Top 10 Rules for Ranking YouTube Videos + Examples

RULE 1: MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE SAME KEYWORDS IN THE VIDEO, TITLE, DESCRIPTION, AND TAGS

YouTube transcribes videos and listens to what you say. You got this! Use the same keywords that you are trying to optimize your video, in the audio, title, description, and tags.

RULE 2: USE AT LEAST 5 WORDS IN THE VIDEO TITLE

Don’t forget to put the keyword you seek to optimize at the start of the title.

RULE 3: USE AT LEAST 250 WORDS IN THE DESCRIPTION

Do not forget to put the keyword you seek to optimize at the start of the description. Repeat them a minimum of 2 times throughout the text. Try not to be spammy!

In this example, almost all 3 rules were applied but we missed 158 keywords!

RULE 4: USE NOT MORE THAN 5 TAGS

Don’t be afraid to use the same tags as competitors, the goal is to express a target topic.

RULE 5: USE LINK BUILDING TO PROMOTE YOUR VIDEOS

Share the videos, in various forums, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Links are a signal to YouTube that your video is a quality resource and worthy of citation. Videos with more backlinks tend to earn higher rankings. 

RULE 6: USE PLAYLISTS

Identify videos that have similar topics and create a playlist with the set of videos. In the example, the playlist is called “Sustainable Food” and includes videos around that topic.

RULE 7: ASK PEOPLE TO SUBSCRIBE

As many YouTube professionals would say, more subscribers will let YouTube know your video is popular and will automatically rank higher.

RULE 8: ASK PEOPLE TO COMMENT 

It works the same as subscribers!

RULE 9: FIND NICHE

Use google trends, AdWords keyword planner, or any other keyword tool. The idea is to make your content around a specific topic, particular kind of product, or service. You can use different tools to find out how many searches there are per month on certain queries or topics that are trending or if there is an increasing trend, so you can build your channel and videos around it.

RULE 10: CHOOSE LOW-COMPETITION KEYWORDS 

Simply find keywords that have low search result numbers on Google. 

This is how you get your channel and videos rolling to the top! Remember you should always be compliant with YouTube policies and avoid demonetized keywords, otherwise, all this hard work will go to waste!

#YouTubeSEO #YouTuberanking