We Analyzed 1.3 Million YouTube Videos.

Here’s What We Learned

About YouTube SEO

by Brian Dean  Last updated Feb. 28, 2017

We analyzed 1.3 million YouTube videos to better understand how YouTube’s search engine works.

Specifically, we looked at the correlation between ranking factors — like views, comments and shares —
with YouTube rankings.

We learned a lot about YouTube SEO. And I’m sure you will too.

Here is a Summary of What We Discovered:

1. Comments appear to be an influential ranking factor. We found that a video’s comment count
strongly correlates with higher rankings.

2. Longer videos significantly outperform shorter videos. The average length of a first page YouTube
video is 14 minutes, 50 seconds.

3. We discovered that video views have a significant correlation with rankings .

4. The number of shares a video generates is strongly tied to first page YouTube rankings.

5. There’s a moderate correlation between a channel’s subscriber size and rankings. This means that even
small channels have a chance to rank their videos in YouTube.

6. Video likes are significantly correlated with higher rankings.

7. “Subscriptions driven” has reasonably strong correlation with rankings. Therefore, videos that result
in new subscribers have an advantage in YouTube search.

8. We found a very small relationship between keyword-rich video tags and rankings. This could
represent the fact that YouTube can now understand video content without the help of metadata.

9. 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.

10. We found zero correlation between keyword-optimized video descriptions and rankings.

11. HD videos dominate YouTube’s search results. 68.2% of videos on the first page of YouTube are
in HD.

I have detailed data and information of our findings below.

Video Comments Have a Very Strong Correlation With Rankings

YouTube encourages creators to publish videos that maximize engagement. Needless to say, comments
are a strong indicator that people are engaging with your video.

But does YouTube use comments as a ranking signal?

Our data suggests that they do:

As you can see in the chart above, the more comments a video has, the higher it tends to rank.
Considering YouTube’s emphasis on user engagement, this result isn’t a big surprise.

Key Takeaway: Videos with lots of comments tend to rank best in YouTube.

Longer Videos Outrank Short Videos

When it comes to video SEO, should you create short videos? Or are you better off with longer videos that
cover a topic in-depth?

We analyzed our data to find out.

Our data shows that longer videos tend to significantly outrank short videos.
In fact, the average length of a video ranking on the first page of YouTube is 14 minutes, 50
seconds.

What’s happening here?

YouTube has publicly confirmed that a video’s total watch time is a key ranking signal.

Also, in 2015, Google was granted a patent for an algorithm that uses “watch time” as a ranking signal.
In short, YouTube wants to promote videos that keep people on YouTube for a long period of time.
Longer videos accomplish this best, hence the preference for longer video content.

Another theory is that longer videos provide more overall value in a single video. This is true for “how-to”
videos as well as for content designed to entertain. The value that longer videos provide may encourage
more interaction signals (including comments and likes) that ultimately impact rankings.

In fact, if you do a cursory search of popular keywords, you’d be hard pressed to find a short video (< 3
minutes) ranking highly in the search results.

Key Takeaway: Longer videos perform best in YouTube search. The average video on the first page of
YouTube’s search results is 14 minutes, 50 seconds long.

Video Shares Are Strongly Tied to Higher Rankings

Google has consistently denied the fact that social signals play a role in their algorithm.

However, YouTube’s algorithm works independently of Google. So there’s a possibility that YouTube uses
shares from social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as a ranking factor.

In fact, we did find that shares have a strong correlation with higher rankings in YouTube:
It’s important to note that we used YouTube’s public share report for this analysis.

Why is this important?

One of the major issues of using social shares as a ranking signal is that they’re easily gamed. Anyone can
can hand someone a few dollars in exchange for sharing a piece of content 100 times on Facebook.

This isn’t the case on YouTube.

Unlike sharing content using a webpage’s social sharing icons, YouTube knows which users share video
content…and where they share.
This tracking makes this signal much harder to game.

Combine that with the fact that YouTube encourages publishers to create highly-shareable content (and
that YouTube reports shares in YouTube Analytics), and you have a strong possibility that the relationship
between shares and rankings is more than a chance correlation.

Key Takeaway: Highly-shared videos outrank videos with fewer shares.

A Video’s View Count Is Significantly Correlated With Rankings

Video views used to be YouTube’s #1 ranking factor.

The thought was that: lots of views=popular video=quality video.

However, YouTube discovered that views often serve as a poor indicator of video quality.

So they changed their algorithm to emphasize factors like audience retention and engagement:
However, we discovered that a video’s total view count continues to have a significant correlation with
rankings.

It appears that you still need a critical mass of views to rank in YouTube. (In fact a YouTube engineer stated
that, while views aren’t as important as they once were, YouTube still uses them).

That’s because, without views, your video can’t generate the other signals that YouTube uses to evaluate
your video’s quality (like total watch time and comments).

But at a certain point, views have diminishing returns.

That’s why you often see high-quality videos rank above lower-quality videos (even when the lower-quality
video has significantly more views).

Key Takeaway: Video views are significantly correlated with higher YouTube rankings.

A Channel’s Subscriber Count Is Moderately Correlated With

Rankings

We found a moderate correlation between a channel’s total subscribers and rankings:

This is good news if you run a small or new channel.

