Best Practice Rankings Tips:
YouTube 1st page ranking is hard but doable, like “Coca-Cola” formula, nobody really knows what are the variables and parameters that would make your video rank higher, however, best on my knowledge and experience, there are few best practice rules one need to follow in order to improve its video ranking at YouTube! I will gladly share them with you. First, one need to know that YouTube search result algorithm is location based, meaning your ranking at country X would be different from your ranking at country Y for same video & search phrase. Second, as most of you probably know, Google and YouTube are good friends, meaning … ranking at first page of YouTube for a certain search phrase , means you have a good chance of appearing at Google 1st page for the same search phrase with a video search result (This is the ‘holy grail’ of all marketers – appearing 1st page at Google with a video search result) - based on my experience, about 40% of my customers (people I help them to rank at YouTube 1st page) also appears at Google 1st page! Lastly, you need to know that you’re literally “fighting” against your niche competitors, the “organic traffic cake” is divided between all people who compete at same niche / keywords / phrases, so in other words, you need to outrank your competitors!
Here are my best practice ranking tips:
1) Check search volume of keywords/phrases using free tools as tubebody or Vidiq that relates to your content, one of the best tips would be to go to your competitor’s videos and see what they are
using …
2) Select 3 phrases which are best (low-mid competitors, mid-high search volume) and place them
A) At Video’s title (At least 2 phrases) *
B) At first 3 lines of description
C) As 3 first Tags for your video
* If Video’s title doesn’t allow that you might consider doing that on another similar video or spined video
3) research on hashtags (simply by typing # at YouTube search field, followed by the hashtag), add
them on the next to last line.
3) Add the Video to 2 Playlists, name them with relevant phrases – 1st playlist contains only “Your” videos, 2nd one contains a 70/30 ratio of competitors videos and your videos (70% of yours) , you might add more than 2 and play with the ratio / naming / context / etc. of each one.
4) That’s probably the best Tip I can give you 😊 Your Channel name is also part of your organic ranking parameter! So, make sure you place at least one keyword on your channel name, do not name it only after your name (e.g. “Dror Golan”), add a keyword to it (e.g. “Dror Golan – SEO Optimization Services”), you have no idea how much this small tips will increase your organic appearance, try it!
5) Tune your Channels tags at YouTube Studio / Channel / General, same as bullet #1 search and see what’s working for your competitors and place those tags here.
6) People are Lazy, 1st glance appearance will determine if they would click on your thumbnail, so your thumbnail should be “sexy”, with CTA (Call to Action) and Text overlay that explains about it.
7) Check your SEO ranking regularly, see what works for you and what is not working and keep improving, remember this tuning is a process, people with M+ views did not reach them over night (beside Beyonce, ‘50 Cents’ and other Mega Stars :-).
8) YouTube gives ranking priority to Shorts (clips below 1 min), live streams and new uploaded videos – keep that in mind if you want an advantage over your niche competitors!
9) Inbound traffic (from social media, websites, or high domain authority links) are great for ranking, use them wisely, you can cooperate with others who refer to your video, publish some posts in blogs, get backlinks at Fiverr , all this will increase your organic appearance.
10) If all this is not working, or you need to improve, give me a message and I will see how can I help you 😊!