You’ve always seen successful YouTube channels, admired them, and dreamed of having your own. Well, it’s not enough to dream and wish. Here’s a shocker- it’s not even enough to create a channel and post one or two YouTube videos. If you want your videos to be ranked, you have to know basic things about the YouTube algorithm.
Ignorance costs much more than knowledge does. A lot of YouTubers don’t understand how the algorithm works especially if they want to get real target views, but they don’t achieve that. They don’t work on their descriptions, thumbnail images, tags, etc., so their videos end up doing poorly even though it has great content.
The goal of every YouTuber is to get their videos to rank. If you’re trying to monetize your content, your videos must rank because ranking attracts views, views attract subscribers and engagement, and subscribers and engagement attract monetization packages.
Even though you’re not trying to be a YouTube celebrity, you can’t spend all your time making a video for an audience of one. Your message has to reach people.
So, what should you know about YouTube Algorithm? Let’s find out
Here’s what you should know about YouTube Algorithm
1. Titles are important
Do not neglect your titles. A lot of YouTubers make this mistake- they create titles for SEO-related purposes but they aren’t compelling enough to attract attention and clicks, or they create very catchy titles but don’t end up ranking because the titles and descriptions don’t include any keyword.
Yes, tags are also important. They help the search engine and users to differentiate one content in a sub-related niche from another. But tags aren’t that necessary after 3 months. Once you get a compelling title that is optimized for short-tail SEO and your thumbnail picture accurately describes what your video is all about, you’re good to go.
2. Know the basics of keyword targeting
If you want your content to rank within a short time, you have to know the basics of keyword targeting. YouTube is the second largest social media platform in the world, so it greatly makes use of metadata so that your video can be indexed and ranked accordingly.
Everything matters- from the descriptions, tags, titles, etc. Your title has to be 50 characters or less with the keyword almost at the beginning, and it has to be compelling enough. The description should be between 50 to 150 words and it should accurately describe what the video is about. The keyword should appear 1 to 3 times.
How should your keywords be like?
They should focus on the topic, be between 1 to 5 phrases and 100 to 300 characters. The target keyword has to come first before others can join.
3. Long or short video?
Sorry to break this to you, but it’s way better to rank long videos than short ones. Research has shown that videos less than 2 minutes find it hard to rank on searching listings, compared to those that are longer. Invest in putting in more time into creating longer videos.
