Youtube is fast becoming a graveyard of broken hopes and dreams for many wantrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on the earning potential Youtube offers through its revenue sharing advertising business model.

Besides, it is probably the only platform where you get to publish free content and get to share in on the spoils. But there is a catch, you must meet youtube monetization threshold first before you become monetized.

So, how hard can it be to Rank Youtube videos and get monetized on youtube? Well, turns out that video optimization is actually easier to do when you have a method, ignore this battle-tested youtube video optimization process and all your Youtube videos will not rank!

What Does It Take To Get Monetized On Youtube?

  • 1: You must meet the Youtube subscriber requirement of at least 1000 subscribers.
  • 2: Your Youtube channel watched hours must be at least 4000 watched hours in total for the first 12 months or preceding year(whichever comes first)

I am New To Youtube What Should I do To Create Youtube Video Content My Audience Loves?

For a start, your videos have to be found on Youtube, so to do that, you got to know how to rank well on youtube.

As a Youtube beginner, ranking video is new territory, so you better be willing to learn and If you are interested in learning how to get better video rankings, please stick around because in this post, am sharing tips and guides that can come in handy when optimizing your video content.
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For whatever reason, you may not be interested in learning a new skill, creating helpful Youtube videos that rank well, and start getting closer to getting monetized. Apologies for that, as this piece of content, is definitely not for you!

This content is ONLY suited for SERIOUS YouTube marketing enthusiasts who are ready to cash in on Youtube earnings. Whether its AD revenue business model or Audience to monetization business model.

Now, I’m not ashamed that this is going to be a pretty long piece of content.
But the best news is that you will walk away fully equipped to start creating value-packed youtube videos that rank, your audience love and engages with!

And you can also rest assured that am not here to sell these popular online training course everyone seems to be promoting.

While they are helpful in shortening the learning curve to literally weeks if not hours, not everyone can afford to pay for their asking price when they are just getting started.

So put those credit cards away, there is literally nothing for you to spend your money on here!

Just 100% FREE content and knowledge nuggets for you!

So grab a coffee, sit back and prepare yourself for a good session

Now, is ranking Youtube videos or as others put it as Video Optimization a myth or a real thing?

Ranking videos it’s not a myth! Who doesn’t want to rank well when they create content? All of us want to rank on Google and YouTube, right?

And the only way to rank better and get found is to make sure that your video optimization is a flawless data-driven process…

But in order to do that, you’ll need a basic understanding of how YouTube’s algorithm works.

Like it or not, there is science to every google ranking you get and if you haven’t been geeking out with Google’s data obsession, you are missing out.

The most important thing to understand about Google and YouTube SEO is this:

Google and YouTube want to show its users the BEST content possible at any given moment a user types in a query.

But there’s one BIG difference between Google and YouTube:

How Google And Youtube Evaluate The Content For Rankings

Google largely uses backlinks to determine the quality of a website/page.
The more backlinks a page has pointing to it, it means more people are recommending it and the better it will rank.

Ranking YouTube Videos is totally different.

So with youtube video optimization, backlinks are not a huge factor, Instead of backlinks, YouTube measures how people interact with your video.

And this is where creating a value-packed video helps you to tick the first video optimization box!

Since YouTube videos are hosted on YouTube servers, there is nowhere to hide really as they know all the details about how people and viewers interact with your videos.

YouTube RANKING FACTOR #1: Audience Retention

Audience retention is a massive factor to gaining rankings, and that is squarely Youtube values the time of your video people watch on average. So if you see this word being thrown around, it simply means Youtube cares for the data behind each video metrics as a key ranking factor that’s all audience retention is all about!


Audience Retention Is All About Value Delivery

Obviously, the higher your audience retention, the better.
YouTube LOVES this metric because it gives them an accurate indicator of video quality.

After all, people don’t tend to watch 90%+ of a not so helpful crappy video. This why my recommendation to Youtube video beginners to always create High-Quality videos that will have a high retention rate!

For better results, Use the video sandwich templating method when creating your content. This method is set out in a way that allows you to create highly captivating videos.

How does Sandwich templating method works?

Sandwich template method promotes content creation by first,

  • 1: Setup the Problem(agitate the need)
  • 2: Provide the Solution( usually two options, free and paid options)
  • 3: Explain How it Works( Tutorial guide)
  • 4: Call to Action( Usually one that allows building a long term relationship through helpful content, an email automation marketing system is always best.)

Basically, your content creation style should have a beginning, a middle, and a precise end.

YOUTUBE RANKING FACTOR #2: Total Watch Time

Total Watch Time is the total amount of time people have spent watching your video over its lifetime.

Now I know that some of you are tempted to say this youtube ranking metric is Kinda old news, but it is still very relevant in the eyes of Youtube ranking algorithms.

As a Youtube content publisher, Total Watch Time is an even BETTER indicator of video quality than audience retention.

Youtube Watch Time Metrics

This metric measures the actual amount of time that people spend watching your video right?

In that case, Consider this example…

You load a 20-second video. Your video is watched for 14 seconds.
Your Audience Retention is an amazing 70%! But your Total Watch Time will be extremely low because the average viewer only watches for 14 seconds before clicking away.

The take away here for you is that making long enough content is in your best interest as Videos with high Total Watch Time benefit YouTube which in return rewards your new youtube channel with more organically promoted impressions.

It’s really simple, the more time someone spends on YouTube, the more money Google makes (from advertising). So it makes sense that they would promote and give higher rankings to videos that keep people on YouTube for a longer time…

By now you see why I highly recommend that you start creating videos that are *at least 10-15 minutes long.

YOUTUBE RANKING FACTOR #3: Engagement Signals

The introduction of Youtube stories can only confirm how desperately youtube want to see that people are actively engaging with you at a personal level and your video content when they leave a comment.

Not that long ago, YouTube launched reel which many have called it its own take on Stories…

Now if you are an Instagrammer, take note that, Reels is YouTube’s spin on Stories, and it’s nowhere near what you would call a copy cut to Instagram stories.

As a matter of fact, Youtube’s Reels won’t live at the top of the app, as Stories do on Instagram – instead, they all appear in a brand-new tab on a creator’s channel.

So if you have a youtube partner who you follow, and they have Youtube stories, you will be able to get a little bit of an intimate look into their day to day take on whatever they want to share with their audience.

Specifically, Youtube goes to the length of actually measuring how many people:

Like, Comment, Subscribe, Share and Add your videos to a Playlist.

The more of these signals YouTube sees, the more they know that your video is keeping their users engaged on the platform.

So I recommend at the end of your videos to add a call to action image, ask people to like, comment and subscribe to your channel.
When done right, this simple “trick” can actually TRIPLE your stats.

YOUTUBE RANKING FACTOR #4: Keyword Optimization

Probably you already master this step. And honestly, probably this is the most important factor.

For YouTube to show your video to people, it needs to understand what your video is all about.
That’s why I recommend you to make sure you include your keyword in your title, description, and your tags.

The gist here is that you should always aim at Writing really long and highly descriptive descriptions


Eddie

As small scale business and content strategist getting a good hang of SEO, Email marketing, long form and data-driven business decision making is something that I take seriously. A good day at the office for me is when the little guy wins and probably that is what motivates me to get out of bed and help small online businesses to take on opportunities available online. The best way I know better is through creation of content that convert. Am a proud founder and content strategist here and am loving every minute of it!

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