The SEO score for a Youtube video is calculated on a series of elements and it is the first step to optimize your video. From 2020, the factors of YouTube SEO and the SEO algorithm needed to rank a video is very complex. There are 5 Major Factors of YouTube SEO and several lower factors that influence the Ranking of a video.
Though we cannot influence views and subscribers directly, we can optimize the video and get enough search engine exposure to produce traffic naturally and take a shot at the things we can control. Let’s take a look at the factors into the order of importance and weight-age.
Calculating a Total weight of 100, here are the factors in order of importance and weight factor:
1. REACTIONS (WEIGHT 35)
This includes the total reactions of a video gets. This includes:
- Number of Comments
- Keywords in Comments
- Comment reactions
- Thumbs up/down ratio
- Favorites
- Video Responses
- Playlists
2. VIEWS (WEIGHT 25)
Youtube takes in consideration the number of views a video gets by calculating:
- Attractive Thumbnail
- The Click Rate in Lists
- Audience retention
- Relative and absolute retention
- Length of the video
- view time relative to video length
3. ON-Video SEO (WEIGHT 25)
Since the search engines cannot search inside the video, YouTube calculates the Keyword relevance in the video. they will look at the text components related to the video and video view statistics to compute a rating.
Here are the factors that influences the ON-Video SEO:
- Keyword relevance
- Title Optimization
- Video original filename (before uploading)
- Description optimization
- Keyword density
- Outgoing links (end screens)
- Keywords (tags)
- Keywords power
- Keywords relevancy to Title and Description
- Annotations (Cards)
- Transcript
- Age of video
- Quality of video (HD, 1080p, 4k)
4. SOCIAL (WEIGHT 10)
Sharing is a major factor for Youtube, with the greatest value added to your videos are coming from social media and social sharing sites, Here are the social sharing factors in order of importance that influence:
- Digg
- Mix
- Embedding
- Video links to the External sites
- And also the Strength of the Sites that were linked/embedded your Video (calculated by how many links they send and the quality of traffic)
5. Channel Strength (WEIGHT 5)
Youtube ranks video from popular channels higher than videos from smaller channels. The factors:
- Trust
- Age of channel
- Total video views (channel wide)
- Number of channel views
- Authority
- Channel Title
- Channel Keywords
- Channel Description
- Channel Links
- Own Playlists
- Number of Subscribers
- Adsense
You can get all these Metrics from the Free Tools like TubeBuddy and Vidiq (Chrome extensions available)
NEVER DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. NEVER BUY TRAFFIC/VIEWS FROM SITES OR SERVICES
Selling views is illegal, for instance, platforms like Fiverr. These sites and people that sell views will bring BOT TRAFFIC that will increase views rapidly but the views are low quality (a few seconds) and they don’t bring any value and total watch time of your Video or Channel. YouTube is currently monitoring these views and targeting channels grown artificially and taking them down and they are removing videos promoted with such methods from the platform altogether.
2. NEVER BUY SUBSCRIBERS
Bought subscribers come from BOT NETWORKS and FAKE ACCOUNTS. You risk your account being taken down and you will lose the subscribers anyhow in a few months and YouTube ban those SPAM accounts and since the subscribers aren’t real they don’t bring any real value for your channel.