5 Easy Steps to Get Your Videos Ranking on Youtube
- Last Updated on
- July 3, 2023
- by Phil Wilson
If you’ve ever uploaded a video on Youtube before only to find it’s not sitting at the top of the search result, you’re not alone. In this article, I’ll teach you how to easily get your videos ranking on Youtube.
One of the most mind blowing things I’ve seen so far in the 21st century, is the amount of YouTubers who make millions of dollars without any real genius skill. It baffled me for years how everyday people could create videos for YouTube and get crazy success. Then one day, I thought screw it! I’ll try it myself and see what happens!.
And guess what happened?
Nothing… I wasn’t an overnight success or getting crazy amounts of views, or any views for that matter.
That was until I decided to reverse engineer a video from a blogger that I followed at the time. He shot a video that was terribly done, yet it had 20,000 views and continued to grow.
Then after my research, I replicated his video and uploaded it. Sure enough after a few months of being online it gained a few thousands views. After a few more, it reached 5,000. Finally after a year of being up, that one video on an empty channel reached 10,000 views.
I dug deep into the analytics and from that created a solid strategy on how to get videos ranking on Youtube. We’ll go through the findings now.
Note: The video was about accommodation in Chiang Mai, Thailand which was becoming a Digital Nomad hotspot back in 2015, since then I’ve dissolved that entire channel as it was for learning purposes.
One of my small channels with less than 20 videos has 10x first place rankings, and the other 10x between second and 5th place. Not bad, right? This is the tool I use to monitor my rankings.
Rules for Youtube Video Ranking
The first thing to do is really understand what the Youtube platform actually is, who owns it, how it wants its users to experience it and what is known to work on it. When you do a bit of research and break it all down, it’s actually quite simple.
Youtube was founded 2005 by three Paypal former employees and in 2006 was bought by Google for 1.65 billion. Google saw something powerful in Youtube way back then so acquired it early and since then, Youtube has been one of Googles subsidiaries.
This ultimately told me that Youtube plays by Googles rules which means things like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), linking and social signals are important for visibility. Also understanding Youtube is a search engine just like Google which means Keyword Research is an important factor.
Last of all, Google wants their users of the search engine to find exactly what they’re looking for when they click on a website that ranks on the search results. If users leave the website shortly after entering, this tells Google the article isn’t relevant to the search term so it’ll lower its position on the results.
A quick recap of the important factors
- Keyword Research
- Search Engine Optimisation
- External Linking
- Social Signal
- User Retention
Now that we know all of this information, it’s time to implementing these rules on our videos to help ranking on Youtube.
Step 1. Keyword Research
In my opinion, keyword research is probably the most important factor when it comes to videos ranking on Youtube. If you fail to do proper keyword research, you’ll have no idea what people are actually searching for, how many searches per month there are and how many other people have made videos on the same keyword.
The rule of thumb is you want to find a low competition keyword (which is a series of words ie:cost of accomodation in chiang mai) and you want to have at least 1000 people searching for that keyword per month.
If this is confusing to you, watch this video I shot about how to find low competition keywords using my favourite YouTube keyword finding tool, VidIQ.
Once you’ve found the right keyword for your video, make sure you find other relevant keywords to your video and keep them handy to use as tags and add into your bio. Now it’s time to shoot your video and upload it to YouTube.
Step 2. Youtube SEO
When it comes to Youtube SEO and SEO in general, know that it’s a topic that is forever being explored and no one actually knows how to fully optimise for Google or Youtube. However, I’ll share with you what I have been following to secure many 1st place videos ranking on Youtube.
Video Title
The video title should start with the keyword you’ve chosen, followed by a supporting statement which is usually something relevant to why the people would be looking up that keyword.
Example Title: “Accomodation in Chiang Mai” {keyword} “Best for Digital Nomads” {supporting}
Description
In the description, you should write a mini blog post about the content you’ve talked about in your video. Some good practices include mentioning your keyword within the first 50 words of your mini blog post, then a few times in the description.
If you have any secondary keywords relevant to your video too, try add them in at least once too. Try and avoid making your description sounding robotic though, you’ll get penalised if it’s just stuffed with keywords and doesn’t make sense.
At the end of the description, add in one more sentence repeating the main keywords once again and any calls to action you may have.
Step 3. External Linking
Step 4. Social Signals
Social signals is a fancy way of saying sharing on social media. The Google search engine knows websites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are social platforms so having your videos shared on them help show YouTube you want the videos seen by others.
Like all things viral, if more people share the video this will tell YouTube the video is really hot right now and to put it in front of more people.
There’s a little trick where you can actually buy social signals on Fiverr and it can help get you on top quickly. If your video isn’t a viral video though, it won’t last forever. We’ll talk about that next.
Step 5. User Retention
The final part of the video that ranking concoction that seals your deal on a ranking position. In short, if your video is good and people watch the whole thing, YouTube loves that as its delivering a good experience for its users. If it’s bad and people click off instantly, more than likely you’ll be pushed down the rankings and that’ll be that.
User retention is one of those things that you get better at over time. It’s really a metric of your video title vs what’s in your video, what you talk about in your video and if you keep people entertained or not.
There’s no golden metric for keeping users engaged, but some things that help are:
- Having good audio, no one likes listening to bad audio
- Giving users the information are watching for
- Keeping them engaged by drip feeding them information
- Give them a call to action to watch until the end
- Entertain them by showing traits of your personality or sharing stories
- Just being human, people love watching other people
- Good video editing (no empty sections of video)
More Youtube Video Ranking Tip
- Last Updated on
- July 3, 2023
- by Phil Wilson
While it’d be nice to get on the very top of the YouTube search for every video you do, it’s not like that. However, the more videos you do and if you stay consistent, you’ll tell YouTube that you are a consistent contributor and that will help you climb the rankings over time.
It’s not uncommon for YouTubers to randomly out of the blue have their videos climb the ranks or end up in the suggested videos tabs. This results in a huge spike of video views and a consistent flow of new subscribers and views!
I hope this video has taught you a thing or 2 about ranking on Youtube. Pair that with a good marketing strategy and you’ll have a brand new income stream in no time.
NOTE: A lot of people think you need thousands of subscribers and millions of views to make money with Youtube, this is far from the truth. One of my channels has just made over $2000 in a month and is only a few months old with less than 500 subscribers. I’m creating a training here if you want to see it.
Drop any questions you may have below and I’ll happily answer any questions. Don’t forget to subscribe too my YouTube channel too for more helpful strategies like this one
- Last Updated on November 12, 2020
- by Phil Wilson
Phil Wilson
Phil Wilson is a full-time content creator and affiliate marketing expert. Before diving into the digital space, Phil was a Carpenter working a job he hated just to get by. Now he helped 1000’s of people all around the world growth hack their new online businesses. Read more about Phil here.
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