With 1.3 billion users as of 2017, YouTube is second only to Facebook and a force to be reckoned with. What was once simply a platform for people to share personal videos has morphed into a social media behemoth where “300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.”

The interesting thing about YouTube is that it has its own unique search engine, which uses specific ranking factors (just like Google) to determine where videos rank. Understanding which factors are most important can give your law firm an edge and improve your YouTube video rankings. In this post, we’ll cover some main points from a study performed by Backlinko that analyzed 1.3 million YouTube videos to learn about YouTube SEO.

Video Length

While the logic of many YouTubers may be to keep their videos short and sweet, it turns out that longer videos outperform shorter ones by a considerable margin. In fact, “The average length of a first page YouTube video is 14 minutes, 50 seconds.” This length gives you enough time to thoroughly cover a topic but without overwhelming viewers with excess information. So keep this in mind moving forward.

HD Videos

If you really want to propel your law firm’s videos to the top of the rankings, be sure that you’re recording in HD. Backlinko found that “68.2 percent of videos on the first page of YouTube are in HD.” And this totally makes sense if you think about it. Most viewers are naturally going to opt for higher quality videos, so those in HD should inevitably rise to the top.

Comments

We all know that engagement is an important part of pretty much every social network. The goal is always to maximize engagement regardless of which platform you’re on. One way YouTube judges how well people respond to a video is by the number of comments it gets.

This tells YouTube that people are enjoying the content and engaging by leaving their comments. For this reason, it’s a good idea to encourage comments and to ask a question at the end of each video to spark discussion.

Views, Shares and Likes

Continuing on the topic of engagement, views, shares and likes are all tied to higher rankings. This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise since these are all key indicators of a video’s performance. Once again, you should actively encourage your viewers to share and like your content because this can improve your rankings.

Keywords

Keywords have always played a considerable role in traditional SEO. But how much do they impact YouTube rankings? According to Backlinko, “Videos that contain an exact match keyword in their video title appear to have a slight edge over videos that don’t. This means that including a keyword in your title may improve your rankings by a slim margin.”

The algorithm behind YouTube video rankings is fairly easy to understand when compared with Google. It relies upon straightforward metrics such as engagement, length, video quality and keywords. Using this information can be very advantageous and help you make the biggest impact with your YouTube channel.

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Nick Mann

Nick Mann has been a freelance writer for nearly a decade and has worked with numerous clients. He writes articles on a variety of subjects, but specializes in business, legal marketing and tech. When not writing, he enjoys playing disc golf, sports, hiking and travel. Nick lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

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