How to Rank Videos

Want to know how to rank videos higher on YouTube and Google without any ad-spend?

The Coles Notes version:

Simple Rule #1: YouTube Live Events let you jump the queue on Google video rankings.

Simple Rule #2: Using your YouTube video description as an SEO tool can help your ranking rise and hold its position.

Simple Rule #3: For popular search titles, use longer title variations until you rank.

Fun Fact:

It appears many people don't realize that a YouTube Live Event isn't necessarily live. It rarely is. You can pre-record and edit your videos before broadcasting them live!

So you can actually go double and triple-live! e.g. you could broadcast a prerecording on YouTube, go live on Facebook at the same time while hosting an actual live YouTube hangout during the broadcast :)

If content and quality are king and queen, then consistency is the bishop.

The Full Story:

A Marketing peer asked me about my YouTube ranking methodology, and as we’re want-to-do we had a quick video call and recorded it. He asked for a copy of the video for reference. I decided to do better than that. I will qualify that I give myself an F for performance but do manage to spit it out.

My hope in documenting all this is that it may serve as an illustration of a few marketing and SEO ranking concepts, which I hope will be helpful to those interested. I'm going to try to use it to secure a very simple yet common and competitive search phrase organically, and there are likely several marketers spending big money to secure this phrase. I will spend none and see how it performs comparatively over time. Updates will follow, but as of this version this now covers a 14-hour time frame.

I won't lie, parts of this are a bit time consuming, and require some creativity and intuition. And I won't reveal all my time savors. BUT, it's a completely free and easy way to boost your video rankings on YouTube and Google. Let me also be clear that I haven't invented anything new and this isn't proprietary. It's simply a combination of a few tricks that video SEO experts are practicing lately and with great results.

Rule #1: 

These days, content and quality are king and queen. Let's quickly discuss the word "quality". Sometimes, production quality does matter. However, as I said earlier; in this video, my delivery is far from smooth, and there's no production quality at all. It's two guys geeking out in a video chat. So, in this case, the "quality" (I hope) is in the information itself and its authenticity. There's a sub-rule here I've spoken of previously: There is a new economy of authenticity and I encourage you to plug into that (which means plugging into yourself and being it).

Rule? #2: 

For the time being at least, Google's algorithm is weighting YouTube Live Events heavily, and that means there’s an opportunity to score some sweet rankings on previously untouchable search phrases. Phrases perhaps your business might want to own, at least until someone catches up to you or the algorithm changes.

Rule #3: 

If content and quality are king and queen, then consistency is the bishop. Once you’ve determined your titles, tags and keywords/phrases; use them consistently and everywhere, especially for backlinks (which is its own thing). It helps to even include keywords in your image names if you can.

Rule #4: 

Leverage long-tails to own the short-tails. Here's the SEO trick that's actually simple and just requires some research. This is going to let you hold onto those high-ranks longer.

There are basically two things we're accomplishing with this strategy:

A) Leveraging longer search phrases to secure shorter, more common searches.

B) Leveraging other top-performers for your desired search phrase by establishing content commonality. Or to be a bit blunt about it; "choking out the competition" with greater “relevance”.

I'll explain by going through the steps and you'll see I'm using this video as an example, so you can look at the end result on YouTube too.

Step 1: 

Determine your desired "Short-Tail" search phrase. Not your short title but the shortest thing someone might search. In this case, I'm going with "How to rank MY videos".

Step 2: 

Now the "MY" doesn't work well as a title, but more significantly, that's probably a VERY competitive search phrase (maybe I am being overly ambitious, but I'll try). If my title was more aligned with a "Long-Tail" search phrase, something someone might still actually search and is still common, then that will start to give me some direct match, which equals hits, which leads to ranking over time. Here's the trick: I search my short-tail to find my long-tail. I'm swiping these from actual top-ranking pages and even though they won't match my actual title, tags, descriptions, keywords, etc., they are informing them along the way.

Step 3: 

Try to stick close to common keywords that fit your message, but mix, blend, be creative with the phrases, tags (yes look at meta tags), and titles. Then stuff them in your YouTube video description! YouTube gives lots of space for those! Few people see anything past the top 3 lines (unless they click "SHOW"), and fewer even read it. But Google does!! So, under the REAL branding lines, website links etc. that go at the top, and under your real description about what your video is about, include a disclaimer like "Everything below is for SEO purposes and may be ignored". Then let the nonsense flow! Remember, this isn't for your audience, this is for Google to consume and adore.

Basically, you're playing human vs. algorithm. Your goal is to make it think "Wow the things this is talking about has A LOT to do with all of these other links that I deliver when people search these 2-3 words, therefore, they must be related".

Initial Results

2 hours:

6 hours:

 (the re-broadcast was deleted, so we are still just tracking the original broadcast)

14 hours: