YouTube is the 3^rd most popular site in the world, and the 2^nd most popular search engine after Google!

Video is the most popular way of absorbing information online, which is why video marketing is so effective. The fact is that marketing videos work much better than copies, banners, presentations, and so on, for getting a message across.

While a monster site like YouTube has the power to deliver millions of views within minutes of viral videos going live, the average person who uploads a video on You Tube, maybe someone like you, will be lucky to get a thousand views, before your video is drowned out with all the competitor videos.

Strategies to make YouTube’s ranking algorithm like your videos

Thankfully, there are strategies you can employ to make your video rank higher and for longer. Three of those strategies are described below.

1. Backlink your video

You can perform SEO to your YouTube video, just like how you SEO your site.  Send backlinks to your video.  A backlink is a link from another website, pointing to your video on You Tube.

One of the easiest ways of link building is by simply embedding the YouTube video onto your own site.  It is important that you embed it as this will count as a link to your site, and also increases time on site, reducing bounce rate (time it takes a visitor to leave), which also helps increase your own website’s rank in Google.

Assuming that your site has a lot of traffic, this is a high quality backlink as it also drives visitors to the video from a relevant website – something that You Tube and Google absolutely loves.

You can also build links to your video with social bookmarks and even promote it on your public Facebook wall or Twitter profile.  They all count and make a difference to the ranking on YouTube. Here’s a helpful video showing 5 Golden Rules for Backlinks.

2. Use long tail keywords

Sometimes, you just have to be realistic about where you want your video to rank.  You can’t create a video about iPads and expect it to rank #1 on YouTube, for the term “iPads” because of the massive amount of high-quality competition.

However, with a long tail keyword like “How to fix an iPad?” you are getting somewhere.  Use the Google keyword research tool, or keyword software like Wordtracker, to find long tail keywords that also have a good monthly search volume.

Then, use that long-tail keyword in the title of your video, blended in with other words that talk about your brand’s profile.  You can also use variations of the keyword in the description as well.  When you do this, your video might just rank very well for that particular search term, without you doing anything else at all.  All you have to do is upload it!

3. Create high quality videos

One of the MOST INFLUENTIAL factors that Google uses to rank your videos is to analyze the amount of time a viewer watches your video. If the average YouTube viewer watches your video for 10 seconds, while watching your competitor’s video for 1 minute, you can forget about outranking your competitor as it just won’t happen.

Here is an example of one of our Whiteboard Animation Videos:

Create high quality videos, like animated whiteboard videos or doodle videos.  Give your viewers something unique.  These doodle videos have some of the highest average watch durations in all of YouTube and your video marketing strategies will fantastically benefit from such videos that also obviously boost conversion rates.

You Tube also looks at the total watched time for all of your videos, so if one of your videos, say, has an average watch time of 90 seconds, try adding an Annotation (an on screen message) at the 90-second point telling the viewer about one of your other videos, with the link to it.  That way, you can keep people watching your videos for longer, and increase your average view time for your channel, thus increasing your ranking.

There you have it, three important tips or strategies that will allow you to rank your video higher in YouTube and also impact the general Google search results, giving you great traffic and the potential to increase conversions.