5 YouTube SEO Factors
This article is about how to rank your video in the first page in the youtube search engine results, or simply about youtube SEO. I will also talk about getting your videos ranked in google in another article as well, but that is a whole different game. I am astounded as how little information you can find about this on the internet… YouTube is the biggest video sharing – network on the internet and still there are no concrete guides for youtube SEO… Incredible!
I did some research, as you can see in this article right here (these are the analysis for the videos that rank in the top 3 positions for the term “get more youtube views”). I’ve also checked this for other keywords and the results are nearly identical… The interesting thing I want to note is that it seems that likes, subscribers and comments are not really important for ranking well on youtube, they have their significance but it is only minor compared to the other youtube seo factors I will talk about in this article.
So Here Are The Most Important YouTube SEO Factors:
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1) Title (exact match)
This is hands down the most important ranking factor in the youtube search engine. Videos with optimized title, tags and description that have 500 views uploaded from crappy channels can compete with poorly optimized videos that have over 2 million views.
2) Views
The number of views your video has is the second most important thing for youtube seo. Think of your youtube views as your main ranking power source and think of the video title as the main power navigator. With enough views your video can rank for any keyword.
3) Tags and Description selection (keyword density + semantic keywords use)
Think of these as additional ranking navigators. But ranking for the keywords that are only in the tags and description will only get a small percentage of the whole ranking power of the video. From what I have seen so far I think that description and tags only direct less than 10 percent of the total video power.
Another interesting thing I noticed at one point of this research was that if the title of a video response matched the keyword… the video gets some ranking boost. (almost identical videos, the one with the video response that matched the keyword was ranking higher even though it was 50-60k views shorter)
4) Age (old and extremely new)
Really old videos are given a nice ranking boost, especially for board terms like: “golf”, “parkour”… etc. However, extremely new videos are usually given a huge initial boost the first few days after they are launched. That’s why you can sometimes see a video with like 1000 views that ranks higher than videos with 10 million views. But for this to work, the video also needs to have a good title and description optimization.
5) Join Date
Users that joined a while ago are given more trust than the newer ones. However, I think that this only applies to ranking terms with less competition.
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So there you have it, the trick for good rank on youtube is good keyword selection (one that has less competition and a good amount of searches), video optimization for that keyword in the title, tags and description and then simply getting the views. If you continue pouring views in the video, it will eventually rank #1 for the targeted keyword. Then you can move on and create new videos for different keywords.
Another cool thing you can do, is to target some keywords that have literally no competition with your tags and video description, this will help you get more views so you can rank for your main keyword latter on.
I hope that these youtube seo tips helped, if you have any suggestions or feel like you have something related to share, feel free to post in the comment section below.
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How To Get Good Rank On YouTube,
And boost your EGO…
We all want to have our videos at the #1 position of YouTube because we know that it will bring us more youtube views, exposure, ratings, ego boost and success.
Before I go ahead with what I’ve discovered, I want to ask you a one question:
If you were in YouTube’s shoes how would you go about sepparating the junk from the videos that should truly rank?
(Just giving you a little time for you to think…)
Most people will tell you that the videos with most views should rank higher, which is true but not complete, since there are other factors that should be combined to determine your overall YouTube rank. Google uses more than 200 factors to determine who will rank on the first page of the search results for a particular keyword and since YouTube is owned by Google, I think they probably included some of thisese factors in the ranking algorithms of YouTube as well.
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So, I’ve extracted a list of everything that COULD possibly have some impact on your YouTube rank and separated them in few categories:
1) On Video Factors:
- Views
- Likes
- Comments
- Favourites
- Date
- Video Responses
- Tags
- Title
- Description
- Speed Of Getting Views/Ratings/Comments
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2) Background Factors (Channel Strength)
- Subscribers
- Friends
- Nummber of Videos
- Total amount of Video Views
- Channel Views
- Last Time Logged In
- Activity (Is the user part of the comunity?)
