Don’t forget to place keywords at the beginning of the title. The keywords should also be relevant to your video.

Video Description

factors that affect youtube video ranking - video description

When many videos on the same or similar topics exist, content can seem repetitive to prospective viewers. Therefore, YouTubers should offer a short but detailed description of the information contained within. And above all, address how their video stands out from similar content.

Because Google and YouTube cannot extract information from videos, they use text descriptions to define the content on videos. Therefore, if you do not include a description, search engines won’t know what your video is about: this might affect your ranking.

Make sure your video description is 250 words or more. Additionally, include relevant and suitable keywords.

When writing the description, you can place the main keyword in your first 25 words and then link to external URLs; for instance, you could link to related blog content or your social media channels.

Video Quality

Poor quality is an immediate buzz kill. Few people can bear to watch a video with poor sound or picture quality. In many instances, quality is one of the YouTube ranking factors. HD (high-definition) videos rank higher than lower-quality ones. YouTube often highlights HD videos in its top search results.

Filmora can help you improve the quality of your videos, which will make them rank higher. The software allows you to edit your video and change its hue, brightness, saturation, and contrast. You can also crop, cut, and trim your videos.

What’s more? Filmora allows you to adjust output volume, pitch, fade-in, and fade-out to make your video clear. Once you have finished creating your HD video, you can head to the Export tab and select Upload to YouTube to publish your video on your channel.

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Watch Time

factors that affect youtube video ranking - watch time

Watch Time is also among the YouTube ranking factors. According to YouTube, Watch Time is the total length of time people spend watching your videos.

YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes videos leading to longer viewing sessions over the ones with more views. You can use Audience Retention Report and YouTube Analytics Views Report to find out which videos have the worst and best view times. Doing this will allow you to plan for your future content accordingly

Using annotations and leaving links to other videos in your description box can help you increase the length of your viewing sessions.

Thumbnails

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Thumbnails

Thumbnails have a positive effect on click-through rates when used the right way. You can use them to maximize your views and YouTube video ranking.

YouTube generates thumbnails by taking screenshots from videos. However, you might want to go for customized thumbnails, as this will allow you to stand out from your competitors and outperform their videos.

Make sure the image you use as your thumbnail is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the attention of viewers. Also, it should be relevant to the content in your video. Keep in mind that thumbnails with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1280-by-20-pixel resolution generally perform best.

Number of Views

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Number of Views

Views are a vital YouTube ranking factor, as people are more likely to watch videos with a high number of views. The more views your video has, the higher it will rank, especially for competitive keywords.

If you want to rank high for competitive keywords, ensure that your videos get loads of views. For this reason, you have to take steps and get your video content on other platforms. In turn, you will increase the visibility of your videos and view count.

You could embed your videos into your blog posts or share them on social media platforms to get more people to watch them.

Closed Captions and Subtitles

factors that affect youtube video ranking -Closed Captions and Subtitles

Adding captions to videos with spoken-word content can improve your YouTube video ranking. Essentially, it opens up your videos to a larger audience, including people who are deaf and anyone speaking a different language from the one in your videos. Search engines also crawl close captions, which can boost your rankings.

While YouTube offers automatic captioning, it is not perfect. So you may need to make some edits or upload the captions yourself.

How to Optimize Your YouTube Ranking

Focusing on User Engagement

One of the best YouTube ranking optimization practices that you can implement is asking users to leave comments, like your videos, and share them. YouTube analyzes these metrics to determine the quality of your content. Ergo, if YouTube sees your video is engaging users, it will rank higher than those with little or no engagement.

Using Video Hashtags

Hashtags help people to find content that provides answers to their questions across various platforms. Use related hashtags when creating your descriptions to ensure people find your videos when searching for specific hashtags.

Tags help drive search because they make main trends more visible. After adding a hashtag to the description, it will appear above the video title, and viewers will see it hyperlinked.

Categorizing Your Video

After uploading your video, you should categorize it by going to Advanced settings. By choosing a category, YouTube will group your videos with similar content. Viewers will find your quickly, as they will come in the right audience searches. In turn, this will help your videos to rank higher.

Conclusion

With 720,000 hours of video being uploaded every day to YouTube, getting your videos to rank high is challenging. But by paying attention to the above YouTube ranking factors, you can improve your video ranking.

  • Title: "In 2024, Skyrocketing YouTube Popularity Through SEO Know-How"
  • Author: Joseph
  • Created at : 2024-05-31 13:46:00
  • Updated at : 2024-06-01 13:46:00
  • Link: https://youtube-stream.techidaily.com/in-2024-skyrocketing-youtube-popularity-through-seo-know-how/
  • License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.