Do you want to stop wasting time on old ranking methods that no longer work on YouTube?
YouTube is constantly changing the ways that they rank videos, so the old ways no longer
work even though people still keep using them.
In this video, I dispel the top 10 myths associated with ranking videos on YouTube.
Hello, my name is Herman Drost.
If you want to grow your audience on YouTube and generate traffic, leads, and sales on
autopilot, hit the subscribe button and click the bell notification icon so that you'll
be notified whenever I upload new videos.
Number one, it's too competitive.
Many people don't start a YouTube channel because when they search a topic on YouTube,
they discover there's already many channels creating content for that topic.
The truth is that if you do proper keyword research, you can find a ton of keywords that
are less competitive than the ones that are being used for the big channels.
For example, if you enter a keyword phrase in the YouTube search box, you'll get a bunch
of suggestions.
You can also use AnswerThePublic to find questions related to your topic.
The key is to find longtail keyword phrases of three to six words instead of keyword phrases
of one or two words.
These will be more competitive.
Click the link in the card to watch my video on how to research less competitive keywords.
Number two, you need lots of subscribers.
The truth is even small channels can rank for specific keywords.
The key is to find less competitive keywords that you can rank for.
For example, instead of choosing a phrase like "How to train puppies", you might select
a less competitive keyword phrase like "How to train puppies not to bite".
You might see some large channels that are dominating the first one or two positions
on the first page of YouTube.
Even though you're a small channel, you might be able to rank the same keyword phrase from
positions 3 to 10.
As long as your video ranks on the first page of YouTube, you'll get a lot of traffic.
If you get multiple rankings for multiple keyword phrases, then you'll get a river of
traffic.
Number three, you need tons of backlinks.
One of the main ranking factors of YouTube is watch time.
That means the longer somebody watches your video or successive videos in a row, the higher
probability your video will appear on YouTube search and YouTube suggested videos.
Throwing a ton of backlinks at the video is not going to make any difference to your rankings.
Truth is, you need to optimize your video watch page.
That means you need to optimize the title, description, and tags with the keywords that
you've researched.
You also need to create a clickable thumbnail that gets a high click-through rate.
The holy grail of getting high rankings on YouTube is to have a high click-through rate
on the YouTube thumbnail and a high audience retention or high watch time.
If a lot of people click on your thumbnails, then YouTube will surface more of your videos
to a larger audience.
If you keep viewers engaged throughout your video, there's a higher probability that your
video will appear in search and YouTube suggested videos.
Click the link in the card to watch my video on how to rank videos in 2019, 2020 and beyond.
Number four, longer videos rank higher than shorter videos.
Let me ask you a question.
If you create two videos, one that's 20 minutes long and one that's 10 minutes long, if a
person watches a 20-minute video and leaves after the first minute, compared to the 10-minute
video, whether they watch it for 5 minutes, which video would rank better?
Obviously, it would be the 10-minute video because of watching 50% of the video.
The key to ranking your video is to keep your viewers engaged throughout the video.
Number five, you need 500 words in the description to rank your videos.
The truth is the description is not one of the main ranking factors for YouTube.
According to YouTube, you should place your best keywords at the beginning of your description.
The first three lines should summarize the content of your video.
The rest description of the description, you'd include links to playlists, videos, and your
social media sites.
Number six, place keywords in your file name.
The truth is, it makes no difference to put keywords in your file name.
The only benefit I can think of is that it'll be easier to recognize the file on your computer.
Number seven, dislikes will hurt my rankings.
The truth is dislikes don't make any difference to the rankings of your videos.
Any engagement on your video, whether it's likes, dislikes, and comments is a benefit
to your video, so don't worry about dislikes.
Number eight, YouTube gives preferential treatment to videos that have advertising enabled.
The truth is, whether they have advertise enabled or not enabled, it doesn't make any
difference to the rankings of your videos.
Instead of trying to figure out what the YouTube algorithm wants, create content that your
audience wants to watch and the algorithm will follow.
Focus on the top ranking factors like watch time, audience retention, and thumbnail click-through
rate.
If you concentrate on getting high percentages in those areas, your videos will do well.
Number nine, if you upload videos as unlisted and later flip them to public, then YouTube
will penalize you.
The truth, according to YouTube, is that your videos won't be penalized if you upload them
early.
What matters is how your video performs after you publish it.
Number 10, my videos should rank higher because I've optimized the titles and descriptions.
The truth is that YouTube uses thousands of signals to rank YouTube videos.
As I mentioned before, you should focus on the top ranking factors
such as watch time, audience retention, and a high click-through rate for your thumbnails.
If you do well in those areas, you'll have a high probability of ranking in YouTube search.
Do you know of any other ranking myths that need to be dispelled?
Let me know in the comments below.
I'd love to read them and I'm sure others would, too.
If you want to know how to rank your YouTube videos in 2019, 2020 and beyond, then watch
my next video over here.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.