YouTube Ranking: How to Get More Views on YouTube

Want to increase the visibility of your YouTube videos?

Wondering how to help your videos perform well with the YouTube algorithm?

To explore how to get more views for your videos on YouTube, I interview Sean Cannell.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Sean Cannell, a YouTube expert who specializes in video influencers, video equipment, and video marketing. He creates videos for multiple channels with 200,000+ subscribers each. His course is Video Ranking Academy.

You'll discover how to help your videos appear as suggested videos and rank well in search results.

Sean explains how views, comments, and referrals from outside YouTube boost a video's ranking.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
YouTube Ranking
Sean's Story

Sean learned about producing video and doing it consistently through a volunteer role with his church. Around 2003, the youth pastor asked Sean to record weekly video announcements. The first year, Sean made 52 videos.

Then he began creating videos for Sundays, too. So before YouTube even launched, Sean was producing 104 videos a year. By 2007, Sean was managing the church's YouTube channel and learning about creating titles and thumbnails. From that experience, Sean started a business creating wedding videos and commercials, and working with YouTubers, coaches, authors, and speakers to help them leverage the power of YouTube.

After about 15 years of handling the different aspects of YouTube and video production behind the scenes, Sean launched his current business, through which he's built a personal brand. Sean's main personal channel, Think Media, has tips and tools for building your influence with online video.

He focuses on the tools (cameras, lighting, microphones). He also helps people who want to improve the videos they produce or stream via a smartphone, or who want to level-up their video production.

The other channel, Video Influencers, is a weekly interview show where video influencers share their best advice. Sean talks to YouTubers and people using video on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or any other platform.

All in all, since Sean started working with video, he's probably published more than 2,000 videos and thus has seen a lot of video data.

Listen to the show to discover how Sean feels about his early videos.

What YouTube's Algorithm Considers

Most people think video views are the most important metric. If a video has a million or even 10,000 views, it must be amazing. However, a few years ago, YouTube changed the algorithm, and now minutes watched matter more than views. Minutes matter most, Sean says.

The emphasis on minutes watched makes sense if you think about YouTube's perspective. A video with a deceptive (or clickbait) title may get only 1 or 2 seconds of view time because the viewer quickly realizes the video isn't what they thought it would be. However, when somebody commits to a video for even 60 seconds, it definitely has more value because it keeps viewers on the platform longer.

The order in which Creator Studio displays YouTube analytics reflects this emphasis on minutes. The top metric is watch time, the second is views, and the third is subscribers. Although views and subscribers matter, YouTube is most concerned with viewer sessions.

With watch time, YouTube's algorithm considers two factors. First, YouTube wants people to watch content on your channel. So if you upload a 10-minute video and someone watches 7 minutes, that's great. Second, YouTube measures time on the platform. For example, when you send an email with a link to a YouTube video,