YouTube… and search… how do you get your videos to the top of the page when people search?
SEO. Search Engine Optimization. Ever heard of it? The buzz word to get your webpages to the top of Google search!
YouTube follows similar but different rules! In this article, you’ll find out how to get your videos to the top of YouTube search. This is the general formula for success on YouTube!
1) Quality of your videos
I know. Quality? So obvious, right? Well, not exactly. 300 hours of new videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute. 90% of those videos are not worth anything because of the quality of their content is terrible.
YouTube is all about the presentation quality! Ramp up the quality of your videos and get rewarded!
People watch your videos because you have something to provide. Views come from people watching your videos.
And at the end of the day, people keep coming because the quality of the content that your videos provide are exactly what they’re looking for.
Quality depends on the category of your video. Categories like entertainment, how to, sports, vlogs, and more. What is your video about?
How do I improve the quality of my videos? Editing and equipment. First and foremost, careful editing comes a long way to getting that high-tier quality! The trend is:
5 minute clips. You don’t have to stick strictly to this rule, but make sure that your video is short and sweet. People don’t have time to watch your video. Shorter may be better.
Get to the point and squeeze so much content into a video that they are blown away how thoughtful and interesting it is.
5 minute clips are harder than you think. If you want to make a clip that gets you views and subscribers, that 5 minute clip has to take at least 6 hours and more of editing.
Quality above all makes your video. The content that you provide is everything.
2) Uniqueness
What do I mean by uniqueness? I am saying that you should not vlog about your life out of nowhere if you are filming yourself and talking about random stuff.
More likely than not, if you are filming yourself randomly without much thought and going on about random topics that you’re not familiar with, you aren’t making a very unique videos.
Different type of videos get more views, but if you are copying that Call of Duty million subscriber gamer without making clips as good as he or she is, you will never make it to the top of YouTube search.
YouTube is a battlefield. YouTube is a merciless jungle. Top YouTubers will eat you alive!
It’s a competition whether you like it or not. You play for keeps! If you aren’t making quality content that is better or unique in some way within your niche, then you’re doing something wrong.
Brand name is everything. What does your channel provide? What are you good at making videos about?
These questions go back to your uniqueness. You have something that only you provide. And uniqueness goes back to quality too.
Whether viewers come back for your quality, personality, how you edit your videos, or something that you do so well compared to others, they come back because you’re unique in that aspect.
If you’re unique and have content that only you provide, you’ll always start climbing higher in YouTube search!
3) People sharing your video
YouTube search works similarly to Google search when it comes to finding the top hits. If people share your video on their blogs, Reddit, or social media like Facebook and Twitter, you’re doing the right thing.
It does not matter if the reasons they’re sharing are good or bad, you’re getting the word of your video out, and a share guarantees views.
How do you get people to share your video? Get a good quality and unique video that’s unbelievable! Think to yourself. What videos have I shared in the past with my friends? What videos have I seen shared to me?
Think long about these two questions and shape your videos to get the same type of quality and category that will make people share your video as well!
Every category has their audience. Try to fit the needs of your audience and see what they want!
Creating the best, share-able video is hard! It’s trial and error as you experiment with what you have learned from your experiences from being the viewer and content creator.
You’ll get a formula to make the type of videos that people will want to share with their friends.
Shares on your video result in more views and subscribers. As a result, sharing gets your video higher up in YouTube’s search for the title topic.
4) Title, Tags, Description, and Thumbnails
Even having the most amazing video in the world, if you don’t pay attention to your title, description, tags, and thumbnail of your video, then you can easily be overshadowed by worse content.
Title:
The title of the video is very important. It’s the most relevant to YouTube search. It has precedence over the other categories. People search for the title of your video, and YouTube search takes that to consideration.
First of all, let me discuss about general titles. Let’s say that you name your video, “Balloon.” Having general titles puts your video up against any popular video that has balloon in their title.
Unless your video has top quality, or you gets shares from web media elsewhere because your video content is so good, no one will be able to find your video in the first place!
On the other hand, you can’t name your videos too specific. You need to focus on the right things. You cannot write “Driving to Market Basket and Buying Milk in Kansas City.”
This title is random, oddly specific, and does not spark interest. What you want to do with the title is hit the balance of hot topics, buzz words, and give a general idea of what your video is about.
For example, if you are doing a video about GTA V (video game) and having fun in the game with your friends in a parody montage, you surely wouldn’t use the full name, Grand Theft Auto Five, instead of GTA V.
Use the names that people are more familiar with. You’d name the video something on the lines of “GTA V: Funny Moments – Parachuting Stuntman.”
With this title, I’m using hot topics and keywords like GTA V while giving the correct impression that this video is one of those parody montages and also providing an idea of what happens in the video.
Tags:
If you want to be serious about YouTube search, tags are second after titles to think carefully about. YouTube search also finds your video with references to your tags.
Let’s talk about the GTA V example. You’d want to include tags like GTA, V, Funny, Moments, Parachuting, Stuntman. Additionally, you’d want to include tags like “GTA V Funny Moments Parachuting Stuntman.”
On YouTube, you can have single word tags or multiple word tags. Take advantage of both! Give tags about the console. Put tags of different names for your title content like “Grand Theft Auto Five”.
Always give tags on the title of your video, category, and what the video is about.
Description:
Description does not matter as much as the title or tags, but it’s still something to talk about. The description relates mostly to sharing.
The amount of sentences in your description should be unique, but it does not have to explain anything. You can leave a couple of sentences with a witty, funny comment or something that strikes interest about your video.
Leave links to what your video refers about. Give credit where it’s due. But more importantly, when I mentioned about sharing, I meant also to leave your social media links in the description. It will come a long way!
Leaving your social media links in the description is important because you want people to follow your whereabouts and watch your videos in the future.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Personal Website.
It’s like being a businessman. You’ve presented a potential buyer a great product, but that relationship of buyer and seller does not disappear. They may buy from you again, so you’ll keep in touch with them.
In YouTube terms, all the different social media helps your YouTube video appear higher in search, so keep the people who subscribe to you as followers on Twitter, and likes on Facebook, and followers on Instagram.
Thumbnails:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Any YouTuber as of today can change the thumbnail of your video. The thumbnail is the picture that gives the image preview of the clip.
YouTube recommends a size of 1280 by 720 on thumbnail images. Viewers who go around YouTube always look at these thumbnails.
Spend a couple of hours, thinking of a great way to attract the clips to watch your great content. Put some personality in those thumbnails!
Put words with a nice font on those thumbnails, and in the background, give a tantalizing background image underneath the words. If you don’t have a photo editing program on your computer, use online photoshop!
Pixlr: https://pixlr.com
5) Getting likes, dislikes, comments, and favorites
The last step to getting on the top of YouTube search is getting those likes, dislikes, comments, and favorites. Did I say dislikes?
Yes, I did say dislikes. YouTube search works by considering the full picture of activity of your video.
If you get more activity no matter what it is, you’ll get views, and YouTube will place you on the top of YouTube search!
Likes, dislikes, comments, and favorites correlates most closely with the quality and topic of your content.
I’ve told you the most picture of YouTube search. Follow the formula, work on the five steps, and you’ll get massively more hits on YouTube because your videos will climb to the top of YouTube search!
Dreams won’t work unless you do. These steps require time and commitment, but you’ll never get to the top of YouTube search without a bit of labor.