Unlike Google, which seems to have a preference for big brands, YouTube is more likely to rank content
from “the little guy”.

For example, for this popular keyword, videos from two small channels outrank a video from a channel that
has over 2 million subscribers:
This type of result isn’t uncommon on YouTube.

(Of course, channels with millions of subscribers have an edge. But our data shows that this advantage
isn’t as significant as you may think).

Key Takeaway: Channels with lots of subscribers have an advantage in YouTube. However, videos from
smaller channels consistently outrank videos from popular channels.

Videos With Lots of Likes Outrank Videos With Fewer Likes

It’s no secret that YouTube prefers videos that engage their audience.

And video “likes” serve as a powerful engagement signal. After all, likes are a crowdsourced way of
evaluating how the YouTube community feels about your video.

That’s the theory. But what does the data say?

Our study revealed a significant correlation between likes and video rankings:
This suggests that YouTube may use likes as a ranking signal.

However, as you know, correlation doesn’t always mean causation.

Videos with lots of likes are also likely to be high-quality. And high-quality videos generate other ranking
signals (like audience retention) that YouTube values.

Key Takeaway: YouTube may use likes as a direct ranking factor. Or it could be that heavily-liked videos
generate other signals that YouTube truly cares about.

Videos That Result in New Channel Subscribers Rank Higher Than

Videos That Don’t Generate Subscribers

If someone really enjoys a video on YouTube, what are they likely to do? Subscribe to that channel so they
can see that channel’s future videos.

In other words, a video that encourages lots of new subscribers is a sure sign of quality.

Not only that, but getting new subscribers is an extremely hard metric to game at scale.

Sure, you can get a few people (or bots) to subscribe to your channel after watching a video. But it’s much
more difficult than generating thousands of fake views or likes.

Knowing that, its likely that YouTube uses “subscriptions driven” as a ranking factor.

Our data did indeed show a significant correlation between “subscriptions driven” and higher video
rankings.
As they do with shares, YouTube displays the number of subscriptions driven underneath each video:

(Publishers can choose not to show this information publicly).

Like with most metrics, you can boost the number of subscribers your videos generate by creating world-
class video content.

However, you can also ask viewers to subscribe:

I’ve found that a clear call-to-action to subscribe significantly boosts my “subscriptions driven” on each
video.

Key Takeaway: “Subscriptions driven” has a reasonably strong correlation with higher YouTube rankings.

Keyword-Rich Tags Have a Weak Correlation With YouTube Rankings

In the early days of online video, platforms like YouTube relied on metadata to understand your video’s
topic.

For example, YouTube would analyze your video’s title, description, tags…even your video’s filename.
Essentially, the more text you could attach to your video, the better.

Today, YouTube can “listen” to every word of your video (without needing you to upload a transcription):
Knowing that, does YouTube still use video tag metadata?

We found a weak correlation between keyword-rich video tags and rankings:

While tags don’t appear to be as important as they once were, our data shows that they still make a small
dent. So it makes sense to use them.

(Also, YouTube recommends that you use descriptive tags. This suggests that they still use tags to
understand the content and context of your video).

Key Takeaway: Including your target keyword as a tag may help with rankings. But the overall impact of
tags appears to be small.

Keyword-Optimized Titles Are Slightly Correlated With Rankings

Traditionally, you video’s title was piece of metadata that YouTube put a lot of emphasis on.

However, we found that including an exact keyword in your video title only has a slight potential impact on
rankings:
These findings could mean a few things:

It could be that YouTube has de-emphasized the importance of video titles. However, this seems unlikely as
YouTube has stated that: “Titles contain valuable information to help viewers find your videos in search
results.”

What’s more likely is that YouTube has developed a deeper understanding of a title’s meaning (beyond
simple keyword matching).

In other words, they may use a less-sophisticated version of Google’s semantic search. If so, YouTube
wouldn’t need to see a specific keyword in your title to rank you for that query. A synonym would do the
job.

In fact, its common to see videos ranking well in YouTube for popular keywords…even when they don’t
contain the exact term in their title.
Key Takeaway: Using your target keyword in your title may help you rank for that term. However, the
relationship between keyword-rich video titles and rankings is very weak.

There’s No Correlation Between Keyword-Optimized Descriptions and

Rankings For That Term

Does including a keyword in your video description help you rank for that term?

According to our data, keyword-optimized descriptions don’t have any impact on rankings:
This finding contradicts a common “best practice” of video optimization: keyword-rich descriptions.

There are a few possible explanations for this finding:

First, like with titles, YouTube may not require an exact keyword in your description to understand what
your video is about. For example, let’s say that your target keyword is: “how to grow tomatoes”. Using
terms in your description like “growing tomatoes” and “the best way to grow tomatoes” may work just as
well.

Second, there’s the possibility that YouTube uses “keyword appears in a video’s description” as a ranking
signal, but it’s so small that we weren’t able to measure it. In fact, we found several videos with no
description at all ranking highly on the first page. This implies that your video description isn’t nearly as
important as user-generated signals (including views and “subscriptions driven”).

