How to Rank on Youtube

After sending my intern on a fact finding mission, experimenting on my own, consulting some SEO experts, and talking to other webmasters, I have a good theory as to ways to help push yourself up the Youtube ranking system.

What is it? Complicated. And that’s being kind.

Youtube search uses a combination of tags and social ranking factors. For starters, everyone (and this was confirmed by google) agrees that descriptive keywords are important. Google can’t crawl your video so it relies heavily on your title, description, and tags to determine what your video is about. Therefore, be very, very descriptive. Don’t be spammy though- Google knows if your tags are relevant or not.

After that, things get much, much more complicated. While those 3 factors form a basis for your rankings and can be enough to rank you for a weird, unpopular term like maori cultural show (i’m #3), ranking for something more competitive is much different.

For something competitive, Youtube relies on a complex and shifting system involving social factors, including:

Video views
External Links
Channel Popularity
Video Responses
Rating
Comments
Favorites
Channel Subscribers
Video Age
Embedded version of the video
How many people watch until the end
That’s how a video on can out rank an older video on

In my opinion, these factors represent about 70% of what Youtube looks for in ranking on a competitive term. What are the most important factors? Well, based on my own experiments with my channel, I would say this is the order:

Rating
Favorites
Comments
Responses
Views
Video Age
Channel Popularity
Channel Subscribers
Embedded version of the video
External Links
How many people watch until the end

I rank them in this order because Youtube seems to be about social interaction with the videos so those videos that produce the most interactions will then move up the search results or get video responses and thus more views. A video with a lot of views is of course popular and should rank high but you can manipulate view counts. My video on Scottish musicians has over 17,000 views….thanks to stumble upon not Youtube.

Next I think your user popularity is important. This is Youtube version of trustrank. Just like Google automatically ranks anything high because they are a trusted website, if you have a channel with a lot of followers, high views, and lots of socially popular videos, Youtube trusts you and thus ranks your videos higher. Back in the day, I remember there was a big to do about this because youtube changed how they ranked videos and it took importance off this so a lot of people were upset. I still think this is important though. The other factors are so minor they aren’t worth going into detail over.

Here’s an example of all of this playing out. Take the search “la tomatina.” Let’s look at the top 4 plus my video:

1. Video Number #1: This by Journeymanpictures. The channel is huge with over 79,000 subscribers and a million views. The video has 61,000 views, 59 ratings, 101 comments, and 214 favorites.
2. Video Number #2: This is by brendanmcwilliams. This channel small with 6 subscribers and 120,00 views. The video has 103,000 views, 54 comments, 44 favorites, and 30 ratings.
3. Video Number #3: This is by awheewall. The channel has 9 subscribers and 130,00 views. The video has 7,000 views, 6 comments, 10 favorites, and 13 ratings.
4. Video Number #4: This video is interesting. It’s way newer than anything on the first page but it ranks #4. Look at the channel, it has 99 uploads, 1500 subscribers, and close to a million views. The video has 2000 views, 13 comments, 5 favorites and 6 ratings.

Now my video is #6 when i looked it up. My channel has 123 subscribers and about 60,000 views. The video has 15,000 views, 14 comments, 27 favorites, and 10 ratings.

So Video #1, despite having less views than #2 has the most comments, ratings, favorites and comes from a strong channel. Clearly a winner. Video #2 has the second most so easy to see why it is #2. But why do video #3 and #4 outrank me if I have more views? My theory is that video #3 is about even with ratings but the channel is popular and video is older. So this is why video age is important. It’s not the most popular video but it is an old video and just like in Google search, age is an important factor.

And #4? This is all about trustrank. That channel is very popular and well viewed so in a short time, it’s new video could rank very high with just a few comments, ratings, and favorites.

So that being said, let’s do a little quid pro quo and test this all out more. I’m really interested in getting my video on la tomatina and I want to see if a new video, like mine on the great barrier reef, can move up quickly with sudden rush of all those social factors i just talked about as it ranks nowhere now!

If you could star them, favorite them, and leave a comment on both of them, I will return the favor for videos of your choice. Let’s help each other here.

If you want to subscribe to my youtube channel, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/keppiezbt

Trying Out Lonely Planet Again

Awhile I ago, I said I wouldn’t use Lonely Planet’s blogsherpa program. I decided to test it out again over the last few months.

My findings? It still blows.

I get about 100 visitors per month from blogsherpa. Now, it’s not a big deal. I’m only tagging posts I won’t seo so I don’t have to fight myself in the rankings but even still, this shows that the program doesn’t offer any huge benefit. Can anyone out there show they are getting substantial traffic from these?

Conclusion? I’ll tag my photos. For 100 visitors, the 3 seconds is worth it. But I won’t be tagging anything I’d like to get search traffic for now or in the future. It still is not worth it and I still find quality control issues there. Letting everyone and anyone in reduces the traffic impact and makes the system pretty pointless.

You know where I find good traffic? Thorntree. Sure, the forum is a mess and people spam it and there are silly postings like “can i find atms in thailand?” but the volume of people that use it leads to great click throughs. Whenever I post links on thorntree, I get about 100-200 people. In fact when I am active on the forum (which isn’;t often because of time issues), I can pull between 200-300 visitors per day from thorntree.

THAT is where to get traffic. Not blogsherpa. Reply to posts, put relevant links into them, and watch the clicks. Just don’t spam them with links…b/c it’s annoying.

added bonus? LP thorntree links are do-follow.

