8 EASY STEPS to Rank Your Videos #1 on YouTube in 2020

As you can read the title our topic is interesting yet boring because we have to create a base before jumping into the content and optimization directly so yeah stay tuned and keep on reading I will try my best to keep it simple yet interesting and on point.

Do you ever encounter people gossiping about creating content is easy and is it that easy?

Then why every other person say content is the key and keeps your content neat clean and straight on point? Ever thought about it? Let us discuss and explore more about it…. When, we say straight on point for content; what exactly are we trying to say?

Content matters a lot that includes not only words but also the way it is presented matters too. Like we say that attitude matters a lot, your appearance matters a lot likewise the way you present your content matters a lot.

For an instant, if I say hey there guys I'm here at XYZ place to show you this and that but the quality of the picture is not up to the mark or the quality of the video is so dark that you are unable to stay there you will never be there in the first place. You will leave that place soon. Same if I am talking about content and optimization you will surely be looking at relevancy and points that will matter like bullets which will help you understand things in a better and faster way.

When I talk about optimization you will think about SEO, keywords, Google ranking and so on. As technology is increasing and moving fast forward things words and search engines are also accelerating themselves. Initially optimizing your videos and content was easy but now the competition is like OMG… Google is the most powerful search engine, but that doesn’t mean Yahoo Bing and other search engines are not there, they are still in the lead and few people out of 90, 10 people still search on Bing, Yahoo and other engines. They still use them and that is where you can actually make your content strong if these search engines cannot compete for the sheer size of Google and are not that popular like Google yet they will help you boost your content, presence, and conversions. Less popular search engines fill specific roles, if you do Bing or Yahoo SEO, you will reach a different audience than Google, and you can reach an audience you can’t reach on Google ….

To rank in top 10, in Google search you need to work on a lot, you need to search multiple keywords on multiple sites, then you need to see what’s the easiest word that comes in your mind and what could come up in other minds or you can give a controversy type of tag line to your content that will attract the audience and that’s how they will read, you have to research on every word you click on or you add that to your title or use them frequently in your first paragraph that’s how you can work and maybe it will work.

Now, if I talk about YouTube as a search engine people might think me as a crazy person, but I am not and YouTube is a search engine for videos. Like I said you will reach a different audience and you will surely target a new era of people where they want everything quick and in fast forward and video tutorials are so helpful that they would prefer video over a blog. Besides YouTube has its own SEO. There are tones of YouTube extensions that help you search for its best SEO words. You want your YouTube videos high up on the YouTube SERPs. Every SEO is a bit different and yes it takes time to get used to it. SO, don’t worry if you take a bit long, besides, do you know the fact that YouTube is the second most visited site, right after Google? If no than thanks me later...

I will be listing down a few pointers that may be helpful for you. But before those pointers, I must warn you about the algorithms of the apps that work and change from time to time. Have you ever heard of the Instagram algorithm? If not then in most of the applications where your accounts are public and where you want to reach to the audience with your content or videos or work there are some algorithms, and these apps change those from time to time so that the robotic and fake accounts get erased easily or at least get detected so that actual work may seem perfectly fined tune and reach the right audience here…

From an idea to a whole lot more than just an idea, there’s more to it. We say content we say idea and that’s not it, work and lots of work is there, as the success on YouTube doesn’t come easily… For the success on YouTube here’s what you need to know; choosing the right keywords.

1) Keyword & Topic research:

Keyword research is important, there are tons of websites and helping tools that will tell you and help you in research your kind of keywords. Keyword brainstorming is one thing, but don’t forget to compare it on every platform. For instance, you have used AHREFs you can also use Moss/Mousse, or Google Trends, or Tubebuddy and so on along with comparing each other, as every result is somewhere different from the other.

2) Track your rankings:

SEMRUSH is one such example where you can gauge your rankings for the websites. If you are not doing this with your YouTube you are missing out on so much. There are many tools, paid or free – just find the right one for you and track yourself as you optimize your videos.

3) Content:

We often heard digital marketers saying content is the king, and every king has a queen too. Do you know the queen of content? If not then I will help you; its consistency. Since you are a YouTuber you will need a fan base that will not only subscribe to you but also wait for your videos every week. So skipping weekly base will hurt you and you might lose some of your fan bases too. Here comes consistency with quality. If you can maintain the quality with the consistency you will surely win the lead. As the world is fast and the competition is getting really tough.

