Are you confused about how to rank your videos on YouTube?
In this video, I share the top 10 ranking factors that YouTube recommends so your videos
can be found in YouTube search, YouTube suggested videos, and on the Home screen.
Hello, My name is Herman Drost.
If you want to grow your audience on YouTube and generate traffic leads and sales on autopilot,
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You put a lot of time into making your videos, so it's important to understand the top ranking
factors that help your videos get discovered on YouTube.
The two most important factors are to help viewers find the videos they wish to watch
and to maximize viewer engagement.
I'll expand on these factors more deeply so make sure you watch this videos all the way
through so you can apply it to your own channel.
A lot of people ask, what does YouTube algorithm like the most?
Instead of worrying about what the algorithm likes, think about what content your audience
likes the most and the algorithm will follow.
Keep in mind that YouTube users aren't ranking signals, but I'm just going to share with
you the top 10 signals that YouTube recommends and the ones that I've used based upon my
experience.
Here are the top three places where your YouTube videos will be discovered on YouTube.
Number one, Search.
This is where YouTube shows the most relevant videos based upon the terms that people are
typing into the YouTube search box.
The videos are ranked based upon how well the title, description, and video content
match the query that the person has typed into the YouTube search box.
Number two, suggested.
Suggested videos are personalized videos based upon what an individual viewer wants to watch
next, and based upon their prior activity.
They're shown on the right side of the watch page, below the video on the YouTube app,
and as a next video in autoplay.
Number three, home.
The Home screen is what viewers see first when they open the YouTube app or go to youtube.com.
This is where YouTube shows the most relevant and personalized recommendations for each
viewer.
It's also the place where your videos will be found by non-subscribers.
Here are the top 10 ranking factors for 2019.
Number one, thumbnails.
The thumbnail is what a viewer sees first when they enter a query in the YouTube search
box.
90% of the best performing videos are based upon custom thumbnails, so make sure you create
an attractive thumbnail.
You can do this by using contrasting colors and bold text.
Make sure it also looks good whether it's large or small.
Take a look at the thumbnails of your competitors and see if your thumbnail will stand out amongst
them.
Make sure you use a high resolution and keep it under two megabytes.
The typical dimensions I use are 1920 by 1080 pixels.
Click the link in the card to watch my video on how to create clickable thumbnails.
You can check if your thumbnails get a high click-through rate by going to YouTube Studio
Beta.
If you get a high click-through rate, it means that many viewers are clicking on your thumbnail.
If you go to your Audience retention report and see a sharp drop-off in the first few
seconds, it means that your content is not delivering what you promised in your thumbnail
and title.
Number two, title.
Your thumbnails and titles are what viewers see first and should give a preview of what
kind of content is coming up next.
Keep your title short because you only have 60 characters before the title will be cut
off.
Put your most important information up front and include your main keywords.
Videos that contain an exact matched keyword in the title tend to do a little better than
videos that don't.
For example, in this video, I used the main keyword phrase "YouTube Ranking Factors" as
my title then added 2019 to make it more relevant.
Make sure you also mention your title when you begin talking about your content at the
start of your video.
Avoid misleading, clickbaity, or sensational thumbnails and titles.
You want your thumbnails and titles to accurately represent the content that you are talking
about.
Also, avoid making your titles all capitals or using symbols in your titles.
Number three, description.
According to YouTube, descriptions can convey valuable information that helps viewers find
your videos in search results and understand what they'll be watching.
Well-written descriptions with the right keywords can boost views and watch time because they
help your video show up in search results.
I usually summarize my video content within the first three lines of my description because
it appears under my video.
YouTube recommends placing your most important keywords at the beginning of your description.
Identify similar keyword phrases that you can put in your description and your tags
using Google Trends or the Google Keyword Planner.
This will help maximize your traffic from YouTube search.
Avoid adding words in your description that don't relate to your video.
The rest of your description you can include links to other videos, playlists, and social
media sites.
This is what viewers will see when they click "show more."
Instead of wasting time creating a new description for each video, set your default description
in the upload defaults feature.
Hashtags.
YouTube recently introduced hashtags that appear as clickable links below your video.
You can add relevant hashtags in your description to help viewers find your videos.
Click the link in the card to watch my video on how to quickly add hashtags to your videos.
Number four, tags, tags are less important than thumbnails and titles, but it helps make
your video be relevant.
Include your title in the first tag, then find similar keyword phrases for your other
tags.
One of the ways to do this is to look at your competitors' tags and use some of them for
your own tags.
Just make sure that they're relevant to the topic of your video.
Click the link in the card to watch my tutorial on how to find the correct tags for your videos.
Number five, video quality.
