Anyone who has ever uploaded a Youtube video has wondered how anyone could possibly stumble across their video with the ungodly number of hours of video hosted on the site. So the question is, “how do I make my video appear at the top of searches on youtube?”

Believe it or not, Youtube’s search engine is much easier to “play” than the super complex Google algorithm. Here is my ordered top five list for the most important parts of your video in optimizing for youtube search:

1) Title – Your video’s title is incredibly important. Not only does a title often score (or lose) you a view, but it also is the biggest factor in determining keywords for the youtube search engine to pick up on. Be very keyword heavy and don’t feel as if a lengthy or awkward title name is always bad. Something like “How to throw a football – The Process Step by Step” may be long, but it is dang effective in encompassing key words.

2) Inbound Links – Have you embedded your video on your personal site or blog? Have you shared it on social networks? Are others sharing it as well? This is important to the algorithm because it is a huge factor in determining if the video has good and worthwhile content.

3) Description – Your description should be thorough. Should it be line for line what was said in the video? No. But! It should be a very good keyword based summary of what happens in the video. There is no point in being misleading either.

4) Views – Yes, unfortunately for those who are just starting, not only does the number of views on the video you have uploaded matter, but also the number of views your channel and other videos you have uploaded have. This is sort of the community impact factor of the search. It helps answer Youtube’s question, “are you actively involved in the Youtube community?” This really makes a lot of sense – especially for Youtube (well Google since they own it) – including this as a factor encourages us Youtubers to frequent the site.

5) Tags – The tags are third on the list of text based Youtube SEO (ranking behind the title and description) because these are what I like to all “catch all” key words. Most often this is where I include my name, my website’s name, the city I shot it in, and/or some other random things people might search if they can’t remember what the video was called.

There are other factors and all of the above can be further explored, but this is a general list to get you started.

Never forget that if your video has good content, it will get found and viewed, but you could do yourself a huge favor if you just do a little consideration of the above!

- Ted