Third, it could be that YouTube now ignores video descriptions as a ranking factor. This is unlikely as
YouTube states that: “Well-written descriptions with the right keywords can boost views and watch time
because they help your video show up in search results.”.

Despite this finding, I still recommend writing keyword-rich descriptions.

Why?

An optimized description helps you show up in the suggested videos sidebar, which is a significant source
of views for most channels.

Key Takeaway: There’s no correlation between keyword-optimized titles and rankings for that term.
However, I still recommend writing keyword-rich descriptions as they can help your video rank for related
terms (and appear as a “suggested video”).

HD Videos Dominate The First Page of YouTube’s Search Results

Do high-definition or standard-definition videos perform best in YouTube search?

We discovered that HD videos appear significantly more often than SD videos on YouTube’s first page:

This data can be interpreted in two ways:

First, it could be that YouTubers that create the best video content also tend to record in HD. Therefore,
this is an instance of correlation only telling part of the story.

Second, there’s the possibility that YouTube has an inherent preference for HD video content.

It’s difficult to determine the full impact of HD vs. SD from our correlation data alone.

Regardless, the vast majority of videos that rank well in YouTube are in HD. In fact, 68.2% of all videos
on YouTube’s first page are in HD.

Key Takeaway: HD videos are significantly more common than SD videos on the first page of YouTube’s
search results.

Summary and Conclusion

I’d like to give a big “thank you” to Zach Russell for collecting and analyzing the data we used to make this
study possible. I’d also like to thank Qi Zhao for helping us with statistical analysis.

And if you’re curious about how we conducted this study, here’s a link to our methods.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which result was most surprising to you?

Or maybe you have a question.

Either way, leave a quick comment below right now.

Pravash

Bookmarking it! Seems like an amazing guide. You last guide was awesome.

Thanks for the post Brian!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Pravash. Yup, this is a brand new study. We collected and analyzed the data over the last 2
weeks so this is what’s important for video SEO in 2017.

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Chris

This is great research, Brian! Something to be proud of for sure. Although YouTube has been around for a long
time now we STILL don’t see too many companies leveraging this great media for ranking. Who doesn’t like
INFO_taining your customers? Even if they do create a small biz video, they might not know how to rank it for
keywords. That is where great guides like this one come in to help succeed online.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Well said, Chris. I think the underlying issue is that, with video, there’s a barrier to entry that’s not there with a
post. But as you pointed out, the upside of video marketing/YouTube is HUGE.

R E P L Y

Chris

Yes Dean, for SURE! I wonder sometimes if people realize that Google Owns YouTube. That being said, why
are you not including videos into your marketing strategy? Huge Ranking Opportunities

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

I’m not using video?

https://www.youtube.com/user/backlinko

R E P L Y

Chris

oh sorry, I meant, generally speaking…. I know you have an amazing campaign.

Bryan

LOL
Mario

Short videos do well… It depends on your audience and content strategy.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

That’s true, Mario. But in general, our data shows that longer videos tend to rank best in YouTube.

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Tom Drake

Hi Brian, another great post as I’m looking to start doing video this year!

When it comes to comments, shares, and likes, have you seen any evidence that these aren’t just the RESULT of
the high rankings, not the CAUSE of the high rankings? On your own videos, have you noticed that when these
factors come first, those videos rank better than others that didn’t get that early engagement?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Tom. This was a correlation study. So we only looked at how different metrics correlated with rankings.
We’re not able to tease out cause and effect
from our data. That said, from my own experience, I’ve definitely noticed that lots of comments tend to
precede a high-ranking video.

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Gary

This was my thought also! Thank you for answering it.

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Vikrant Jadhav

This is going to be massively helpful. Thanks.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Vikrant

R E P L Y

Azzam

Excellent research piece and knocks the head on some of the rubbish I read out there about “YouTube SEO”.
Thanks Brian

R E P L Y
 Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Azzam. Yup, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about YouTube SEO. I hope our results
can start a trend where more people use a data-driven approach.

R E P L Y

Caleb Malik

How confident are you in the results given the use of spearman correlation (thanks for sharing methods btw). You
do supply some anecdotal evidence based on reports out of YouTube, but I often found myself saying things like,
“well of course the comment count is highest on the higher ranked videos, it’s much easier to get comments when
you rank well.” Any additional thoughts on this? Are there results above for which you advise greater caution, are
there others you are more confident about? Would be interested to hear more.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Caleb, you raise a great point. As with any correlation data, caution is warranted, correlation doesn’t mean
causation, etc. And our study is no different.

In terms of results I’m confident on, I use a combination of the strength of the correlation, statements from
YouTube about what they value, and my own experience. And my experience is pretty much in-line with the
data. The only one I was surprised to see was the effect of views as I see videos with fewer views outrank
videos with significantly more.

R E P L Y

Caleb Malik

Hmm, very interesting, and I assumed there was definitely interpretation on your own experience. Thanks
for sharing! Had you considered a multiple regression for analysis? Or did this data, and it’s collection, not
lend itself to such analysis? This might offer greater insight into causal relationships if it is possible.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

We actually did consider multiple regression to try to tease out the individual effects of each ranking
factor. It’s something we may pursue in a future study/update of this one.

