YouTube has been around for a few years, but it is only now starting to be taken seriously, both as a social media avenue and as a platform for real content. But YouTube relies on search algorithms, just like your favorite search engine does, which means that if you want to be successful on YouTube and get the search ranking boost that having a highly-watched and rated video on the platform provides, you need to know how to play the game. Here are seven tips to help you improve your rank:

Improve the Amount of Your Video That People Watch.

YouTube knows and cares about not just how many people watch your video, but actually how much of the video they watch. If they bail out after only a few seconds, or there is a point in the video that most people are leaving, this is going to hurt you. You can maximize the amount of time people will stay on your video by getting rid of your long introductory segments and getting rid of long outros. People are more likely to bail during a long intro and before the outro. Minimizing the amount of time for both of these things means you’re less likely to lose people before they can be engaged by the actual content.

Encourage Viewers to Watch More Videos.

Don’t let your video be a one-off. Refer back to other videos on your page. The more time they spend on your channel, the better. The algorithm cares about not just how much of one video they watch, but how many of your videos in total they watch. End videos with links to other videos are a good way to do this, as is inserting clickable links into the video and putting a playlist of other videos to watch in the description box.

Make Videos on Topics People are Already Looking For.

You already use this tip in writing page content and blog posts, so why not utilize it here, too? In order to get people to actually view your content, make videos about topics that your audience is already looking for. YouTube has its own gauntlet of paid tools that will help you get insights about what topics you could make videos about. Make sure it is easy to tell that your video is on a relevant topic by creating a great title that includes a keyword and uses that same keyword in the tags.

Side Note: You don’t have to have the best production value—consumers will forgive production value if the rest of the value is there—but they do require consistently valuable content. If even one video slips in value, you are going to lose a large portion of your audience. Making videos about similar topics over a long period of time also helps you build authority on a website where it can be difficult to do so. Pick a niche and don’t deviate from it.

Engage Your Audience by Encouraging Them to Like/Comment/Subscribe.

These are three things you’ll hear professional YouTubers asking their audience to do in every single video. Why try to trick your audience into doing these things or just hope that they’ll do them, when it is much more effective to just tell them to do the thing you want them to do. The more comments you get, the higher you’ll rank. The more subscriptions you get, the higher you’ll rank. Tell them what to comment about and they’re more likely to do it. It’s a simple formula that can be incredibly successful for those who use it.

Encourage Your Audience to Share Your Video.

Aside from liking, commenting, and subscribing, sharing your video, by embedding it on their own websites or sharing it to social media, should be the primary goal of your videos. Value, of course, will do this. But so will asking. Look for venues that might be looking to post video content of the kind that your produce. Reach out to those venues to ask them if they would like to embed your video on their website or blog. If they are interested in your topic, they will be more than happy to embed the video.

Include Links Back to Your Interior Pages.

It’s a common practice to include a link to your website from your YouTube videos, but you’ll actually see better results by including links to subpages within your site. For example, if you’re a law firm practicing criminal defense, and your video is on DUI defense, then you’ll want to link directly to the DUI defense page within your website.