As a YouTube specialist I can tell you that it is all about YouTube SEO and practically nothing about the quality of the video. Just take a look at the top 20 videos on any YouTube search, many of them are simply awful.
Proper YouTube SEO is designed to get your video up where people will actually see it. After they see it then you can get shares, likes, etc. But if it does not place well in the listings no one will see it and no one will watch it.
Here are the basics:
Research and pick your keywords for your video, these keywords should match popular searches on YouTube, not on Google.
Name your video file using your keywords
Upload your video to YouTube
Use your keywords in your title
Use your keywords in your description
Make sure your description is full, YouTube likes longer descriptions
Make sure to link to your site, but put your link in the second sentence in the description, not first thing in the description. The first sentence is what is displayed along with your thumbnail in YouTube search results so that sentence needs to entice people to click on your video.
Put links to your social media at the end of your description, YouTube likes social links
Use lots of tags that match your video content
Make sure that you have a YouTube channel and that you have verified your identity, this will allow you to use a custom thumbnail.
Create a special custom thumbnail with text that tells the YouTube searcher what your video is about. Thumbnails with text are clicked more often than just pictures
Use annotations in your video to link back to your web site
There are several more tricks available and I have a free ebook on how to do that on my blog at georgepeirson . com
For proof, go to YouTube and do a search for "photoshop elements 11 text", that is one of the example searches I used in my ebook, currently almost half of the videos on the first page for that search are mine. I placed several of those videos on the first page right after I uploaded them, no views, no likes, but right to the first page using my techniques. BTW, all of my techniques are YouTube approved but most people simply do not understand or use them.