You want to give your viewers the best view and experience, so make sure your videos are
high definition.
YouTube highlights high definition videos in the search results.
If you display a poor quality video, it might annoy your viewers and you lose viewers and
subscribers.
You also get a lot of dislikes.
Branding, even though branding doesn't directly affect your video rankings.
It helps boost your brand and engagement.
This can lead to more viewers, subscribers, shares, and views.
One way to do this is to include a branded intro at the start of your video.
YouTube also offers watermark feature that enables you to brand all the videos across
your channel.
I'll place a link to this video in the card.
Number six, watch time.
YouTube promotes videos that keep people on YouTube for a long period of time, the longer
the better.
[unintelligible 00:06:09] keep people engaged throughout your video, there's a high probability
your video will appear in YouTube search and YouTube suggested videos.
If your viewers watch a series of videos one after another, this will keep them log on
the video platform.
There are four additional metrics which are part of watch time.
Session starts refers to how many viewing sessions your video starts.
This can come from all over the web such as your social media sites, your website, and
other websites.
The more session start times you get the better, because it means you're getting a lot of engagement.
Session duration is a total amount of time someone spends watching your video on YouTube.
You can see where your sessions begin by going into YouTube analytics.
They can come from your browse features such as your home screen, subscription feed, they
can come from suggested videos and even other YouTube channels.
You can increase session duration by putting your videos into a playlist.
If somebody starts watching one video in your playlist, they might end up watching a whole
bunch of videos.
Session ends refers to videos that drive people off YouTube.
For example, if you link to a website in the card earlier on in the video, you're taking
people off the YouTube platform.
This ends the viewing session of your video and will result in a short amount of watch
time.
Instead, it's better to redirect people to external links at the end of your video.
Another item that impacts watch time is upload frequency.
According to YouTube's creator academy document.
Publishing regularly also provides more opportunities for your videos to surface in YouTube's automated,
recommended and related video sections.
Basically, this means that your video gets more opportunities to be featured.
The main takeaway about all things included in watch time is to keep people watching as
long as possible on your video or successive videos.
Well, the best ways to see if viewers are watching your video all the way through is
look at your audience retention graph.
Number seven, audience retention.
Absolute audience retention shows a number of views for your video as percentage of a
total percentage of views for your video.
Relative audience retention compares your video with other videos of similar length.
When your graph is higher, it indicates how many viewers kept watching your video compared
to other videos of similar length.
Great audience retention is shown on the first graph which starts at a hundred percent, and
remains flat throughout the duration.
This means it kept viewers engaged.
The second graph shows a sharp drop off in the first 10 or 15 seconds.
This means that your video content is not delivering what you promised in the thumbnail
and title.
The third graph pinpoints engagement changes.
The rising curve may mean that viewers are re-watching your video.
Depths in the curve means that people are leaving or skipping that area of your video.
The fourth graph shows a normal decline in your audience retention.
A gradual decline means that viewers are losing a little bit of their attention over the duration
of the video.
A sharp decline means that something in your video caused them to stop watching.
Average view duration is part of audience retention.
It refers to the estimated average minutes watched per view for the date range and the
content.
For high rankings, you want to shoot for a high click-through rate on your thumbnails
as well as a high average view duration.
Number eight, subtitles and closed captions.
This exposes your content to a larger audience such as deaf or hard of hearing viewers.
When you upload a transcript of your video content, it makes the content quotable by
the search engines.
This helps increase your video's rankability.
Just keep in mind that YouTube's automatic captions are not very accurate, so you have
to make some edits.
Click the link in the card to watch my video on how you can transcribe your video content.
Number nine, engagement.
When you publish your video, you also want to promote it so you get a lot of engagement.
The more engagement you're getting in the first 24 or 48 hours the better, because it
shows YouTube that a lot of people are interested in your content.
This is often referred to as view velocity.
Number 10, view velocity.
If you go to YouTube Studio Beta and click on overview, you see a latest activity for
the video you've just uploaded.
It will show you the live stats for the last 60 minutes and last 48 hours.
If you're using YouTube Classic, you can look under the real-time reports.
You'll be able to see hour by hour statistics or minute by minute data.
What's the biggest takeaway from these top 10 ranking factors?
I think the top three ranking factors are your thumbnails, your titles, and your watch
time which includes audience retention and average view duration.
If you get a high clicks through rate and a high average view duration or watch time,
then your videos will do well in search and YouTube suggested videos.
Another way to reach a larger audience is to translate your videos into another language
besides English.
If you want to learn how to translate your videos into another language, watch the next
video over here.
You will discover how to translate your titles, description, and tags into another language.
Thanks for watching.
I will see you in the next video.