YouTube search

YouTube, as you know, has its own video search.

So, as YouTube owns Google, we can assume that search engines are similar there and when optimizing a video to get views from a search, you can use approximately the same principles as for optimizing for example blog articles.

However, the platforms are different and YouTube has its own ranking factors in the search, the main of which are:

Total video viewing time
Average time to watch a video per user
Hold

There are other factors:

Likes / dislikes, comments, behavior after and while watching a video, adding a video to favorites, clicking on links in the description, etc.
All this affects not only the position in the search, but also getting into similar videos.


I recommend later reading this article on Habré:

Video promotion on YouTube. SEO, analytics, charts and nuances

This article can already be called a classic. Although some things have changed, it is still very relevant. Its author (Eugene Zaremba) worked in the world of tanks while promoting their channel. He is one of the founders of the site about YouTube:
http://worldofvideo.ru/
There you will find many useful materials on this topic.


Let's return to our topic.

There is a basic method for optimizing video, the scheme is as follows:

Keyword in the title;
Keyword in description;
Keyword in tags.

What I'm talking about? See the picture:

How to write title, description and tags in the video

An example of optimizing my video

You may notice that on the top channels, those people do not always follow these principles and it’s very likely that all of this is simply carried to YouTube by users based on their experience in promoting websites, blogs and articles in ordinary search engines.

Nevertheless, I advise you to do so, especially at the beginning.

As for the selection of keywords, you can:

Watch what competitors are doing and do the same / better;
Analyze traffic using yandex word stats, google keywords, etc .;

This topic is serious and big, it’s worth analyzing separately, but you can read almost any article on this topic or even watch a video, even if it concerns, for example, promoting a blog with articles. Principles about the same.

For beginners (and not only) it is recommended to choose low-frequency queries. These are requests with low traffic and low competition.

The fact is that high-frequency or mid-frequency requests where there is a lot of traffic (for example, HYIP themes) almost always snapping up tops very quickly and you will probably not be able to replay them.

And you can gain a base on topics and queries, in which the tops do not climb - not popular.

In this regard, what can you do now to increase search traffic and increase your video views on YouTube?

Change the name, description and tags of your old videos so that they become low-frequency queries.

Look for videos that get the least amount of search hits and start with them.

Additionally, your video can be raised by other factors in the search: the number of comments, likes, adding videos to favorites, etc. To do this, encourage users to do this directly or arrange some type of contests:

"can we get X likes here?"

The number of comments is also important, and it is not necessary for this to deliberately make mistakes in the video, flog crap or insult someone (although this can be done).

Simply invite users to ask questions in the comments, share experiences and respond to their comments themselves.

Read: Why so few comments on my blog or YouTube channel

It is also extremely useful to create your own group in VK (or in another social network) where you can communicate with your viewers almost directly, listen to their advice, suggestions and criticism. This will greatly help your channel to understand your audience and determine where to go next, what videos to do and how.