YouTube Algorithm Hacks

Ce January 10, 2022 0 Comments

Today, we’re going to be talking about one of the most important factors that determines how a video performs on YouTube, and that is the YouTube Algorithm.

In short, YouTube Algorithm refers to the entire system that decides how many times a video should be recommended, who the video is recommended to, and how high it is placed when someone searches for a particular keyword.

So if you’ve seen a random video from 2010 suddenly pop up in your recommendations and see a lot of people in the comments saying how this decade old video is somehow being recommended to them, It all has to do with the YouTube Algorithm.

Because the algorithm decides how many times and to whom a video is recommended to, it’s one of the most deciding factors that essentially decides a video’s FATE. So even if your content is great, but it is uninteresting according to the algorithm, it won’t be recommended, making it so that your video doesn’t reach its target audience and hence, doesn’t get views.

Don’t worry though, as there are plenty of ways to make your video more appealing to the algorithm and optimize it so that it is recommended to its target audience. But before we move on to our YouTube Algorithm Hacks, we need to understand how the YouTube algorithm works.

How does the YouTube Algorithm work?

YouTube’s Algorithm suggests people relevant content that they want to watch through various sections on the platform, which are Home, Search, Trending, Suggested Videos and Subscriptions.

By suggesting people the exact kind of content that they want to watch, YouTube makes sure that viewers return to their website regularly, keeping regular traffic incoming to YouTube and so far, it has done a great job at making sure people come back to it almost everyday.

To figure out what content one wants to watch, YouTube keeps a track of its every user. It keeps a track of what genre of videos a viewer watches, what they search for, how long they watch a specific video for, what video a user likes or dislikes and then tries to recommend the user the videos they liked or watched for longer, while trying to recommend less of the videos the person disliked.

Let’s take a look at how the different YouTube recommendation systems work:

Home

When a user first opens the YouTube app or youtube.com, they’re met with a wide array of videos which is often broad, containing every genre of videos, simply because it still doesn’t know what that specific user likes to watch.

The way YouTube selects which videos to show on the homepage is by using 2 ranking systems:

Performance

The primary ranking system for the homepage, YouTube selects videos that perform well based on various trackers such as Views, Likes and Dislikes, Viewer Engagement, Average View Duration and Click Through rate.

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Personalization

As the viewer starts to watch videos, the home page becomes more and more personalized. For example, if the viewer watched gaming videos, the homepage would start changing so that it includes more gaming videos than other Genres. The gaming videos recommended would still be on the basis of performance.

Search

YouTube, being owned by Google, has a brilliant search system. And the way the search system works is by focusing on keywords and click through rates.

Keywords

YouTube’s search engine heavily relies on keywords, which are words that define a specific type of video, like “Funny” or “Cute” which are often included in the youtube video’s metadata. And the way the “Funny” or “Cute” videos will be ranked in the search is done by tracking click through rates.

Click Through Rates

So now YouTube has to rank all the videos that have the keyword “Funny” or “Cute” in them, and for that it uses click through rates.

Click through rate refers to the number of times a video is clicked upon being recommended.

So, if you search for “Cute” and you click on a video titled “Cute Cat Videos”, it’s going to rank it higher than other videos because it learned that when you searched “Cute”, you were trying to find that specific video.

Subscriptions

If you’re not already familiar, YouTube has the option to subscribe to a YouTube channel for free, which means that if someone subscribes to a channel, any video uploaded by that channel will appear under their Subscriptions Tab and may also show on their home page.

There’s also the option to turn on notifications that will send a notification every time a video is uploaded by the channel notifications are turned on for.

How to Optimize the videos for the Algorithm?

So now that you understand how the YouTube Algorithm works and how it chooses which videos to recommend to its users, You’re ready to HACK INTO THE YOUTUBE ALGORITHM!

Just Kidding- don’t worry, you’re not going to be hacking anything, but rather, you’ll be using some of the methods that popular YouTubers use to optimize their videos for the YouTube algorithm to get as much audience to their channel as possible. Here’s how you can do that as well…

Creating Effective MetaData

Metadata includes all the information related to a video, such as Title, Video Description, Tags and Annotations. As mentioned above, YouTube uses keywords from the metadata to display and rank videos. Thus, taking the time to optimize the metadata is crucial to making your video stand out.

This includes using metadata related to your video, making the title and description appealing.

It’s very important that you AVOID using metadata that is misleading or not related to your video. For example, using the tag “Cooking” in a car race video will reduce your click through rate and hence, reduce your video’s reputation.

Clickbait

Clickbaiting is a fine line that when done correctly, makes your video perform extremely well, but clickbaiting too much can hurt your video and overall, your channel’s reputation.

Clickbait refers to adding or exaggerating the thumbnail or Title in such a way that the video becomes extremely clickable so that every time it is recommended, it manages to get users to click and watch the video.

However, there are certain Dos and Don’ts to clickbaiting:

Do:

Add an interesting title and thumbnail.
Make the thumbnail visually interesting and clickable.
Exaggerate the title a little bit.
Include what actually happens in the video.

Don’t:

Add things that aren’t actually a part of the video.

Make unrealistic thumbnails like dragons flying above your head.

Use irrelevant words in your title and description.

Increase Video Performance

Last but not the least, Video performance is one of the most important factors the YouTube algorithm tracks while recommending videos to its viewers.

So, it might come as no surprise that channels with more subscribers and viewership perform a lot better than the ones with less subscribers and viewers.

For example, a video by a channel with 10M subscribers will perform A LOT better than a video by a channel with 100K subscribers even if the latter is a better video. Simply because the former will be recommended to a lot more people and thus will reach its dedicated audience.

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