THE YOUTUBE ALGORITHM (but it actually makes sense)

let's break down the YouTube algorithm as always time stamps are below so let's just get into it starting with the basics what has YouTube themselves said about the algorithm because when I'm doing my research I don't want to pull information from just like a random joeo blog post I want to study the information directly given to us from the source itself so on YouTube's Creator page titled growing your channel they say quote our algorithm doesn't pay attention to videos it pays attention to viewers so rather than trying to make videos that'll make an algorithm happy

focus on making videos that make your viewer happy now this sort of response seems to be a common theme that I found when doing my research every time YouTube or somebody at YouTube has asked about the algorithm they always bring the conversation back to well what is the viewer like think about your audience da da da da which for the longest time my brain just like could not understand and would not accept that as the answer I was like that's a cop out I want to talk about the algorithm I want to know the coding

that's where my brain was but then the light bulb moment came the clouds parted the heavens opened the choir was singing and finally I understood why they answered this way I think a lot of us are used to thinking about algorithms in a very specific way where like the top of funnel is the piece of content that you post like you post a video and the algorithm analyzes your video first from there it's going to pull all the information that it needs to then like properly categorize your video right it's like cool suszie posted a

video on working out therefore this is Fitness content so let's push this video on this specific topic then to users who then may be interested in that topic or relative search results so we're always thinking top a funnel WE Post our video the video gets categorized and then pushed to that category or user but YouTube's algorithm is actually flipped YouTube's top priority and top of funnel is the user themselves the audience so their algorithms top of funnel they actually study each individual user's Behavior first their algorithm is studying the audience to gauge what sort of

topics or videos that a specific user might be interested in and then YouTube pulls videos for the viewer YouTube's priority studies the audience studies the user the viewer The Watcher your video is not top priority or top of funnel the audience is that's really the big difference here as someone who is uploading content and being a Creator I think it's super natural to think well I'm giving this information to YouTube and its algorithm so that they can do its thing they're going to push this video out to the right people but that's not the case

YouTube doesn't push videos for creators to help them get views it's actually pulling videos for review and videos that they think the viewer will watch and enjoy their algorithm is thinking when a user opens YouTube up on a specific day at a specific time with this sort of watch history on this sort of device what videos do they want to watch right now so their algorithm really is all about the audience with that in mind we can understand the flow and progression of how the algorithm thinks which then leads us to questions like great well

how does YouTube determine which video somebody sees when they open up YouTube first I'm going to give you a breakdown of all the information that the algorithm is looking at and then we'll talk about how you can apply that information and what we learned today so that you can rank on home search and recommended when talking about how YouTube recommends videos the short answer that YouTube said on their creat page was quote we track what viewers watch how long they watch what they skip over and more this helps us figure out what kind of videos

they like best and what we can recommend to them next but of course being me I needed more information so I did a little bit more digging and found that the algorithm is studying a lot of different information at once in YouTube's video YouTube search and Discovery the algorithm they explain that the videos a user sees are based on hundreds of signals now the cool thing is that we can more often than not sort these signals into two categories viewer personalization and video performance since YouTube prioritizes the viewer let's first take a look at viewer

personalization viewer personalization is based on signals about a given users preferences such as what videos did they choose to watch how often do they watch a Channel or topic what did they search for in the search bar does that user watch more shorts or more long form videos and information that's equally as important what videos did they choose to ignore or dismiss and more when the algorithm has a good understanding of a user's behavior and interests then they could build a homepage or recommendation feed that matches those behaviors which leads us to the second category

of signals that YouTube looks at video performance this is how well a piece of content engages viewers when it was offered to them for example do viewers choose to watch a video did they choose to ignore or select not interested on that video and if a user did choose to watch a video how long did they watch that video for how much of that video was played did the viewer ultimately enjoy the video so yes this does mean that the algorithm studies and uses average view duration and average percentage viewed of your videos as signals

to inform their ranking system the algorithm also takes into consideration things like likes comments and you user survey responses which Speaking of if you've learned something new so far make sure to give this video a thumbs up because again this is going to tell the algorithm that there's something good happening over here and if by the end of this video you've learned two new things consider subscribing because I post weekly videos like this and um yeah it's a great free way to support my business and help me keep making free content for you now before

we get into how we can apply like tactically how can we apply this information into our own YouTube strategy so that we too can rank in home search and suggested I want to give you a few tips about average view duration because it's one of those analytics that YouTube is definitely paying attention to average view duration or avd is the average amount of time viewers spent viewing your video and YouTube wants people to stay on YouTube so they're going to recommend videos that are keeping people on YouTube longer that's really what it comes down to

so what's the easiest way to increase your avd little trick little something called b-roll if you're somebody who is unfamiliar with that term b-roll is supplemental footage that's intercut with the main shot of a video like throughout this video of me talking this is our main shot right there's probably been other videos popping up to help visually support what I'm saying this keeps a video moving and feels a little bit more engaging for the viewer I mean you could go watch any of your favorite YouTubers and they're probably using b-roll at some point throughout their