R E P L Y

Caleb Malik

Sweet, would be very interested in seeing the results. Thank you for sharing!

Felipe

I had the same thought. The more views a video has, the more comments, likest, etc. it is likely to
have. We need to look at the RATIO between views, and all other factors to see if those other factors
have much influence.

Ann
There is something I have to keep in mind, Thanks for sharing these things!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Ann. These results also led me to tweak how I approach optimizing my videos.

R E P L Y

Amie Botes

Great post and really interesting insights Brian!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Amie. Glad you enjoyed it.

R E P L Y

Amie Botes

I think it could also be interesting to see what categories the videos fall into, like the channel’s main focus
for example, marketing, entertainment, food, exercise, gaming ect. and if that has an impact on how
YouTube ranks different video categories.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Amie, that would be interesting. That said, our sample included hundreds of different categories. So they
were represented in the data set.

R E P L Y

Felix Rose-Collins

Amazing article! Thank you so much

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Felix

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Yosua Herbi

Yeah.
I get new content from Brian Dean.

Thanks!

(I think, I will make a channel tommorow after read this. :/)

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Yosua. Cool! Good luck with the new channel

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Kiril Yovev

Hello Brian, the thing is that in the past the most popular videos were the short ones. Now… it’s exactly the
oposite thing… Everyone wants to keep the users on their websites, decreasing the bounce rate. They’re not
doing it so much for the users but to improve their profit.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Kiril, that’s a valid point. Whether its Google, Facebook or YouTube, they all want to keep users on their
platform.

R E P L Y

Jake

Great Article,

What about a series of video like Part 1 – Part 10, do they rank aswell as long videos?

Thanks Jake.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Jake. According to our data, a series won’t rank as well. Both from a “We’re YouTube and we
want to keep people on our platform” angle and from a user experience point of view. It’s much easier to watch
a single video than get the same info from 10 different vids.

R E P L Y

Marcus

Fab article, thanks Brian.

To me YouTube ranking is an enigma. I can upload one and it gets views, likes etc but upload another and it’s
somewhere in the abyss. Part due to competition I am sure but I cannot find consistency. Your guide helps.

One question actually… YouTube keyword research. Do you have any tips on finding those YouTube searches that
carry search volume? All I use is the predicted search bar in YouTube.

Finally, YouTube rankings in organic search. Any data you’d possibly share about this?

Great thanks.
Marcus

R E P L Y
 Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Marcus. Hopefully this article will help you figure out what’s working so you can scale.

Honestly, YouTube suggest is your best bet. It’s great. Even YouTube recommends it!
https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/titles?cid=get-discovered&hl=en#yt-creators-strategies-1

We didn’t look at Google rankings so we could focus on the YT platform

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Sariel Mazuz

Hey Brian,

Awesome article with some surprising insight! Definitely going to take action based on these.

The one that really caught my attention, it’s the correlation between keywords-rich description and ranking.
Although I’ll keep using optimized descriptions (As you said), still, as a “little perfectionist” it’s great to know
that

Quick question, which tools did you use for this kind of analysis?

Stay awesome,
Sariel

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Sariel. That one caught me eye too. We had quite a few videos without any description at all rank well.
So that was a sign that descriptions
aren’t as important as they once were.

In terms of tools, I’d have to ask my co-author (Zach) what he used. But from what I gather it was a Swiss Army
Knife of different tools. This wasn’t easy to pull off.

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Zach Russell

Hello Sariel, I figured I can chime in about the tools we used. To do the extraction, we used a combination of
the Python library Scrapy and their companion headless web browser, Splash, to render JavaScript (its
essentially a scriptable version of Google Chrome). Once we collected all of the data, we put it into a database
and normalized the data. We then used the Python Library SciPy to extract the data and run the correlation
algorithms. If you have any more specific questions i’d be more than happy to answer them.

R E P L Y

Shad

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the insightful post.

What would be your recommendation for visual-only videos (no talking – no text). Examples would be real estate
tours, demo reels, etc… (Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Q2-6v7OMc)

Is there any hope for videos like this to rank well?

R E P L Y
 Brian Dean

Hi Shad, there is definitely hope. I imagine other videos in that space also have no talking. So you’re all in the
same boat

R E P L Y

Jui

Nice information!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

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Miguel

Wow, just a great guide and free! The future of “SEO” (we’ll have to come up with a new name soon) seem to be
outside of Google Search now, having so many other places to lookup content (Youtube in this case, Reddit,
Pinterest… you name it).

Thanks again!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Miguel. It’s true that other platforms steal a few % of searches from Google. But Google is still
the dominant force in search by a mile

R E P L Y

Dustin

Legit study, way to really provide some value!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

That’s how I roll, Dustin

R E P L Y

Pankaj

Hi Brian,

Thank you for sharing such a epic youtube ranking factors.

From your every post i learns something new & intersting.

