SEO is a waste of time! Well, not really but kinda

[Jeremy S.]

Well like in my analogy it's a formula that requires all parts. If you have OK or better videos about popular topics and you have horrible SEO then SEO improvements will help a lot I'm sure. If however you have good videos about something that is not popular enough AND YouTube thinks your video sucks, then SEO won't do much for you. Most of my views are handed to me on silver platter by YouTube. There are only a few search terms that are doing any good. Interesting thing is any video doing good in search, usually does well with YouTube algos. This means just about every top video I have is mostly getting traffic from recommendations and then from search. Sometimes, search will fall WELL behind suggestions while at same time tons of views are coming in from suggestions.

[DOUBLEPOST=1412718995,1412718548][/DOUBLEPOST]If my video is ranking number 1 in search how can I not be doing it correctly? Is the not the goal of SEO to get as close to number 1 as possible?

I will just throw this out there. In my experience, and this is just something that I do personally, I usually do not click the first link. I usually go down to the second, third, or so on.

 

[babyteeth4]

It's easy to get high-ranking SEO for more obscure things. But not everyone is interested in obscure things.
Much tougher to get high ranking results for something like "candy review"...but it can be done.