Ranking in the first page of YouTube search results for your YouTube video is a difficult task. Let alone the top 3!
It’s easy to understand why – YouTube search results are based on a complex algorithm that takes into account dozens of different factors, from the relevance of your video’s content to the quality of backlinks and social shares.
And then, huge competitions – with many other people using their best strategies to influence ranking.
It’s difficult, and if you ever tried for a medium or high competition keyword, you know very well.
So, how do you ensure your YouTube video appears at the top of the results?
Good news: it’s not as hard as you may think, if you know the right tricks. In this article I’ll break down the truth and give you three powerful tips to help your video rank higher.
We’ll cover:
- How to optimize your video for YouTube search and CTR
- How to build quality backlinks and social shares
- How to analyze your results and readjust your strategy
- What services to use to effectively rank a video
So, let’s get started.
1. Optimize Your Video for YouTube Search and CTR – 3 Must do’s
Optimizing your YouTube video for search and CTR (click-through rate) might sound like a boring/daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be.
By following a few simple steps and leveraging some of YouTube’s amazing features, you can take your video’s ranking in YouTube search to the next level.
We will look at three stepts to follow, which will take you just 5 minutes.
1 – Take some time to carefully select the right keyword or phrase to optimize your video for. This is critical because the keyword you choose will be the driving factor in how YouTube ranks your video in search results. Make sure the keyword you use is specific enough to accurately describe your video, and try to be as specific as possible. It can also be helpful to use any relevant tags, which will help YouTube understand what your video is about.
The best tool to see the rank of a keyword I believe it is Ahrefs. It also has a YouTube search feature. If you don’t want to pay for a tool, I suggest using some free keyword checker, even though they won’t be as accurate as they get data from YouTube API or Google Trends, most of the times.
2 – Use the description field to its fullest potential. This is where you can effectively increase your video’s ranking by including catchy sentences, relevant keywords, and descriptions that accurately represent the content of your video. Try to imagine yourself from YouTube’s perspective and use language that is both SEO-friendly and appealing to potential viewers.
Also, avoid spammy links as much as possible, especially if your channel has no authority yet. Even if you are doing CTA, wait to add links until you are ranking. Of course, YouTube links or authority links are fine, especially the former.
Finally, use the annotations and cards features to increase your video’s performance. Annotations and cards are small pieces of text, images, and links that are embedded in your videos. These features allow you to create clickable links within your video and direct viewers to other videos on your channel or subscription pages.
This not only helps to increase your video performance and rank by increasing user retention, but it also increased the potential to get your video shared or promoted by other viewers – which is another ranking factor as we will see.
By following these 3 tips, you can give your video the best chance to rank high in YouTube search results. With some time, patience, and a bit of effort, you can start climbing the YouTube ranks in no time!
2. Build Quality Backlinks (Embeds) and Social Shares
One of the most important tips to rank a YouTube video at the top 3 results is to build quality backlinks (in the form of video embeds too) and social shares.
You want to make sure that the backlinks you build are quality and relevant to your video, as this will help boost its rankings.
To do this, you need to focus on getting links from websites that are related to the topic of your video or articles that talk about the topic of your video, and possibly have low spam score.
You can also use link building tools to identify domains to contact for placement, or you can use online services that build backlinks of your video. LenosTube has a great video embedding service, where they add your video inside relevant article and in real domains, for quite a cheap price actually, considering you don’t have to bother about writing content or nothing similar.
You should also take advantage of social media platforms to promote your video and build more backlinks. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit or Quora can be used to share your video and get more people to watch it. You can also join relevant groups and forums to promote your video and encourage viewers to share it on their own channels.
In order, I believe in terms of authority, Facebook and Reddit are the best (power of the share), but, if you want to get traffic too, then Quora or relevant Facebook groups work best.
When building backlinks and social shares, it’s important to remember to not go overboard. You want to make sure that your backlinks are natural and that you are not over-promoting your video. Also, it is important to remember that is a slow speed growth strategy.
Just like SEO, the results won’t be immediate, so I do not suggest doing this for seasonal keywords that you want to rank for just a few weeks, as you will start seeing the true effects of social shares – and especially video embeds/backlink – only later.
By building quality backlinks and social shares, you can significantly increase your chances of getting your YouTube video ranked at the top. It is possibly the best strategy also to improve your channel’s health and rank as a whole.
3. Analyze Results and Readjust Your Strategy
To ensure that your YouTube video ranks in the top three results, it is not only important to implement an effective keyword strategy and buildink links/shares, but also to analyze the results and make necessary changes to get higher rankings. Knowing how to read the analytics and user feedback can help maximize the reach of your video or, of your next video.
Again, this is possibly a boring part of the job but you’ll learn to love it once you see how it can be effective.
Analyzing the results starts with getting to know where the traffic is coming from, for example, you tried Quora and not only it created shares, but also brought traffic, and you can scale it.
YouTube Analytics also provides detailed information about YouTube search views, specifically, by showing the specific search query. This can be extremely useful as you can build new videos around those keywords also because, keyword tools are never 100% accurate!
Additionally, read the comments and any other user feedback you are getting. People usually leave comments or likes to express their feelings about the video, and these comments may be helpful in understanding what people think about your video and can help you adjust the strategy for producing your next video. Afterall, it is worth to remember that also a video performance such as its engagement and audience retention contribute to ranking.
Lastly, consider researching what your best performing competitors are doing. Analyzing the videos of your competitors will also give you an understanding of what is working and how to outperform them. Get inspired by their keyword strategy, but also check their video data with external tools aswell to see if they are building backlinks or creating shares.
To conclude…
Ranking a YouTube video can seem like an intimidating task. It’s a complicated process, but with effort and these fresh tips, anyone can make a real impact on their video ranking.
Ranking a video in the top 3 results can significantly increase views and earnings, so give it a try today!
And, don’t forget to track your videos ranking to see if there is a progress. There are also free tools out there providing a free YouTube rank tracker, such as ytrank or lenostube, so it’s super easy.