YouTube has gone from being a video-sharing platform for personal use to becoming a major tool for businesses to promote themselves online. It’s the second-most popular channel for businesses to post video content, following Facebook (Buffer, 2019). Likes on videos can give viewers a sense of legitimacy and trustworthiness. It can also help boost a video’s search engine optimization (SEO) ranking.
YouTube’s algorithm looks at a variety of factors when determining how to rank a video in its search and recommendation engines. Some of these factors are things that you can control, such as the number of likes and views a video receives. Another factor is how long users watch a video, with longer videos receiving more credit in the algorithms. YouTube’s algorithm also takes into account whether a video is watched in its entirety.
For this reason, it’s important for YouTube viewers to stick around for the full length of a video. This helps ensure that advertisers who purchase ads on the platform will get the most bang for their buck, as YouTube pays them per viewer watching an advertisement for 30 seconds or more (or the entire ad if it’s shorter than 30 seconds).
In order to inspire a large number of thumbs-up, videos need to be entertaining and informative enough to hold a user’s attention. In the past, this was a difficult task, but with the advent of smartphones and faster internet connections, this is now more possible than ever before. Popular examples include reaction videos to newsworthy events or viral challenges, such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge or Gangnam Style.
YouTube focuses on what its audience wants to see, which means that videos on trending topics will tend to receive more likes and views than videos that are less likely to engage an audience. This is why it’s important for marketers to keep up with the latest trends and create video content that speaks to what their audience is interested in.
If a video on YouTube has a lot of likes, this will likely translate to more engagement and higher search engine rankings. It’s also a great way to build brand awareness, as many users will see that a video has a lot of likes and may be compelled to check it out.
YouTube is a huge platform, and it can be hard to keep up with all the new content being posted all the time. To make it easier for people to find and watch their favorite videos, the platform also offers a variety of other features, such as recommendations. These appear in a few different places on the site, including on the homepage and while watching other videos. The algorithm that determines how YouTube ranks these recommendations includes various signals, such as likes, dislikes, and shares. However, the most important signal is how long someone watches a video. The more they watch, the more likes a video will receive. It’s also worth noting that the more likes a video receives, the more views it will get, which leads to more engagement and search engine visibility. youtube like