Posted by Jeff Johnson in social networking sites, video search engines, video sharing, youtube, youtube ranking optimization.
Youtube Ranking Optimization (YRO) is definitely in its infancy and I have yet to see a comprehensive resource on the subject… so I’ve decided to coin the new phrase “Youtube Ranking Optimization (YRO)” and start the ball rolling 
Please note: as of today a search for “youtube ranking optimization” on both Yahoo and Google yields zero results; let’s see if we can work together and develop the science of ranking higher on youtube!
Up until now I’ve pretty much ignored youtube for many reasons, but mostly because I just never took the time out of my schedule to work with my staff on it.
But that’s about to change.
I hired 3 full time web 2.0 guys a few months ago and their only job all summer long was to simply surf hundreds of social networking/web 2.0 sites and compile a huge web 2.0 knowledge base for my own personal reference library.
They basically kept electronic journals documenting their explorations and discoveries and now I’m working through their notes.
They also built dozens of social networking profile pages for me at sites like myspace, facebook, squidoo, etc., but I haven’t had time to play around with all of them, just youtube and myspace.
Here’s my youtube profile page:
Jeff Johnson Videos
Here’s what I’ve learned about youtube ranking optimization or ranking higher on youtube itself:
The youtube search engine uses three basic items to initially rank your video:
• The title of your video
• The description of your video
• The tags that you assign to your video
It can’t actually “read” what’s in the video itself so it relies on you to give it clues as to what the video is about.
That means all you really have to do to get started with your Youtube Ranking Optimization is to include your primary keyword phrase in the title, description and tags of each video.
Be sure to create unique titles, descriptions and tag sets for each video, even if they are similar in nature; doing so will create “unique” content for the other engines to find, and help you create “long tail” phrases that occur naturally in your writing.
Pretty simple, huh?
There’s actually a lot more to it than that but this blog post is getting too long so I’ll stop here and try to remember to share more of my “rank higher on youtube” observations with you in a later post.
Just be sure to visit my youtube channel and poke around looking for clues in the meantime 
Here’s my youtube profile page again:
Jeff Johnson Videos
Enjoy!
Jeff Johnson
Oran says:
Hi Jeff,
Youtube Ranking Optimization (YRO) is a great concept. I have been experimenting with it and can offer 2 ideas:
1. “A video is a video”: keep em short to minimize your production time, upload time, & download time.
2.”Parts is Parts”: build modular videos, paticularly slide shows, so that you can just add in 1 or 2 new slides, and voila, you have a new video with a new theme.
Best wishes, Oran
Need More? September 9th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Helen says:
I make photo pet memorial jewelry. A YouTube marketing method I used was to make a video of the before pet picture, then the piece of jewelry made of that pet. I put in a tear jerker song. I introduced it with credits with my URL then ended it the same. I then emailed my customers and told them they could see a memorial of their dear pet, and that I hoped they would visit, rate it and comment on it. Don’t know if it will bring me customers but surely it will give me a good incoming link.
Need More? September 9th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Abdaleye says:
I recently bought a software that has helped rank my videos very nicely. I can get about 200 visitors a day from every video I upload to youtube once I run the software on my video.
Its called tube automator
Jeff Johnson says: I’m not passing judgement… But be careful; that is most definitely a spam tool and could get you kicked off youtube for using it. Be sure to only use it on your “throw away” accounts.
Need More? September 10th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Rose says:
youtube ranking optimization now brings up this blog.
Jeff Johnson Says: Cool!
Need More? September 10th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Chris says:
Hey Jeff thanks for the post.
I just checked your profile on Youtube and saw your videos that reviewed the Casio Exilim under the search term ‘Casio Exilim ex-z1080′.
I saw that you were kind of split testing the results.
And the newer version of the same video put up 1 month ago is ranking higher than the one that was put up 6 months ago - YET the 6month old video is actually rated 3 stars compared to the 1 month old video.
The only other difference is that the newer video has more comments than the older.
It’d be interesting in the test results.
1. Do newer videos get more preference than older?
2. Are videos ranked according to the number of comments?
3. Do the contents of the other videos in your profile (tags, titles and descriptions) as well as your profile name, play a role in the ranking of your video amongst others for the same/similar keyword?
It’d be interesting to find the test results. It could possibly be a combination of all of the above.
Maybe finding that out will help you put out your ooined term ‘YRO’ in the internet marketing realm. Anyway, thanks for the heads up.
Jeff Johnson says: Here are the answers to your questions:
1. No, newer videos do not necessarily rank higher than old ones. It has to do with many, many factors including incoming links, comments, tags, the number of sites that host it outside of youtube, the quality of those sites, etc.
2. Yes, commenting helps but is not the only thing that matters.
3. Yes, the only way the engines know what is in the video is by what you tell them is in it by use of your incoming link text, the title tags, your description, and any of the words found on the pages surrounding it.
That pretty much means you should optimize the pages that your videos on in the same way you would for a regular page.