Thanks again Brain for this awesome post!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Pankaj

R E P L Y

Dan

Great update to this post Brian. It sure is nice that guys like you test all the data that some of us just don’t have
time to do. Thanks!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Dan. Actually this is a brand new post. Either way, glad you enjoyed it

R E P L Y

Damian

Thank you for this article, I am an SEO Analyst and I tend to do a lot of searching online to keep up-to-date with
the SEO world and ever-evolving techniques. And I have to say, you’re site is one of the best out there offering
top-quality content, and lots of it. Love your YouTube posts too, keep them coming!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Damian.

R E P L Y

Katherine Ong

A great study for brands looking for increased brand awareness or traffic to their YouTube channel.

However, did you look to see if it’s still true that click through from YouTube to websites is low? If that’s still the
case, it would seem that using YouTube videos as a method to drive website visits would not be recommended.
What are your thoughts?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Good question, Katherine. The CTR depends a lot on the video, the CTA etc.

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Pradeep Singh
Thank you for this detailed guide about YouTube ranking factors.
It’s surprising to see your analysis of keyword-optimized descriptions not having any impact on rankings. I find it
really hard to agree with this, based on my experience.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Pradeep. I was surprised by that one as well.

R E P L Y

Thuong Le

Hi Brian,
Just want to say Thank you for great research. You are the best.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Thuong. I’m always trying to add value to the SEO community.

R E P L Y

Anand

Brian, your ideas are superb. I hope to be like you one day guiding many.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

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Bill Portnova

Great info on YouTube ranking. I will start making all my videos in HD, Thanks Brain

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Sounds good, Bill

R E P L Y

Judy

Good timing! I just suggested to a friend who is traveling through Africa by the seat of his pants that he should
start a video log. I’ll send him the link. Thanks.

R E P L Y
 Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Judy. Hope this guide helps your friend

R E P L Y

Justin Gordon

Brian,

This is absolute GOLD! I’ll be saving this in Evernote, bookmarking in Google chrome, and reviewing again and
again. Thank you!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Justin. I hope this guide helps you grow your channel

R E P L Y

Ivailo Durmonski

Hey Brian,
It’s a quite interesting guide – very detailed and informative. Looking forward to the next one!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Cheers Ivailo. Glad you learned some new stuff

R E P L Y

Qadar

Brian, you are the Brain of IM. It is just the “i” on the other side

Excellent research and useful findings. Will definitely help.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

HA! Thanks Qadar

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brian lollie

Brian, Great Post and Awesome! Content My team and I have been pushing video/SEO for almost 9 years now and
Brian it changes constantly however, your study will be utilized to the fullest. I’ve followed you around for a while
also and You are the MAN! keep up the great work and god bless you for sharing your study.

R E P L Y
 Brian Dean

Thanks Brian. I hope this helps you guys have even more success with video marketing.

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Jacob

So based on these findings would you recommend driving as much traffic as you can to new videos to increase
views, shares, subscribes, and view time? Or is it best to let them rank organically and see if they sink or swim
naturally based on the merits of the content.

If so, what is the best strategy if you have a small audience?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Jacob, it’s both. I recommend promoting your videos to your current audience (it’s great content anyway. So
it’s a win for them). That can give your video an initial boost that helps a lot.

R E P L Y

Bruno

Hey Brian. Thanks for this study. For me there’s something missing. What about CTR? Don’t you think that in 2017
Youtube use that like Google? ++

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Bruno. I’m confident that YouTube uses CTR. Unfortunately that’s not public so it’s hard to
analyze data on that.

R E P L Y

Dany

Hi Brian,

Bookmarked it and will use it for sure!

Got a little question for you:

Do you think there is a correlation between subtitles and rankings? Does Youtube use it to understand the subject
of a video and therefore make it rank higher?

Thanks!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Dany, great question. I actually don’t think they use them that much. They can transcribe videos with pretty
good accuracy without them.

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Dan Harris

Amazing stuff and I have bookmarked as well. Quick question: as video length appears to correlate with higher
ranking, how do we weigh the significance of that vs. the data that shows view duration dropping off significantly
after 2 min or so? Won’t the longer videos decrease % of views all the way through? Thanks

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Hi Dan, good question. YouTube isn’t as focused on % viewed. They care more about total watch time.

R E P L Y

Manmohan

Hi brain after reading this article … Most trending videos on YouTube by your site readers… Cheers

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

I hope so, Manmohan

R E P L Y

Ivan Panchev

Hey Brian,
Just another awesome research. Every piece of content at backlinko is pure gold!
Thank you for sharing!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Ivan. Glad you enjoyed the new guide

R E P L Y

Andrew Gitt

Hi Brian, this is a great article. I only pay attention to facts with case studies. So thank you. I’m going to be in
touch with you in the near future as I’m working on a new platform that literally does every single thing you
mentioned and going to be recording my own case studies. I plan on sharing with you. So be on the lookout to
hear from in the near future. Thanks again for your great article.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Andrew. I’m the same way

R E P L Y
Amir

Hey Brian, have you had the chance to check the impqct of the ratio of likes to views amount

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Hi Amir, we didn’t look at that ratio. Are you thinking a higher likes:view ratio is best?

R E P L Y

Amir

Yeah, it might reveal who used bots for increasing his views and who had real users.

R E P L Y

Vali

Hey Brian,

How about “latest uploads”?