Deliver in long: Digital marketers often ask content writers to write things in short. They will often comment on the length of content but I will tell you for YouTube the longer the better works. Your content should have a grip that will make people stay on your channel and enjoy watching your content. YouTube wants to earn like television that’s where they prefer longer versions. So yeah for YouTube the longer the better.

The power of playlist: I personally never knew the option of a playlist or its worth but since I have searched the tool and read about it I must say it’s a wow option. Playlist helps you find your kind of content fast. The same goes out for the viewers. Make it simple for your viewers, if you post as a general type, like your topics vary from fashion to cooking and home décor to makeover, make a playlist, which will help your viewers to select that content and play it over and over again.

Before posting: The first few hours are critical; as I have mentioned above about the algorithms and the clarity of the topic, if YouTube algorithm has found that your content is unworthy the damage is done. You need to rethink the title, tags, descriptions, thumbnails, and transcript and so on, it’s a must to check and balance everything before uploading and making it trash for yourself. I don’t want to sound rude but it gets quite frustrating knowing that the hard work is judged wrong.

Now that you are aware of the importance it’s time for how to optimize videos:

4) Title:
The title plays a vital role in ranking your video, so do the keyword research and use it wisely. The length of the title should be not too long or not too small, it should be concisely catchy to not only grab the attention of the viewer to be on your video or channel or watch your content also have the keyword that will do wonders.

5) Thumbnail:
Ever wonder about the thumbnails, I tell you my personal experiences that I encountered; recently encountered some really weird thumbnails with beautiful lies, and for the sake of curiosity I clicked those videos and upon clicking them I find nonetheless things in that video, it was merely a fake news to attract the viewers on the link. So thumbnail matters the most, more than the title, sometimes when people click the link even accidentally they watch the video stay on the screen scroll down to witness more such stuff and to read the comments in the section below so everything matters.

Some do’s for the thumbnails; customize your thumbnails, have professional shots or titles, make it captivating. Some don’t for the thumbnails; use clashing or confusing colors, unprofessional looking still, or thumbnail with all the texts.

6) Description box:
Some times after mentioning the title we all forget to write the description and leave it just like that. This is your chance to expand on the information links, call to action, bio and some more relevant keywords, as you can hook some enticing words that will make them click on show more and make them get the insight of the video, don’t be afraid of lots of information as it is all worthy.

7) Tags:
Tagging is easy, make sure to use phrases as well as single keywords. Tags are the random words that come to your mind when you hear a word or a phrase. Tags are not visible but if you add extension the tags are visible to you and you can add all those relevant tags in your content, enjoy mining your competitors.

8) Call to action:
After the video or even in the start there’s always a message saying if you like this video, give it a thumbs up, share it and subscribe to our channel. This is a call to action kind of a line where you are asking people to do something. Subscriptions send a signal to Google if people are subscribing to you because of this video that means there is something worthwhile. You can add a thumbnail of your previous video and create a connection story type which might give them the chance to roam around and watch all your videos.

Now is the time to wait and watch; after you have done all the mention steps and efforts, optimized and uploaded your videos, the last is to monitor and analyze the performance. YouTube analytics is the tool that tells you all about who is watching your videos; it’s like the insights of YouTube. This also helps you to watch out yourself where you lack and where you want to use your energy. You can embed Google Analytics with YouTube analytics to know more about your videos, perhaps you want to create more content for more audience, you also might want to know about your viewers being your subscribers that follows you closely after all subscribers are the conversion key for you. If your goal is to build an audience then use this tool effectively which will tell you about your videos being so attractive that they convince a viewer to hit the subscribe button. This insight will also help you choose your next topic for your viewers, as it will tell you what more they want to see. And off course there are plenty other third-party analytical tools that will tell you more about the data which you might need for creating a long term plan. They are available as per free and paid which tells deeper insights, such as likes, ranking, view count, video replies and so on, this will help you more in optimizing your video content as well as content distribution strategies.

Translations or Transcript:

We often click some video that is not available in our language and we often feel sad to not be able to understand the video thou the visuals are attracting and meaningful because again sentiments speak more but being deaf is a handicap. So try adding subtitles if possible so that you can make hold on your viewers and get more attention in other countries as well, as this platform is open for all.

