There are more than a handful factors giving impact to your YouTube rankings. While some are ranking signals might be rather easy to figure out, there are also a few you might never heard about before. Let’s start with the actual content and how to describe it.
YouTube content signals
The video itself, how it’s translated and emphasized can make a huge difference. Here are the six most important YouTube content factors:
1. Relevant titles
Just like with search engine optimisation, titles seriously matters. In fact, YouTube titles are one of the most important factors. Titles for YouTube videos should sounds interesting leading to to high CTR, while being relevant at the same time so users don’t bounce when seeing the actual video.
2. Create descriptions
Both website description and YouTube descriptions can make a big difference. However, don’t limit YouTube descriptions to 160 characters. You can benefit from creating a longer description; between 250-500 words is often a good length. Make them interesting and add keywords people use in a natural manner. Don’t be afraid to put in a link or two as well.
3. Having enough tags?
While you should be careful not using all too many tags for blog post, YouTube is different. You should use at least 10 tags because if a tag is not there (singular, plural or keywords), you might not be found since YouTube don’t do any semantic matching yet. Tags are basically keywords so make sure to do you keyword research before adding tags.
4. Manual YouTube transcriptions
Many people never heard of YouTube transcriptions as a ranking factor. YouTube attempt to do a transcript of what’s being said in the video and it is also an indexing factor. The problem is that they are not so good doing the transcripts yet. Therefore, most YouTube specialists recommend going through the transcript and change it to become a perfect translation of the video content.
5. Channel authority
Authority comes after frequent updates of you channel with high quality videos. If your videos get many views, likes and comments the YouTube authority increase.
6. Creating useful YouTube videos
Like with any type of content, you need to make it excellent to gain visitors, new followers and likes. Do your research and try to make something unique and different. Try to answer potential visitor queries and make it interesting enough for people to comment, hitting the like button or even embed your video on their site.
YouTube engagement signals
While incoming links, social shares and comments are very important ranking factors, there are also a number of engagement signals to consider.
7. Amount of views
The more views your video gets the better. However, it’s also about engagement. Users quitting watching half ways are a bad sign, while a high degree of users watching the entire video is a good ranking signal.
8. Inbound links
Just like with website optimisation, backlinks really matters for YouTube rankings. Focus on quality backlinks over quantity, even if the amount of links also is a factor. Focus on getting both channel links and links to specific videos.
9. Social shares
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg can give huge amount of traffic if your video gets popular.
10. Embedding your video
The more people embedding your piece of content, the better ranking you can expect. Video embeds are obvious a way of showing they really like the video and YouTube care about the amount of embeds and how many powerful sites sharing your clips.
11. Do you get any comments?
YouTube comments are a form of engagement that is measured in the ranking algorithm. Try to answer questions from users and ask your friends to engage as well.
12. YouTube likes
In contradiction to Facebook, there are both like and dislike buttons at YouTube. Getting many likes (thumbs up) are obviously the most positive, while many negative votes (thumbs down) might be a sign you need to change one or many things in your video creation. If you’re getting many users taking action and make the video a favourite, it’s another good factor.
Rather see a video about this? Check out what Jeff has to say:
Credit to Whiteboard Friday and Jeff McRitchie (mybinding.com) for inspiration.