I’ve searched for “TVR1” (in Romania) and top 1-3 videos are uploaded within last 24 hours. They have only 2k
views, 4-5 minutes length, few likes, etc.

On 5th place is an 430 days old video, over 40 minutes in length, some likes and comments, etc.

The first video (ID: 1Ap6uI-Nx5A) is ranking without having the keyword in title (TVR1).

Some ideas?
Thanks,

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Vali, good question. We actually looked a bit at that but didn’t find anything. New videos only get a temp
boost. After that, older videos rank better because they have more comments, likes, watch time etc.

R E P L Y

Vali

I see… I’ll watch that video to see when will lose his rankings.

1-2 years ago was a simple method to rank #1

Step 1: upload a video on UNLISTED
Step 2: boost with some views, likes, comments
Step 3: make that video PUBLIC
Once you made it public, it ranked on top.

Any new tricks like that?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Vali, I think the days of tricks on YouTube are coming to an end

 R E P L Y

Omkar Nath Nandi

Are you sure about the duration of the video, that is 14 Min and 30 sec? As in many niches, it’s impossible to
increase video length; then one need to add additional video minutes. It might reduce the interest of the viewer.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Omkar, I’m sure. We triple checked all of our data.

R E P L Y

Omkar Nath Nandi

Great but if you can check hairstyle, cooking type of niches the average time is around 6-8 minutes. My wife
has a channel which has 70 recipes that fetched 130k views in 10 months in just three months work with 0
work and without further updates. There I see high duration videos receiving fewer view’s while less
duration one’s getting more. But I agree with most information based niches this period is standard. I look
forward to updating you if I can gather any information on it.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Omkar, that makes sense. The data doesn’t necessarily mean “longer videos=better”. The #1 goal is to
create an amazing video. And it sounds like your wife is doing that. I would keep going with what’s
working for you.

R E P L Y

Melanie

Great stuff! Answers a lot of questions. Thank you very much.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Melanie. Glad this study could help clear things up for you.

R E P L Y

Ruby

Excellent analysis of youtube SEO and video ranking factors.

Just started our youtube channel, the information provided in this post gonna help me a lot.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Sounds good, Ruby. Good luck with the new channel

R E P L Y
Joseph

Awesome research! As a very small channel, I am testing the same theories as far as search and rank is concerned.
I have 15 Subs, almost all of which were derived from one video that has viewer retention and comments! I set out
to try and replicate the same results in future videos, and I landed right in between 2 videos of major YouTubers!!
This video only had 8 views!! I am fascinated with how YouTube ranks and will continue to read your posts! Great
work, sir!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks for sharing your experience, Joseph. Hopefully this study can help you re-create the success you had
with that popular video.

R E P L Y

Aamir

What a great article, Brian! Thanks, only a few people write such a quality article on such a topic

I have a simple question, what should be the minimum length for writing a great description? I am told by so
many people that your description should be of 500 words. Did you find any correlation between the videos that
have a long description and the videos that have a short description?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Aamir, good question. We didn’t find a correlation between description length and ranking. But long
descriptions may help you show up for more “suggested videos”, so I prefer to write 250+ word descriptions.

R E P L Y

Sam

How did you select these 1.3 million videos?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Sam, there’s a link to our methods at the end of the article.

R E P L Y

Sam

Ah, missed that. Thank you.

R E P L Y

Barry
Found your e-mail in my Junk folder and almost deleted it before reading as I didn’t recognize “the sender”. Glad
I didn’t as what a “gem”! Answered a ton of my questions about video marketing with Youtube. In fact I have paid
for content with less valuable information about marketing with Youtube than what you provided for free in your
report! Awesome content! Many thanks, Brian!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Barry. I have too

R E P L Y

Sabine

Thanks for this! As a new an very small chanel I am glad to hear about point 5!
Greatings, Sabine

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Sabine

R E P L Y

Derwin

Simply great Brian. Thanks a lot!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Derwin

R E P L Y

Mahedi

Extraordinary. Awesome research Brian

Bookmarked. Thank you very much.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome. Glad you learned some new stuff you can use to optimize your videos

R E P L Y

Oleks

Brian, great job! Have you figured out what weights certain factors have on suggested videos vs youtube search.
It seem to be a different weights? You can promote video to the search or to the recommender. I noticed that
certain strategies would get one but not another. What your thoughts and insights on that?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Oleks, great point. “Suggested video” works different than YouTube search. So that would be interesting to
look at.

R E P L Y

Oleks

Brian, I hope you’ll find some time for an deeper look into this and share results with the community. It’s
hard to understand one without the other. Thanks again for the report.

R E P L Y

Amin

Thank you so much. amazing and helpful post. I have extra question if you please – How can I make HD video? can
I convert any video to HD?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Amin, you actually have to film in HD

R E P L Y

Nand K.

Hi, Brian – excellent analysis, hopefully, this will work for us too.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Cheers Nand

R E P L Y

Ostin

Nice summary you provided here. I’m just not sure how did you know which videos of those 1.3M are videos with
real views and real comments? Conclusion is always right if you make it from a proper sample. Otherwise results
are not adequate. Anyways thank you for your research.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Ostin. We weren’t able to distinguish between fake and real views (even YouTube struggles
with that).