- Channel Information
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3) Off Video Factors
- Links
- Embeds on websites
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However these are only theoretical and in order to find out if they are practical in real life I’ve decided to take some time to analyse the top 3 videos ranking for the keyword “how to get more youtube views”. First I extracted all the required DATA and organised it in an excel spreadsheet,you can download it here:
How To Get More YouTube Views Spreadsheet
Then, I analysed the numbers and got some valuable information on the things that determine your YouTube rank. Scroll down to discover the results…
1) ON-Video Factor Analysis:
Title, Description and Tag optimization seem to direct the search terms from which the views will come to your video. The first video is clearly the best but as a result of poor tag selection it doesn’t rank in the first page for the equially important keyword : “increase youtube views” and as a result it doesn’t get views from there as well. A simple tweak here could easily increase the average views per day from 600 to 1000+
The third video has good is ranking on the third position for the keyword “increase youtube views” due to optimized Title, Description and proper tag usage.
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On-Video Factors Score:
Video 1 -> 9.5 points (-0.5 point for Title/tag/description optimization)
Video 2 -> 4 points (better response from the audience)
Video 3 -> 5 points (more views + clever Title/tag/description selection)
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Conclusion:
The results seem to match my expectations, all the factors we mentioned in the on page optimization are influencing the rank position for thiese videos. The amount of views seem to be a pretty important thing but the average nummber of “views per comment” and “views per like” seem to be almost equaly important.
Tag/Title/Description optimizations directly influence the search keywords you will rank for, so if you have a good score for the other factors you should try to target more competitive search phrases.
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2) Background Analysis (Channel Strenght):
Video 1 comes from a channel that is in a whole different league compared to the competition. It has over 500.000 subscribers with 173 milion views in total. Auch…
Video 2 and video 3 have similar stats. The video ranking in the second position comes from an older member and has more subscribers. However the video in the third position has significantly more channel views and views on all videos in total.
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Background Factors Score:
Video 1 –> 9 points
Video 2 –> 5 points
Video 3 –> 4 points
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Conclusion:
The results are coresponding to the postions in the serch results. It makes sence for youtube to give better rank for videos that come from highly trusted people. If someone has delivered quality material in the past he will probabbly do it again in the future so youtube can feel free to give him “ranking benefits”. However new users would probably get negative or no ranking benefits for their videos.
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3) OFF-Video Factors Analysis:
I expect these things to impact the ranks for the videos on Google more than on YouTube. After analyzing everything, it turns out that Video 2 is seriously and intentionally optimized for this keyword. It ranks in the on the 3rd place for the keyword “how to get more youtube views” while video 1 gets the 7th and video 3 is ranked on the 6th place.
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OFF Video Optimization Ranks:
Video 1 -> 4
Video 2 -> 7
Video 3 -> 0
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Conclusion:
The second video probably got to this position by attaining good rank in google first, then it used the leverage of the good rank in google to get more YouTube views, comments and likes that increased its rank on YouTube. Video 2 and Video 3 have similar strength of for the first 2 factors, but video 2 is a clear winner in the OFF video optimization category, so this is probably the reason why it ranks better than the third vid.
Another interesting thing to note here is that video 3 is included in the first page for our keyword search on google even though it has zero OFF video optimization. Does this mean that ranking well in youtube can bring you a good rank in Google as well? Probably yes.
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Overall rank: (max points – 30)
Video 1 : 9.5 + 9 + 4 = 22.5 points
Video 2 : 4 + 5 + 7 = 16 points
Video 3 : 5+4+0 = 9 poitns
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Overall Conclusion:
YouTube views, ratings and comments are only a part of the factors that determine your rank on YouTube for a certain search phrase. The video title, description and tags are equaly important, because they determine the search keywords for which your video will rank. A good background and a good channel will make it easy to attain a good rank for every new video you create. And finnaly, good rank on google will probabbly get you a good rank on youtube and inverse.
This is only one case study, a small scale test if you will. So we can’t be sure that all of the factors mentioned here are actaully considered by YouTube and if they are, we don’t really know how much importance they are given.
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What Should I Analyse next?
We will need more results to get clearer picture of this, thats why I decided to do another case study for a more competitive search phrase on YouTube. IF you have any suggestions or ideas about the next keyword I should analyse, leave a message in the comment section bellow.
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