YouTube look at a combination of things to determine which videos to display in the top spots, and like Google can change the game plan whenever they like but increasing video views is a big part of the picture.
Not only that, it’s human nature to click on the video which looks to be the most popular, which in turn increases the views, and if it’s a good video then can get a number of ratings, comments, honors, etc.
I suggest looking at similar videos that rank higher in YouTube’s search results to see if there is a pattern.
Some videos get lots of views, but have very little response from viewers where as others have a higher number of comments/interaction.
The video title, description and video tags are very important; and favorites, likes, comments, contacts and subscribers are also part of the equation.
Other factors to some degree can also influence the position like flagging, embeds, shares, age of video and inbound links.
Not many people get inbound links to their video and/or channel pages, so some good quality links go a long way too.
With some link building, you can get page rank 3 or more which is a good link to have from YouTube.
You should have your website clickable link in the video description at the start, so it’s viewable to viewers to encourage them to click it. It’s a nofollow, but still good to have, plus can increase traffic to your website.
What’s really cool is your website link on your channel page is a dofollow, so getting page rank on that as well, sends you link juice back to your own site.
A good thing to do is analyze the top few videos for your chosen keywords and record all the above stats.
Look for patterns between them. What video category are their videos in? Some categories can be less competitive than others. Do all top videos have xxx amount or more of views, favorites, likes, comments, inbound links, owner last logged in*, subscribers, etc.
That will give you a good picture of what got them to the top and then try match or better them.
* Go to their channel page and record “Last Visit Date”. Are they active, or has the owner not logged in for months.