Homeland Insecurity

So it’s happened again. Some would be terrorist managed to almost blow up a plane. Luckily, those we put our trust in helped keep us secure. No, I don’t mean the TSA. I mean the other passengers on the plane who actually do the TSA’s job!

Now, I can’t go number #2 an hour before I land, my water bottle is probably classified as a biohazard (but it’s still ok to keep next to the security area), the woman at the x-ray machine is still NOT looking at it, and the TSA is gonna start screening more babies now while the jittery guy with no luggage gets to go right through.

I think everyone who works at the TSA or Homeland security should be replaced by a team of monkeys. I have more faith in them than I do whoever is running the ship now. Now they are creating more rules to keep us safe, which won’t do anything to keep us safe. Why? Because all the rules in the world don’t matter when your staff reads at a preschool level.

Let’s see: Guy gets on a plane to America with no luggage, jittery, named Abdudlalajlah, is on the terror watch list, and his dad calls an embassy to warn he might blow up a plane. What happens? He’s let right through and almost blows up a plane.

What idiot didn’t think this was a potential hazard?

For starters, he’s on the terror watch list!!! What the hell is he doing on a flight anyways?

Secondly, his dad calls to say his soon might blow something up BEFORE his son got on a plane. Why didn’t anyone question him?

Third, who the fuck gets on an international flight with no checked luggage? MAJOR FLAG right there!!

How about instead of more rules we pay people to actually do a good job? I’m ok with higher taxes if that is where it is going! I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone through the airport and watched as the xray machine person WASN’T looking at the screen. Hello! That’s where security starts!

Or how about the water bottles? If it’s so unsafe, why is there a big pile next to me in security? Wouldn’t you want to remove that in case all of a sudden my poland springs bottle went nuclear? I mean you never know what could happen when water, plastic, coke, and gatorade come together.

This whole thing is going to produce a lot of show and even less security. All the rules in the world aren’t going to help us until we start getting competent people working security and we have the government actually taking those phone calls and memos (remember bush’s august memo?) seriously. Our government is great at insecurity but still not so good at the security thing.

Until then, let’s just hire the isreali’s to protect our airports. No one ever gets on their planes with even a dull pencil.

End Rant!

What’s Going On in My Life

Somethings require a different blog….like life updates….so going on my life:

I’m going to New Zealand next week. I’ll be there until about January 18th and then, as planned, I’ll still go to Australia to explore queensland and take care of some business in Melbourne. I also managed to get myself a free Kiwi Experience pass for my trip around the country. I might also try to get a Stray Travel pass too. I hear the Kiwi experience is full of college kids who want to party and while I enjoy a good party, I’m not sure I’ll want 45 days of it. However, like any good journalist, I must investigate so I can accurately report back to my readers.

Even though I said I am not going to use Blogsherpa, I’m testing it out again with photos and blog posts I don’t want to rank on google for. They made some changes to the program so I’m checking to see if I can get any consistent bump in traffic. Results are inconclusive right now. I’ll report back again in a month.

I’m also using Facebook ads to see if I can get people to my fanpage. Results are complete failure. I’m still playing with it though to see if I can hit upon a demographic that works. So far females from the US between the ages of 18-24 click through the most. There is so much potential in Facebook I’m going to make this work. Expect a long blog post on it when I am finished. I suspect when I give away a trip to Costa Rica in January, I’ll have more success with that. But I’m not going to give any more details about that….just yet.

I’m also going to try FB ads for my ebooks.

I’m also trying LP thorntree. While it is possibly the worst forum in the world, there is just so much ridiculous traffic there I’m seeing if I can up my clicks and traffic from there. I mean each posting, no matter how crappy, gets like 500 views. There has to be a use for it! Reports on that later.

I also wrote a new ebook on how to create a travel blog. Take a look. It’s only four dollars.

In non web work related news, I’m excited to go to NZ to meet Craig and Linda from Indietravelpodcast and see some old friends who live in Christchurch. I’m obsessed with the British band La Roux.

I’ll be speaking at TBEX ’10 next June. If you are a travel blogger or just someone with an interest, you should come. Last years event was the first time there was a “travel blogger” conference and this year’s event looks like it is going to be even better. It’s two days with a lot of workshops and talks. Come!

I have two other big big big big projects in the works but I want to keep those a secret. All I will say is one involves helping travel bloggers get free stuff and the other involves sending someone on the trip of a life time.

Other than that besides working, traveling, and buying bootleg movies in Bangkok, I lead a boring life and don’t do much else. Sorry for the boring blog update.

Ohh but I was named one of the ten sexiest twitterers…I should put that on my business card!

My Travel Plans

Curious as to where this nomad is going? Well, be curious no longer. My upcoming travels include:

Now until Nov 7th: Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich, Vienna
Nov 7-Dec 3- Bangkok
Dec 3rd to Mid January 2010- New Zealand
Mid Jan to Feb 28 2010- Australia
March 1 to April 30th- Indonesia/Malaysia/Thailand (Songkran!)
May 1-July 30th- SUMMER IN EUROPE! (Greece, Italy, Portugal)

After that, it’s a return to the US. I think I am going to rent a place in NYC for a month or so and then drive across the country. I’d like to do Central America after that but I don’t know. That is too far out for me to plan right now.

If anyone lives in these areas or is going to travel to these parts of the world around these times, drop me a line and let’s meet up!