Don’t rely on YouTube’s transcript as they malfunction or skip some script of yours, try creating or at least match those with your video, the timings should match with the titles. Also, there is an option where you can translate your videos to globalize your content without having to reshoot. It allows foreign visitors to feel good and understand the content with subtitles (closed captions). Another reason and the tips are that it helps to rank your video in a foreign language.


Links:

Linking is again the easy thing, it’s basically telling your viewers about the other platforms you have, where else they can find you or find about the products you have used in your videos. You want to route and engage your viewers from one to another and keep them tagged on all your channels.

Well, that’s not the end, the last and final step is clean up and provides a better viewer experience. Create a new flow chart and add these tips for being a better optimizer. Undoubtedly YouTube is getting more and more powerful and people are trying to get more and more successful here.

Improve your content, that’s the last piece of advice for everyone out there, no SEO can make people coming back on your vlog, blog or page until unless your content is strong and unique than other competitors out there so good luck with all the visuals and thought you have in your mind and best of luck.

Optimization Tools and Video Marketing in YouTube:

Optimizing the content on YouTube is pretty different from Google. People often say it is easy but trust me it’s not so here; this is the second part where we will discuss some more points about the optimizing content for YouTube, as the average time spent on YouTube is 40minutes per session (according to a research-based on 2016 that is 4 years before) but don’t worry here I will be listing few tools that may help you out more in optimizing your videos for suggestions and search.

TubeBuddy Chrome Extension:

Google chrome offers multiple extensions that nobody cares for. Let me tell you one such extension Tubebuddy the most popular plug-in among st creators this serves the best. Tube Buddy offers tons of features with a plugin, tools for productivity, bulk video processing, data research, and SEO. What else do you need? It’s for free, so once you have signed up for the tube buddy account you will need to install the extension. (Thank me later)

I will be listing the top features of Tube Buddy so that you know why it is important:

Tag explorer:

For SEO expert keywords are easy but for YouTube, we need to see more of the ranks. We need to see where short tail tags and where long-tail tags are needed. With this tool, you can plan according to your research and add valuable tags in your post.

Suggested tag tool:

Do you know how many characters can you add in your video tag? If no let me enlighten you with this knowledge too. Once you are done with the tag explorer let Tube Buddy works for you, it has an option where you can find and fill as many long-tail tags as possible. This feature helps you find and suggest additional tags along with the score chart indicating the potential difficulty of the tag. 

Compare:

This is more like AB testing if you are confused about which thumbnail would attract more clicks you can easily see that here. Tube Buddy offers two variations at a time. So enjoy comparing one with the other videos.

Tube Buddy has two options paid and free trial; give it a try and use it as much as you can. That’s not the only option this gives it also provide you with animated GIF generator, canned responses for comments, custom short links with click tracking and backups export.

VIDIQ Vision Chrome extension:

This extension has similar options like TUBEBUDDY but that’s not the reason I have added this in my list. What makes this different from tube buddy is a bigger emphasis on insights. Their checklists and scoring system is used in different criteria to determine how well optimized the video is.

You have to sign in for vidIQ account, and after the installation, you will find all the features:

Scorecard and checklist:

For each video there is a checklist that you follow and fill, there is a scorecard listing out actionable items which improve the overall SEO, as you complete the checklist there will be an updated score. Using this tool and its suggestions you will improve and increase the optimization for each video. For suggestions are irrelevant means won't effect your SEO at all.

Page Stats and Overview:

This is the best part of the VidIQ, here you can see real-time insights of your video, insights from views per hour, average view time, to average daily subscribers and within 30 days it’s like overall insights. Moreover, you can get a chance to witness your competitors’ referrers and embed sources, overview the tags used on the video and channels.

Quick Overview on Analytics:

We surely don’t have time on a daily basis to study out the depth of all the analytics of our channel. But if I say with this VidIQ you can actually see the overview easily it will be a win-win situation. You can easily see; Audience demographics, Top-performing videos, Top search queries bringing our videos traffic, Key trends, Views, Suggested views, Watch time, Likes, Comments, and much more, as this is just a simple reference, you will find YouTube’s native analytics much more comprehensive. The last cool feature is the competitors’ dashboard which shows growth in your channel versus your competitors.

