What Makes A YouTube Video Rank?

When it comes to YouTube, there is a variety of factors that will help a video rank at the top of YouTube and even appear as the first result of a universal search result in Google.  Although Google’s algorithm is continuously changing to give us the most relevant results, YouTube sticks with the medieval search model of titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords.

When uploading a video, YouTube will translate your video title into a meta title tag, your video description into a meta description tag and (you guessed it!) the video tags into the meta keywords. In other words, attention and thought should be given to your title, description and tags in order to rank well for your targeted term.

YouTube rankings improve from titles and descriptions? Is that it?!

No. There are many other factors that will be taken into consideration. At the end of the day, YouTube is an engagement channel with millions of people viewing, commenting, sharing, responding and rating the videos they like (or dislike).

According to Glenn Gabe’s YouTube Ranking Factors, the following list is also considered – I’d recommend looking at the analysis he has carried out also:

• views
• ratings
• playlist additions
• flagging
• embeds
• shares
• comments
• age of video
• channel views
• subscribers

What about links to YouTube videos?

That’s the last point made by Mr Gabe is in fact inbound links from outside of YouTube. While the above all contribute to a top ranking video, links will aid results in both YouTube and Google results.

While links are great, an interesting part for me is the inclusion of embedded links. While a link is a link is a link, an embed on a website would be questionable right? Well, maybe not. Think about it, to boost a website within the rankings, a website with plenty of ‘voting’ links has more of a right to rank highly in the search results for its term. As YouTube is a video website, surely an embed is just as valuable to a video ranking as a link is to a website ranking on a search engine. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

How do I get the ball rolling?

It comes down to creating valuable content, as with anything in the social media arena. Popping up on a community, shouting about a video you’ve just made then disappearing never to be seen again will have very little, if any, effect. Take time to engage with the community, build relationships with other members and build your own following. This way, your own videos will get the recognition they deserve and your initial efforts will be rewarded.

When it comes to Google, you have no real control over the architecture of YouTube so good quality links will be your best bet to appear in the universal search results. Again, having a great relationship with your community will improve your chances of receiving these links thus helping the video appear in universal search.

In Summary…

The best place to start if you have any sort of video you wish to upload is ask yourself “Is this video of any value to my target audience?”. If the answer is yes, your next step would be to think about optimising your title, description and tags to cover the keywords the video will target.

Make sure you take time to engage with a community that matches your target audience. This could be Twitter, Facebook or a niche discussion board that specialises in your industry. Build up the relationships with these users and this will increase the likelihood of them sharing your videos to the larger community when you upload them. Effectively engaging with the community will aid future success of videos too and work to increase all the other factors such as views, comments, embeds and good quality links helping it rank on both Google and YouTube.