How does the YouTube Algorithm Works in 2021?

Since its launch in 2005 and owned by Google a year later, YouTube has grown from a repository of amateur videos into the most popular online video platform worldwide.  It’s the second most-visited website on the Internet with almost 2 Billion viewers per month. So clearly it’s an excellent platform to connect with your audience and keep them engaged for longer periods of time while encouraging repeat traffic and views.  A clear understanding of how the YouTube Algorithm works is necessary if you want to uplift your youtube ranking, attract, and engage your target audience.

Every day, millions of people come to YouTube.

• Almost 500 videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute,
• One billion hours watched daily generating billions of views.
• People watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos daily, more than Netflix and Facebook videos combined.
• Youtube is having 30+ million daily active users.
• The YouTube app has over 13.4 million downloads from Google Play Store and over 4 million from Apple App Store in 2019.

Such growth of youtube reflects the increased appetite for digital video content among internet users. The number of videos and users is both increasing day by day. So it’s quite tough and competitive to stand high among others.

What is the YouTube Algorithm?

Are you thinking about if it is still possible to promote your YouTube channel and get your videos in front of your target audience?  Here is a brief understanding to do so, by knowing the Youtube Algorithm.

This is the YouTube algorithm that decides what people watch on YouTube, 70% of the time. As per the survey, Over 81.6% of American viewers say they regularly watch youtube videos recommended by the algorithm.

So It’s very important to know the working of the Youtube algorithm in 2021 It’ll ultimately help you to get more subscribers, views, and engagement on your videos.

How does the YouTube Algorithm Work in 2021?

The first thing you need to know is that you’ll need to produce quality contents that will keep your public interested. Because YouTube’s algorithm favors engagements, that means viewers must enjoy the videos they watch to stay for a longer period of time, So if you hope to be in their good books, Make sure to produce quality content that engages your viewer for the maximum time period.

Do You want to know Awesome ideas for videos? Read our recent article about it.

Like Google, YouTube also uses ranking factors to determine which particular videos come at the top of each search results page (SERP). YouTube looks at your video’s number of views, how long users watch it, and how many positive ratings and comments it has.

YouTube inspects its users’ actions on Youtube from their watched videos, to the time they spend on a specific video, if they like it, dislike it, comment on it or subscribe to it. Using this method they can tell which videos are worth keeping at the top search.

5 Sections where Youtube Algorithm works?

YouTube has five different parts, where the algorithm chooses the most relevant video for a particular viewer and ranks it high for users to see.

1. Home
2. Trending
3. Recommended videos
4. Search
5. Subscriptions

1-Home 

Youtube Algorithm inspects the viewer’s activity to know what videos are relevant for a particular user. In this way, it brings up different videos on the user’s homepage according to how engaging the videos were to other users that have similar likes and dislikes.

2-Trending

The trending section on youtube is for popular and new videos based on the region. In this section, YouTube observes how many views and engagement a popular video has and also how fastly the views grow. They do so to ensure there is a balance between new videos and popular ones so that the popular ones do not override the new ones.

3-Recommended videos

The Algorithm chooses any particular video for the recommended video section according to the number of times the viewer has seen the video or how many of the channel’s subscribers have watched the video.

4-Search

If you want to rank high in YouTube’s video search, it is necessary that your video’s title, description, and video content match what your audience is searching because these are some of the things the algorithm considers.

5-Subscriptions

The Subscription also plays an important role to get views on your videos and ranking your video on youtube. What YouTube does is to measure the number of active subscribers (not visitors) who watched a new video from their subscribed channel immediately it gets published through a metric known as view velocity. The videos will rank high with the rise in the matrix.

14 ways to optimize your videos for Youtube Algorithm?

Here are 14 steps and a set of tasks you should do to rank your video among your targeted audience. You could easily get more views, and gain subscribers and engagements on your videos by:

1. Optimizing your videos using relevant keywords in your video’s title and description.
2. Making eye-catching thumbnails.
3. Publishing often.
4. Creating a playlist (series of videos).
5. Add closed captions to each video
6. Add some suspense to your content
7. Share on social media
8. Embed your video with your blog etc
9. Making videos on trending / hot topics.
10. Encourage people to subscribe
11. Sticking to a consistent format for your YouTube channel
12. Making content that adds value to the users.
13. Include right tags
14. Engage your Audience (reply to their comments, offer benefits, giveaways, etc)

Final Thoughts

YouTube’s algorithm has changed a lot over time, each time leaving creators and brands scrambling, wondering why the methods that they’ve used to rank their videos aren’t working anymore.

But even as the YouTube algorithm changes, keep in mind that its goal remains the same: Get more people to watch and engage with more videos on YouTube. And that’s not all that different from yours. If you have a unique value proposition of your own, and if you go the extra mile to create videos people love, you can become very successful on YouTube.

If you’re struggling to come up with top video content ideas in the first place, our blog post: YouTube content Ideas (2021), would be the perfect place to start.

Marco

Born in February 1989, Marco is a social media manager. Originally started working as a phone salesman, but he was always a social media enthusiast. So, he began creating websites after work in his home. Later, he found out that social media is a perfect area for marketing. No matter the product, social media offered a lot space for him. So Marco decided to become an expert in social media marketing. Now with many social media platforms in the world, Marco has experience in each of them. Helping and guiding people in social media has always been an interest for Marco. Now he is sharing all info and tips for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook to SEO.