So, as the title states, I wrote an article back in February after devoting quite a bit of time doing some research, and this is what I came up with.

YouTube Algorithm/SEO Understanding - By WarwickSTL

I've been doing a lot of research about the YouTube algorithm and felt I should pass on some information I've picked up and feel I have an understanding for:

We’ll go over title, description, tags, custom thumbnails, parentheses, and a few examples.

Title: You want your first part of your title be something that YouTube can understand what the video is about. For instance, instead of putting "I found a strategy in Battlefield that got me 100 wins in a day" you'll put something like "Battlefield V Strategies - how I won 100 games in 24 hours" -- That way Battlefield V Strategies is your "YouTube, this is what this video is mainly about" line, and winning 100 games is the "additional information about the video."

Description: The first two lines from the video's description is what shows up when people search. So, with that, make sure you're filling out descriptions with a good amount of information. Give the general basics of what the video is about without giving the whole video away.

Tags: Tags are important. Don't have too many. Tags should be multiple words. It gives YouTube's algorithm a good indication what your video is about, matches to people's search, etc. For my recent Sliver video (can't link due to self-promotion :( ), I had approximately 40 different tags, using tags of every game listed, Theta, etc.; all one word tags. I deleted the video from my channel, because at that point, I would confuse the algorithm if I changed it up.

Now, for my Sliver video, my tags are: "How to use Sliver.tv," "How to win free prizes," "Win Free Gfuel Amazon Paypal Theta," "Watch your favorite streamers," "Watch your favorite games," "Twitch," "Live Streaming."

You start with two in-depth, then expand it out to 2-3 slightly more vague descriptions of what your video is about, then 2-3 general relations to the video.

If you notice a related video doing well, you can always right click on the page of the video and select "view page source." ctrl f to open find and search for keywords. This will show you the keywords that are used in the video and should give you an idea of what to add in your video.

Custom Thumbnails: Use a custom thumbnail. Something that would make people see it in the right hand side of the screen and click it. Try to use colors that are not YouTube colors (red, white, black) Something that will catch people's eye. Use 30 characters max if you do use text in the Thumbnail, (like, absolute max) and remember that the bottom right is usually covered by the video's duration.

You can judge how your thumbnail is doing by going into the YouTube Studio, click the video, analytics, then Reach Viewers. You will see "Impressions click-through rate" which shows you the percentage of people that saw your thumbnail and clicked on it compared to those that passed up your thumbnail. You want this to be above 4%. If you notice your thumbnail is below that, you may want to reconsider what you're using.

Parentheses: Surprisingly, parentheses are big in a title. A video I was watching said that in an analysis of over 2 million YT search criteria, you're 38% (I don't know why that number stuck in my head) more likely to have someone click your video if you use parentheses (like this). It's tough to change videos that have already been uploaded for a while, because if you change anything on it, it confuses the YT algorithm. Update at your discretion.

Example: In the above example, I would have the title be: Battlefield V Strategies (how I won 100 games in 24 hours) The tags would be something like: "How to get better at Battlefield V," "Strategies to win at Battlefield V," "How to win at video games," "Winning strategies that get you victories," "Online Multiplayer Game," "War Games."

Thank you so much for reading! I know the algorithm is ever-changing, but I feel this gives a good starting point to understanding Search Engine Optimization and the YouTube algorithm. This is not the end-all-be-all, and there's no guarantee that this article will help in any way. :-P