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sponsoring this video so taking a look at everything that we've learned today about the algorithm so far let's break it down even more okay so that we can apply what we've learned into our own YouTube strategy starting with how can you rank on home because I feel like that's everybody's main goal when they think about like the algorithm they're thinking like how can I get my video on a homepage so how to rank on home home is going to show a user a variety of videos so new videos videos watched by similar viewers videos from

your subscriptions and more now these videos that YouTube is showing on a user's homepage is based off of that individual users watch history but also how well that video's performance is so far in YouTube's video how YouTube's Home Screen Works they said that there are three things that you could do to rank on home upload on a consistent basis keep viewers engaged and keep making what works now if you're just getting started on YouTube or you don't have a large audience yet these action steps aren't very helpful because how do you keep viewers engaged if

you're struggling to get views in the first place or how do you keep making what works when nothing's working so what do you do instead of trying to show up on home and rank on the homepage in the very beginning of your journey I think it's actually best for most people's first priority is to start ranking on search and Discovery if you can rank on search and Discovery and start to build some traction start getting some views there then you'll have more data to pull from to figure out okay how can I then rank on

home so let's talk about how you can rank in Search and Discovery now YouTube search aims to show the most relev videos to a user according to what they've typed in the search box now what they typed into that search box is something called a query the result that YouTube shows is not based on which videos have the most views that's not what it's based off of instead they first rank the videos on how well the title description and video information matches the search query and then they'll analyze which videos have the best watch time

and engagement to then present the listed search results so it's not based off of oh the more views you have the more likely you are to rank in search it's how well does your video's title description info match what a user is typing into the search bar and when someone clicks into your video can you keep them watching through the whole thing in YouTube's video how YouTube search works they said that there are five things to do if your goal is to rank in search these five things are use relevant Search terms in both the

title and description of your video write full description they even went as far to say writing at least one to two paragraphs this way if you're writing like more words you have one to two paragraphs of information that increases the chance of the words that you're writing matching somebody's search query which we'll kind of talk about in a second the third thing they said is to use Google Trends to see what people are currently searching for fourth pay attention to trending and seasonal topics and finally make sure your video is relevant to its title and

thumbnail because if your title and thumbnail is promising something and it loses the viewers attention when they go to watch it that's definitely going to hurt your video's performance basically don't clickbait people into thinking your videos about one thing when it's not so some action items that you can take to ranking and search and explore would be to study our very favorite phrase SEO I know I know so scary it's really not that bad it's so much easier than we think it is all you're going to do go to Google Trends okay type in some

words that are in your Niche or industry and see what other people are looking up in your industry right now and then Google Trends will give you some words or some phrases use those words and phrases in your title and description boom shakalaka that's SEO that's SEO my friends you can practice this in YouTube as well so if you're making a video about salad I don't know why I'm talking about salad today but if if you're making a video about salad typee in the YouTube search bar salad see what is recommended under that so it'll

be like salad kit salad dressing I don't know but whatever YouTube is recommending under your word they're telling you what people are searching for so try to use those phrases and as many phrases that are relevant to the video into your title and description the more phrases that you use that people are searching for and the more relevant your video is to to those search phrases the better your chances are of ranking in Search and Discovery then once you're starting to rank in Search and Discovery and you have some videos that are getting you more

views that's the information that you can study to then try and show up on YouTube homepage so you're going to look at those videos and you're going to check out the average view duration the clickthrough rate you're going to be like okay how can I get more people to click on a video do I need a better title and thumbnail combination are people clicking on it but are they dropping off and not watching the whole thing how can I increase the viewer retention and get them to watch longer so that's when you'll really start diving

into analytics which I can make a whole other video on so if you want me to dive into analytics and what to look for when to look for and what information means let me know in the comments below I'll definitely make an analytic video cuz I love analytics but yeah try to rank on search first and then after you start getting traction home could be your next goal suggested our videos YouTube recommends based on what viewers were watching beforehand so related topics and past watch history in YouTube's video how YouTube's suggested video works they said

there are two things that you could do if your goal is to rank in suggested number one is to use a strong call to action at the end of your video this is going to encourage people to watch one of your videos next you could even consider creating a series so like 2 weeks ago on my channel I posted a video how to calculate your Instagram rates for a sponsored post that's going to be part of a series for calculating your rates as content creators there's going to be one on Instagram YouTube Tik Tok so

when I make the YouTube version of this one at the very end of that video I'm like okay now you know how to calculate your YouTube rates watch this video next to learn how to calculate your Instagram rates that's the strong called action which goes into the second tip that they said for trying to rank in suggested which is to use playlists links cards and end screens to suggest the next video to the viewer at the very end of your video you can choose which video you want somebody to watch next and have that pop

up in the end screen if you're somebody who is actively trying to grow your YouTube channel be sure to watch this video next where I teach you step by step what I would do if I had to start from absolute zero on YouTube you can also use the link in the description to stay up to date on my YouTube course which is launching next week don't forget to include clud this video's secret Emoji in your comments down below and I will see you in the next one follow your joy bye