Oh, btw this extension also has two versions, free and paid. You can enjoy all the features in both the extensions.

Audience Insight:

Knowing your audience is good, but watching who your top engagers are is more exciting. You can roam around their profiles and see the interests and have more information about your viewers.

YouTube Insights:

This is a really interesting free YouTube dashboard. Here you can find the channels and videos your audience is tuning into along with more features like; audience overlap, engagement level, subscriber base.

These were all great tools for learning more and more about the audience, viewers and fan base. This is all a fast track growing tips for you and your YouTube. Remember me telling you above, about the importance of content optimizing; now you will find and see which video is being suggested.

The last link for this topic is – YouTube and Affiliate Marketing:

Marketing with YouTube or through YouTube is now becoming a norm. Marketers or people are opting out for video marketing for a few reasons. I will be sharing those few reasons here in my last link for this topic so bear with me as I start with my last link.

Videos are a compiled source of why how and where like why should I buy this product from where could I find it and how to use this product are the very basic people need to know, as I mentioned early in my blog people want to learn fast so this is why YouTube marketing is somewhere helping them out. With that being said it is a great place to share a video and reach the audience like a really, really high audience with approx 2.0million users every month as YouTube is the second most visited site after Google. It’s not only about the huge audience but also the most active audience.

YouTubers can have a foster relationship with their fan base as it’s more like a family and friends. This video’s from the YouTubers matters because the viewers can see their expression as well as hear their voices and feel the concerns in their tone. That where the true and genuine connection for long term builds.

How does it work?

Well, to be honest for YouTube affiliate marketing you may need to collaborate with few YouTuber’s or video creators to make content for you or for your product, who are already aware of how to be on screen and how to talk about the product, must have few of the followings, so that when they refer people they may listen. They could link your products in the description box or tag your page and so much more could be done.

As we have said great power comes with great responsibilities; a YouTube affiliation requires more research and outreach. You will need to seek out people who are camera-friendly, feels comfortable around the camera so that the video comes off as both professional and captivating.

Check out your mentions, sometimes people mention you tag you so that you notice them and once you notice them they ask for the collaborations. Google alert and Awario are very useful, specifically for YouTube mentions.

Established YouTuber’s are also useful since they know how to do and they have a built-in audience. Make a list of combinations of nano, micro and mid-tier YouTubers that are well-informed and reputable in market, use of hash-tags to find such low cost emerging influencers who are doing a fabulous job by producing excellent content but are not yet on top of the search results. Use the database research; sometimes the database connects us with different levels of influencers in a variety of categories. In fact, some databases have full knowledge of YouTuber’s subscriber count, views and overall rating so you can calculate ROI. YouTube’s Creator Services Directory is one such place where you might find more answers.

For licensing and legal reasons, the location of your customers and affiliates matter as YouTube’s services vary from country to country. So, for avoiding all the hassles and bustles evaluate the customers and partner with affiliates in your location to ensure that your product is visible without barriers.

Creating content nowhere you have to deal with the briefing; some background checks some reality check some truth to be said out to the partner or the influencer you are working with, tell them the details that you want to show in the video, clear the objectives and goals. Also be sure to share all the necessary kinds of stuff like the brand logo, fonts, colors, taglines if any, etc to keep the consistency of your brand.

It’s time to focus on keywords and titles as mention above. There’s a wide variety of videos on YouTube that may fit best with your goals of affiliate marketing. Product reviews, how-to tutorials and best of the two, like a comparing video. After this entire process, repeat the step of choosing the best tags, best and catchy title, keyword SEO, first line should be attractive in description box so that they click on show more and so on, we have discussed it all in the start of the blog so read it again as it is a never-ending cycle.

Start Marketing:

Finally, it’s time to let them work as it is important to give space to the content creators so that everything comes naturally and looks natural rather than manufactured. Using the tips provided in this blog you will achieve the target you are looking for. Besides affiliate programs require a bit of effort, yet with a massive engaged active audience, this platform gives a natural boost to organically reach tons of potential customers.

And that’s a wrap!!!!! Wrap of the whole lot on the chosen topic, I hope it was worth reading and you all liked it.