There are A LOT of videos uploaded to YouTube every single minute – 500 hours to be exact – so it’s very important to follow the right guidelines to make yourself stand out.
The YouTube algorithm mainly prioritises the following:
- Relevance – matching factors like title, tags, content and descriptions to user’s searches
- Engagement – specifically metrics like watch time and watch percentage but also the basics of likes, comments and shares
- Quality – various signals to determine the channel’s authority and trustworthiness
- User search and watch history – essentially what the user has engaged with in the past
But most importantly, YouTube recommends videos in three different places on the platform:
Home
This is the place that you instantly see when you open up YouTube, and it’s highly personalised for each viewer and their interests.
YouTube specifically looks at these two elements for the Home page:
- Performance of the video
- Watch and search history of the user
Therefore in your cases, all you have power over is the performance element. This means if one of your videos has already started racking up views higher than your channel average, those videos will appear here.
Suggested videos
These are the videos that are recommended on the right hand side of the video you are currently watching.
YouTube looks for the following in this section:
- The topic of the current video
- The viewer’s watch history
So for this section, it’s all about nailing the topic and ensuring that if someone is watching a video about ‘Monaco Grand Prix’, you are nailing your title, description, thumbnail and tags to match this.
Search
Unlike Instagram and to a lesser extent TikTok, YouTube is driven by its search engine. You need to master something called SEO or Search Engine Optimisation which is essentially making sure you follow all the steps so that the algorithm correctly identifies your video and matches it to a user’s search request.
YouTube SEO is driven by keywords which are the words that describe your video. For example, if your video is about Monaco then you need to prioritise ‘Monaco Grand Prix’ across the following areas:
- Title – make sure your video’s title is eye-catching but also relevant to your video topic by using your keyword
- Description – try to include your keyword multiple times to boost the chances of being recommended
- Thumbnail – in some cases using your keyword can help, but this is all about grabbing attention and getting clicks
- Video content – mentioning the keyword as soon as you can will help your chances of being recommended
9 quick tips to improve organic reach
Do your keyword research
Look into other videos about your topic and see which are the highest recommended. Usually they are focused on a keyword and keep all language accurate and concise.
Make your thumbnails pop
The thumbnail is the first thing people see, and is arguably the most important thing. You need to design them so that people have no choice but to click!
Ensure people keep watching your video and more
Of course you need to keep people engaged and watching for longer, but by adding video cards to your video, people will click to then watch more of your brilliant content.
Bring viewers from other platforms
YouTube love when you bring people to the platform, so make sure to promote new videos across your other accounts.
Engage with your community
While content is king, community is queen. Not only does being active with viewers help video performance, building a strong community builds your subscriber base enormously.
Experiment, experiment, experiment
No video is perfect, and creating content should be a never-ending quest to pursue perfection. So whether it’s as important as thumbnails or as small as using transitions, test everything!
Post when people are watching
Releasing your videos when your audience is watching is critical, to understand this head to your analytics to get a full run-down of when your audience is online.
If nothing else, get on Shorts
For those that have nailed Instagram and TikTok, or for the YouTube veterans out there, you should not be avoiding Shorts. While the payout isn’t so high it can be a great way to boost subscribers.
Keep an eye on those around you
Just like any successful business, it never hurts to see what those around you are doing. Whether it’s thumbnails, titles or video production you can always learn from your competition.
