YouTube uses user experience signals like subscription rates and retention to rank videos within their platform—and they weigh those two factors heavily.
So, if people are subscribing to your channel after watching your video, it demonstrates that you are dedicated to creating quality and highly-engaging content.
Viewers “Liking” your content is another measure of the overall user experience, though it has less significance than someone subscribing.
A great way to build your audience on YouTube is to group your videos into playlists. Build a keyword-rich playlist that provides YouTube with a deeper understanding of the kind of content you’re offering.
Once you’ve uploaded 10-12 videos on your channel, you should be grouping them into playlists by targeted and relevant keywords.
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
Video Comments:
If someone leaves a comment on any of your videos, that sends a strong message to YouTube that your content is highly engaging. After all, it motivated someone to react by taking the time to leave feedback.
When Brian Dean of Backlink analyzed 1.3 million YouTube search results, he found that the number of comments strongly correlated with ranking highly in the search results.
So with this in mind, you’ll want to make sure to encourage your viewers to comment—and that you reply to any comments you may get.
“Subscribes” after watching a video:
If someone subscribes to your channel after they watch your video, that signals to YouTube that your content is effective, relevant and highly-targeted.
And the best way to get more subscribers is simply to ask viewers, so don’t be afraid to directly request that they smash that subscribe button!
Video Shares:
When YouTube recognizes that people are spreading the word about your video, they’re going to reward you by giving content a boost in overall ranking.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR):
When someone searches for your keyword in YouTube, do they click on your video or on someone else’s?
YouTube plays very close attention to user behavior. The percentage of people who click through on your result is called your click-through-rate, and obviously, the higher that number is, the better.
If YouTube notices that a lot of people are clicking on your videos, they’ll rank your content higher in the search results.
On the other hand, if people are skipping over video, they’ll likely drop your ranking. And one of the best ways to boost your CTR is to create compelling thumbnails and titles.
Thumbs up/thumbs Down:
This is self-explanatory. The more “likes” you get, the better for your overall ranking.
Video Length:
Quite simply, longer videos often rank better and hard date has proven this to be true.
For example, if you search in YouTube for the keyword “WordPress,” 3 out of the top 4 videos are over an hour long.
How long should your video be?
Don’t stress out too much on the length when you’re just getting started. Instead, focus on creating the best video you can. If that video is twenty minutes long, so be it. If your resulting video is awesome, people are going to watch it.
As you gain more experience creating high-quality videos, you can begin to extend them.