R E P L Y
 Oleks

Oustin, Brian, this is in fact interesting point. From the one hand Youtube has up to 80% of unidentified
visitors – so they cannot track it. On the other hand, Youtube won’t care that much about fake views. It’s in
the interest of Youtube so that additional liquidity is maintained. It is still a problem for Youtube, but it’s not
violating Youtube’s operating philosophy. The advertisers are paying anyway. Can you think of any
strategy/metrics to figure it out on the mass scale? I would say disproportional likes/views or
comments/views ratio might point out to the fake views video.

R E P L Y

Neal Hett

As always – very valuable info and if there is anything I can do for you let me know. You really are up to date and
accurate.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Neal

R E P L Y

Amy

Great article! Awesome to have something that is worth while to show exactly where to focus based on stats. Any
stats about publishing consistently? This is something that has been recommended in various places too. Perhaps
it’s just to keep your subscribers engaged in your videos.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Amy. We didn’t look at publishing frequency as a ranking factor. But from my experience it doesn’t
matter nearly as much as putting out amazing content.

R E P L Y

Chris Guthrie

Great post Brian, but I echo some of the same sentiments shared by other comments:

e.g. Of course top ranking videos have more likes, comments etc

Would love to see the data analyzed in other ways in a future post.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Chris. You’re right: this is a limit of correlation analysis like ours.

R E P L Y
Uchchash

Really amazing! Recently I am thinking to focus on YouTube along with my blog! So, this article is really helpful!
Thanks Brian!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Awesome!

R E P L Y

Jared

Wow Brian! Thanks for creating this amazing guide.

Your insights and stats are super useful and I’ll definitely keep them in mind as I create more videos on Youtube.

One quick question/comment, in your post you mentioned, “Google changed their algorithm to emphasize factors
like audience retention and engagement.”

Do you think that when people replay sections of your videos will play into the “retention and engagement” of
those videos?

Thanks man for creating awesome stuff time and time again.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Jared. I’m honestly not 100% about that. Replaying sections could mean that you weren’t
clear or that section of your video is amazing. So I’m not sure how YouTube treats that.

R E P L Y

Oleks

Jared, you might think of the following thing: video gets boosted each time when people are closing the popup
ads or skipping the video ads. I haven’t figured out the way to use it though. Perhaps better placement of the
ads might be done to facilitate this action.

R E P L Y

Pawan Sahani

Hi Brian,
Overall, quality depends. If video quality is good then it will get more likes, comments, subscribers and shares,
and will rank higher.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

That’s very true, Pawan.

R E P L Y
Ashley Jessen

Another quality article So surprising to read the description research. Perhaps as Google’s AI team get better at
extracting what is being said in the video, then the video is the key to the description. It sort of makes sense as I
rarely click on ‘more’ to see what has been written in the description section. Google’s click tracking would show
them that too. Just a guess on my behalf.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Ashley, it’s a good guess. As YouTube gets better at “listening” to videos, the description gets less important.

R E P L Y

Hopeton

Wow! This was an in depth research, thanks for these valuable information.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

You’re welcome, Hopeton

R E P L Y

James

Brian, great to see you applying your analytical approach, and step by step break down to another area. This is
good timing for me (and I think quite a few others) as we start to look more seriously at Youtube as part of the
mix. Great quality as always.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

James, you’re not alone: more and more people are jumping into video marketing (and YouTube) this year. So
hopefully this helps.

R E P L Y

James

Brian – also a suggestion: could you look at adding LinkedIn as a share option on your articles? I tend to keep
facebook for personal stuff, don’t use Twitter much, but I do share the occasional good article with my network on
LinkedIn.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Hey James, if you sign up for the newsletter you’ll get notified every time I publish something new

R E P L Y
Tim

Great article Brian!

Something worth noting, having multiple tags and keywords helps a video to rank for multiple keywords. I like to
be found for a few phrases and mixing it up in the title has achieved that for me (and the description). What’s
your research say? Still works, or not any more?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Tim, we didn’t find that tags help you rank for specific keywords. But more tags can help you show up as a
“suggested video” in YouTube, which is a massive
source of views for most people.

R E P L Y

Gaston

I have discovered a few days ago that “Audience retention” is the most important factor in my Youtube channel.
The videos with higher retention percentage are the ones that get more views on my channel. Not only for higher
rankings on search pages… mainly because these videos tend to get more views as suggested video on related
videos.
Thanks for this great post!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Gaston, I’ve 100% seen the same thing. Audience retention and total watch time are huge. Optimizing your
videos for terms people
search for on YouTube is the other 50% of the equation.

R E P L Y

Andres Bustillos III

AMAZING research and intel on the YouTube algo! How did you examine and manage data for 1.3 million YouTube
videos?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Andres. If you look for Zach’s comment he goes into some detail on how we pulled this off.

R E P L Y

Mayaprakash Pant

I completely agree with Brian – creating a call-to action for subscribers really work. When we watch a video song
of a popular artist, at the end that celebrity asks us to subscribe to their channel. Overall this is an awesome
article. Cheers!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean
 Yup, that seems to really help.

