What goes on behind getting your video at the top in the list of search results in YouTube? This is an intriguing question and more intriguing is the answer. Your clever tactics could help you get your video at the top, nothing else, if going by organic methods. These clever tactics are what are known as strategies to optimize your video on YouTube. As we know that optimizing is only a kind of publicity gimmick. You get noticed only if you succeed in getting your video at the top of the list, otherwise there is no use of having the perfect content without viewers. So, let us look at some strategies to achieve that noticeable status as far as your video on YouTube is concerned.

1. Front load your keyword – you need to put your keyword in the title of your video. But the key here is to mention it right at the beginning to get a higher ranking. A title with a front loaded keyword is way more effective. For instance if you want your video to be ranked with cold brew coffee, then a title ‘my 5 tips to make a cold brew coffee’ would not be placed as high as a video with a title ‘cold brew coffee:5 easy tips’.
2. Boost video engagement signals – videos with lots of Engagement Signals outrank videos that didn’t get a lot of engagement. We need to understand what are engagement signals before going any further into this tip. Engagement signals are things like shares, likes, comments and subscribers. Basically whenever someone engages with your video, it tells you that people are loving your video. It was found that comments correlated with rankings more than any other engagement signal. Here the question arises, how can you get more people to comment on your videos. In the words of an experienced vlogger, who has conducted a formal research on this, ‘putting a hyper-specific call to action at the end of your video works best’. Most YouTubers use a generic call to action like ‘leave a comment’ or ‘let me know what you think’ etc. Instead of such generic calls give your viewers something specific to comment on.
3. Use the TAB formula for video tags – according to a ranking factor study, Tags aren’t as important as they used to be. Having said that, tags still make a difference. So, it’s worthwhile to spend some time on them. Video tags are designed to help YouTube understand the content of your video. This implies that you don’t need a lot of tags to get the job done. In fact, if you use lots of tags you are just going to confuse YouTube and Google. They would have no idea of what your video is actually about. It is recommended to use a small number of tags which are highly specific. Here comes the TAB formula, which stands for Target, Alternative and Broad. So, you need to make sure that your target keyword goes first, next create 2-3 tags that are alternative versions of your main keyword, these alternative versions can also be checked from the list of suggestions that YouTube gives when you type in a keyword, finally include 1 or 2 broad terms as your last set of tags. These tags should describe your video’s overall topic or industry. The goal of these broad tags is just to give YouTube more context about your video.
4. CTR Magnate thumbnails – you probably already know that click through rate is an important YouTube ranking factor. In other words, if your video gets above average amount of clicks, YouTube is going to give you a higher ranking spot. Now you might wonder how to get more clicks. Well, there’s a strategy around everything. Here, you can use CTR Magnet thumbnails. They are thumbnails that are strategically designed to get more clicks from YouTube audience. There are some steps regarding this process,

• Use non YouTube colours in your thumbnail – choose colours in contrast with red, white and black, which are YouTube colours. You can opt green, blue, purple, grey, orange etc.
• Use big bold text in your thumbnail – thumbnails with text get more clicks than thumbnails without any text. Although, your thumbnail is pretty small, so you don’t have a lot of room to work with. It is thus, recommended to use maximum 30 characters of text.
• Write mini blog posts for your video descriptions – it’s not like you could get away by writing any random stuff like, ‘this is an awesome video, do check it out’. From lots of testing, it has been found that long descriptions help videos rank better in youtube. You have to clearly state your purpose and goal that you are trying to achieve with the video. Keep in mind, though, that you need to describe the content of the video in minute details, do not give away the whole script. Your description should arouse curiosity about watching the whole video.

• Boost video length – when it comes to video SEO, longer videos tend to outrank short videos. Sometime ago, YouTube said that it focuses on videos that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos here. Longer videos racks up a lot of watch time and hence gets a better chance of ranking high. To sum it up, whenever it makes sense, try to make your videos between 8 and 15 minutes long.

These strategies are definitely going to help you a lot to optimize your video. As you might have understood that shooting a video is just the beginning, getting the courage to speak and write a script and shoot. The real journey starts thereafter, when you fight your way out of the crowd and prove your mettle like a knight in shining armour. This is what matters eventually in today’s competitive marketing industry. One who knows better to sell himself out there is successful, one who knows social skills, knows what to offer to people, one who’s aware of the happenings around in their respective industry and makes the most out of these situations. So, make sure to stay ahead in the race by improvising on the prevalent trends and tactics. This way you will be able to exceed your expectations as well as that of your viewers.