Need More? January 12th, 2008 at 10:56 am
David Birley says:
Apart from the tags etc, wouldn’t having a lot of either “subscribers” or comments on the video help with the rank of that video? (especially if it was competing for highly searched keywords).
Youtube certainly indexes high in Google - I came across a cool service the other day called “Tube Mogul” (http://tubemogul.com) that allows you to upload your videos to the ONE site, and it will distribute it to about 12 different video sites at the same time for you.
The cool thing with this is that you can track the views of ALL of the videos on different sites, on the SAME PAGE.
Nice.
Any thoughts?
Jeff Johnson says: tube mogul is great and offers analytics so you can track your video stats.
ANd yes, comments and subsribers to your videos is definitely a plus for ranking higher on youtube
Need More? January 12th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
David Birley says:
In terms of ranking high in youtube, i read somewhere that it helps getting a lot of views and comments.
In terms of getting more views, by embedding the video in your blog or site, and people clicking on that video, your views of that video will increase simultaneously over at youtube.
This technically can increase your ranking as well…
Those are not my words - I haven’t done it yet.
Cool.
Need More? January 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Chris W. says:
I have 2 videos that got over 10000 views in a week and several in the thousands. Here are some VERY important strategies I have found for getting high ratings.
1. Find a “Hot” video that is complimentary to yours. (I.E., Search for what you would search for to find your video and find the hottest videos that match the same search pattern.)
2. Set your video as a video response to the hottest you can. If they do not accept yours as a response, move down the list until someone does.
3. Find complimentary web forums and IRC channels and post the video links there with the description. Make Sure You Do Not Do This As Spam or you will be booted and shunned. Make sure you pick a few forums that are interesting to you and become known and respected in your own right, and then people will not begrudge you for showing them your work.
Chris
Need More? January 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
John says:
That is really great, but the problem is how can we know what people are searching for in youtube search bar.
Can someone tell us is there a statistic for top youtube searches, or/and tool like like overture for gooole.
Please if someone know something,let us know.
Jeff Johnson says: You just assume they are looking for the keyword phrases that they look for on the web.
Or you could use the technorati “popular videos” feature
I use Wordtracker Free Trail for my keyword research
Need More? February 14th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
John says:
Hi again
First for all thanks Jeff for your answer, but how technorati will help me to know which are the most popular keywords?
Does youtube show their top searched keywords, or is there a place we can see them?
Jeff Jonnson says: Technorati shows you which videos are the most popular based on their blog buzz.. that helps you come up with keywords that would be associated with them.
youtube itself has “top favorites” section that will tell you which videos are the most popular for the week/ month, all time… and you can guess which keywords are associated with those videos; they simply look in the title, tags, and description
Need More? February 16th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
John says:
Does someone know software that is similat to Tube Automator?
Jeff Johnson says: We use a paid service I like to call Automatic Video Sharing
Need More? February 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
John says:
Does someone know software that is similar to Tube Automator?
My guys use a video submission service I call Automatic Video Sharing
Need More? February 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
John says:
Hi Jeff,
Is there a course that will explain how can we increase conversion rate of videos.
Or site site free tips?
Jeff Johnson says: I assume you mean “conversons rate” to sales. If so, you have to include a great offer just like you would for a sales letter or a PPC ad. And writing a script before shooting helps you design it more like a verbal sales letter… and helps you avoid rambling on and saying “mmmm” and “uhh” a million times.
Copywriting is the key to any good offer.
Here’s one of the best:
BestDamnCopywriter.com
Need More? February 20th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
John says:
Hi Jeff,
How actually Traffic Geyser works?
Their offer is great, but how do they achieve that?
And what do I need to do?
Do I need to create title, description, and tags, or they will do this?
Jeff Johnson Says: TG works by helping you automate the video submission process. You load your video up to TG and then they help you post it to dozens of video search engines; one upload versuses doezens.
How does it work? Well, they use a combination of perl and curl programming/scripts to get the job done… most of the search sites don’t have API’s to allow for automation.
Other than that it relies on the fact that the search engines are crawling these “web 2.0″ sites every few seconds, and that google actually updates their database continuously; if they find a blog post or video they like they can post it to their SERPS in minutes.
Once you load up your video you need to give it title, description, etc.
You can do all the submissions without TG by hand, but TG makes life much easier.
Here’s my link for the service we are currently using for video submissions:
AutomaticVideoSharing.com
Need More? March 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
david says:
is there a way to get paid for your videos? … i know youtube has some adense for videos, but i’m looking for more …
Jeff Johnson says: Use your videos to sell products and build your list. In fact, sell your videos as products themselves. I know that sounds obvious.. but you asked and it’s something we do all the time.
We use them quite successfully to sell earn thousands in affiliate commissions selling someone else’s products.
It can be for electronic gadgets, “guru” courses, you name it.
We also use crappy videos to build lead lists… there’s money in a list that is marketed to correctly.
Need More? April 6th, 2008 at 1:27 am