The factors affecting YouTube ranking can be categorized mainly into two basic concepts: metadata and user engagement. Unfortunately, exactly how YouTube indexes and calculates where to put your video on SERPs is a top-guarded secret, and so guaranteeing your search position is going to be virtually impossible.

Luckily, there are data available that make a solid analysis possible, so we can make better videos that rank higher on the platform. Here we cover 10 YouTube ranking factors for 2017. Hopefully you can make great use of this information and start ranking higher than your competitors.

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Views

While YouTube’s algorithm is largely shrouded in mystery, it’s widely-known that having lots of video Views tops every known ranking factor on the platform. Having a high View count is a sure-fire way to secure a high position not just on YouTube but on Google SERPs as well.

Consider buying YouTube Views to kickstart your presence on the platform. Bought Views will attract organic Views because people are naturally drawn to videos with higher View counts, compared to videos with lower counts. This human tendency is called social proof. Paired with an organic campaign, bought Views – or in actual fact, social proof – can catapult your videos to success and help you secure, if not cement, your videos’ position on the top.

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Likes

YouTube puts more importance on videos that engage their viewers, and Likes are one of the best indicators of how engaged your viewers are. Recent data suggest that videos with more Likes outrank videos with fewer Likes.

Shares

A high number of Shares correlates to a high rank on YouTube. Apparently, the number of times your videos have been shared does not only tell you how your viewers liked your content, but it also influences your videos’ search rank.

Comments

Comments are another factor that measure user-engagement. Because Comments require more energy from your viewers, they’re a good indicator of the level of engagement your content gets. A correlation analysis of one study determined that Comments affect YouTube ranking by a significant percentage.

The reason why higher ranking videos have plenty of Comments may be due to the fact that they get more exposure, but having plenty of Comments may also be the reason why these videos rank high on the platform. At the very least, this proves that content affects engagement. So, when making YouTube videos, remember that content is still king.

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Subscriptions Driven

Videos that result in new subscribers for the creator rank higher than videos that do not. Some data suggest the difference is not significant but it’s clear that if your videos are generating new subscribers, then you have better chances of ranking high on search results.

Subscribers

Subscribers can generate lots of Views for your videos and the number of subscribers you have can very well be the baseline of the number of Views your videos will get. Certainly, channels with a massive number of subscribers are at a greater advantage than channels without.

Do you know that you can grow your subscriber base by buying YouTube Views? Again, the social proof that you’ll get from your high View count, even if it’s fake, attracts real Views. Once you get people to watch your videos, turning Views into Subscribers becomes much easier.

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For instance, once people watch your content you can ask them to subscribe, or you can make calls-to-action that will motivate them to hit that button. There are plenty of ways to encourage them to subscribe to your channel. Of course, having thousands of Views is often enough incentive for people to subscribe to your channel, too.

So, augment your marketing campaigns with bought YouTube Views. Buy from legit sellers of quality, high-retention YouTube Views that will help you reach your Views and Subscriber goals in record time.

Video Length

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One of the reasons why high-ranking channels on YouTube are mostly gaming channels is said to be because gaming videos are long. This contributes to a longer watch time, or the average amount of time viewers spend watching the video. This is also referred to as audience retention. The longer the video, the more time can be spent watching it.

Google had made it clear in 2015 that watch time was going to be one of their ranking factors. That is why longer videos outrank shorter videos.

Obviously, Google wants people to stay longer on YouTube and is rewarding videos that succeed at doing that. Smart move on their part!

Keywords in Tags

The role of keywords in search is not as dominant as it was before. Google, with its trillions of bits of user data on past behavior, and YouTube, with its ability to listen to words used in videos, appear to have little use for keywords, nowadays.

Still, keyword-rich video tags help you rank in suggested video lists for related videos, though its overall influence in SERP ranking is much smaller than it used to be.

Exact Keyword Match in the Title

Although small, exact keyword match factors in video ranking. So, videos with matching keywords in the video title have a slight advantage over videos whose keywords do not appear in the video title.

Video Quality

HD quality videos rank higher than low-quality videos on YouTube. In fact, 68.2% of videos on YouTube’s first-page search results are in HD format. This underscores YouTube’s desire to make user experience optimal at all times.

So, to get your videos ranking high, maximize and invest in tools and equipment for making awesome HD quality videos.

Build a Big Audience!

The above factors stress the importance of user experience and how YouTube takes that into account when ranking videos on the platform. Your metadata plays a role but it seems that at the end of the day, it’s the viewers who determine how high your videos will rank.

You can easily meet the conditions that will push your videos up the search results by keeping your audience in mind every time you make a video. Remember too, that these elements all stem from Views, without which YouTube will have nothing to evaluate, and nothing to use to decide how it’s going to rank your video.

So, work on getting those View counts higher, combine that with top-notch social proof marketing, and the rest shall follow. It will take time and hard work but it will all be worth it!

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