R E P L Y

Dave Rohrer

Curious at the breakdowns for search/video types. Ecom vs Gamer vs Beauty vs How To vs Etc. I saw someone
else mention how things are different depending on your vertical. Much to the sadness to YT Trolls… I wonder if
they know that their comment wars and thus engagement only help videos and not really hurt them #oops

Lastly – interesting data and awesome job digging in!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Dave. Every industry is different to a certain extent. But I don’t think the algo treats videos in different
verticals differently. So I’d say the findings apply
to all industries.

R E P L Y

Jurgen

Although the 14 minute video length average is an interesting statistic, it in itself does not say much, there is no
clear trend in the data there (maybe a slight upwards trend in length, but it is very faint) so I’m not sure we can
draw a conclusion that it is a good video length. I would like to see the standard deviation added to that same
graph. For example, is the average 14 mins but 4 mins and 24 mins also do well? You probably need a histogram
as I suspect the distribution will not be symmetrical. In that case rather add percentiles (e.g. 10 25, 75 and 90).

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Jurgen, that’s a good point. If you check out our methods you’ll see we found a significant relationship
between video length and rankings.
That said, we may do a deeper-dive into the data in a future update.

R E P L Y

Rishi

I like the fact that my new channel have opportunity to rank higher.
Awesome content, I liked it soo much that I am going to share it in my WhatsApp group….

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Sounds good, Rishi

R E P L Y

Gaurav Heera
Really amazing………………your article is really informative and helpful for me and others too because as you have
described everything about YouTube SEO in descriptive, simply yet effective too. You’ve done a great job, doing
analysis of 1.3 million videos are not an easy task.
Thanks to share this precious article with us.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

No prob, Gaurav

R E P L Y

Alex

Hey Brian, thanks for amazing post! You’ve mentioned HD videos like a ranking factor. What do you think about 4k
videos?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Alex, we only found a correlation between HD and rankings. I’m not 100% sure it’s a ranking factor. That said,
HD videos look better, and 4k looks great, so they may perform better.

R E P L Y

Valli

This was a nice read. It’ll be of a great help if you could also write about how to practically achieve the ideal
scenario of at least a few of these YouTube SEO factors. And I’m surprised about longer videos ranking higher. It
makes sense for YouTube, but sometimes shorter videos are better for users, aren’t they? eg. how-to videos

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Valli. This guide will help you implement our findings: http://backlinko.com/video-seo-guide

R E P L Y

Diego

Hi! Great study.

Have you tried to use the median instead of the mean/average?

Some outlier values, like really long videos, can have a great influence on the average.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Diego. We did correlation as well as average. And we found a correlation between longer videos and
higher rankings. The average isn’t so much a hard-and-fast rule as a way
of showing that longer videos tend to do best.

R E P L Y
Muffi

Hi Brian,
Great Post, Keep up the good work.

Just a question. How much time does it take to Rank a Youtube video?

I have applied all your tactics, but the video is stuck at the 2nd Page.

Anyways, Thanks for the awesome content.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Muffi, you’re welcome. It depends on tons of factors. Can take months or even years.

R E P L Y

Alvise Canal

Hi,
I found your article really interesting and I wanted to ask if I could have your allowed to translate it and publish it
on my italian blog.

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Hi Alvise, sure no problem

R E P L Y

Jim

Nice article and impressive research. Just what i was looking for, i am going to test it out!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Sounds good, Jim. Let me know how it goes.

R E P L Y

Nischay Jain

Hi Brian, another great post! Going to bookmark it!

I want to ask you a quick question – Is any there any way that thumbnail can increase CTR on videos?

Anyways, Big Thanks for this detailed research guide

R E P L Y

Brian Dean
 Nischay, you’re welcome. Yes a thumbnail is a big part of your videos’ CTR on YouTube

R E P L Y

Arun Sarathy

OK. Great study, first of all! Hats off, Brian for putting so much time into this. This looks like a bit different from
the textual content’s SEO factors. For example, I see you have pointed out in another comment above that
‘frequency’ of posting doesn’t seem to correlate with engagement. Or is it not measured?

Also, I believe that the video cover thumbnails play a significant role to improve the CTR, in addition to adding a
link to your other videos throughout the ongoing video, without distracting the viewer (and making them disable
the annotations if it’s all over the face).

Does it help to have a co-existing blog/a website with a domain name that’s same as the YouTube channel name
and then also direct some traffic to the YouTube channel/vice-versa by ‘repurposing’ the content (text, images,
slides)?

Great job, again!

Regards,
Arun Sarathy

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Thanks Arun. We didn’t look at publishing frequency, so I was speaking from personal experience there. Yes, re-
purposing content like that is a smart move.

R E P L Y

Nick K

Hi Brian, what about regular backlinks? are they considered a ranking factor in youtube videos?

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Hi Nick, we didn’t look at the influence of backlinks. My take: YouTube doesn’t use them as a ranking factor.

R E P L Y

Cody Burkhart

This is insanely helpful Brian, as are all of your guides.

You rock!

R E P L Y

Brian Dean

Cheers Cody

R E P L Y
 L e a v e a C o m m e n t

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