- Learning how to craft a compelling title can be one of the
elements that takes your video from
must-watch to no one saw it at all.
So what goes into it?
Let's go ahead and get started right now.
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On average, we typically only have a few precious seconds
to hopefully slow down someone's scroll
when they're on YouTube and get them to click into a video.
The combination between the title and the thumbnail
is what gets people interested in your video.
So how do we craft the most compelling title that we can?
Especially if you're in an education or how to niche,
when a lot of what you're doing is actually a little bit
more straightforward or perhaps even listicle in style.
How do you make that exciting?
YouTube is the world's second largest search engine owned by
the world's largest, which would be Google.
So you don't have to go very much farther for
a search based results than the address bar.
So let's start here first
and then we will take it from there.
If you already have a keyword in mind,
go ahead and blop it into the search bar of YouTube
and then here's the insight trick and tip here,
go ahead and hit the space bar and see what comes up.
These are also going to start listing things as they're
being associated with this search term
and coming up in order of popularity and search.
And then more so than that,
the next tip, is to go ahead and start with the letter A
or an underscore, and then see what populates,
and then go ahead and delete that and go to letter B.
Take a quick scan through all of the letters
and if there are topics that come up
that sound interesting to you,
feel free to save them as a topic
inside a Video Topic Planner inside of TubeBuddy,
to save as a digital post-it
so that you can come back to it later.
Once you have your keyword that you'd like to explore more,
let's go ahead and take this and put it into
Keyword Explorer inside of TubeBuddy.
Now, one of the great parts about
putting a keyword phrase into
the Keyword Planner is that with TubeBuddy,
we can bring you back additional information,
including how many videos are in that search result
or how many times that keyword is searched per month.
Not only this,
but we'll also be able to show you how well optimize your
competition is when it comes to that particular keyword.
We'll also be able to tell you related searches
or commonly used tags when it comes to that search as well.
If you're on a paid plan of TubeBuddy,
we're also going to be able to give you
additional information which takes into account
your channels history,
as well as average views to show you how well your video
might perform if you made a video on this topic.
Now, if you are a search based channel,
you may find that the opportunity is going to be greater
for ranking higher in Google and YouTube search.
If you are one of the videos in a smaller pool of results.
So instead of making a generic video in a sea of results
about WWE, for instance,
with several million videos in that particular search pool,
you might make one that's a little bit more specific,
such as WWE divas,
and be competing with a lot fewer videos and have a higher
likelihood of your video being able to be seen.
Now, a couple of common mistakes
that we see very frequently when people
aren't going after particular keywords are that;
one that they can be too specific so instead of WWE,
which is too generic and then WWE divas,
which is a little bit more of a shrinkerfier,
then they say divas that are blonde and born in England.
If you're going to use a keyword phrase like that,
you do want to be a little bit cognizant of the fact that
you can go down too far.
The second common mistake that we see a lot is
that a lot of people will use their keyword
and they'll put it at the end of their title.
So keep in mind if you have something that might come up in
search, such as The Shure SM7B microphone,
you probably wouldn't want to create a title that says:
my genuine reaction after using The Shure SM7B microphone
for five months.
Instead, you would say Shure SM7B microphone,
my reaction after five months.
Easy, best, unbelievable,
things I wish I had always known, do this before you buy X.
Those types of phrases have emotional triggers
that make people respond and have genuine intrigue
and interest in the title.
So if you can marry that search keyword,
as well as that emotional trigger,
you're going to have a title on your hands
that is going to get more clicks.
The next mistake we see with people using keywords
for their title is going to be that
they make their title so long that it gets cut off,
especially viewing on mobile.
Think mobile first and most of the time after 70 characters
or so it's actually going to get truncated on the title line
and you're not really going to see it.
So it's best not to use all of those characters.
In fact, one of the items on our upload checklist
as well as best practices list includes
the fact that the title is under 70 characters,
so that hopefully none of it gets cut off.
Now I do want to take a second and put onscreen our comment
of the video and someone out there did remind me
that I missed it in one of the last videos.
I'm very, very sorry, but this one is now here.
Thank you so much for interacting with our community post
or with our video.
And if you want to have your comment featured
in the next video, make sure to comment on this one.
Now we have talked about this once before in a video
and if you miss that one,
I'm going to link it up here in the cards.
But, one of the best practices when you're starting to learn
how to craft titles that are enticing
and will get a click is to study magazine headlines
as well as newspaper headlines.
By studying the way that professional journalists
actually title their headlines for newspapers
and magazines, you're going to start to see
a lot of patterns when you're looking for them
and you're going to get some great ideas
for how to craft your own title.
Another frequent and very common mistake that we see is that
when people are crafting their titles,
not only do they make them too long,
but if they have a recurrent series on their channel
or perhaps a Vlog, they name the Vlog 142,
and then the thing afterwards,
as opposed to actually the keyword and the visual interest
or emotional trigger,
and then having the name of the series at the end.
Now, if you're not primarily a search based channel,
like many of these examples we're showing today,
one of the coolest things inside of Keyword Explorer
is going to be the trending topics.
So you can go through and actually go ahead and look for
trending topics, and if that's something
that's in your wheelhouse, you'll have data right there
showing you how much people are
looking for this and what that search number looks like,
so you can decide if you'd like to start and kick off your
keyword research with that term.
If you're in a country that is different
from what is in the list,
you can go ahead and drop down from the main menu that
comes up and change it.
One of the greatest things about these trending topics is
that it's all being pulled in from Google Trends.
So this is such a great time saver so that all this
information is right there
inside of TubeBuddy at your fingertips.
So if you have your keyword that you want to go after,
and perhaps even your emotional trigger and response as part
of your title, and you want to put those together,
you can also kick it up a notch by launching SEO Studio and
then go through the process of having your title as well as
your description box and even uploading your thumbnail to
see what it's all going to look like
when it gets put together.
And if you're not ready to apply it to a video at time of
upload right then and there,
you can save it as a draft and apply it
when you are ready to upload your video.
As you start to brainstorm all of these ideas,
you may also find I've got a couple of different titles
that could go either way,
one has a positive connotation, one has a negative,
like best stuff and worst stuff and I want to know
which one should I go with, for you data junkies out there
I've got something even better.
If you're on the Legend Plan of TubeBuddy,
you can actually do an A/B test with titles.
That's right, it's more than just thumbnails.
If you want to,
you can use your metadata or your title
and your description box.
You can change it from one variation,
perhaps the negative to the other variation,
perhaps the positive, and then go ahead and test those
and see how your audience reacts.
Personally, I think this option is so cool.
And if you're out there and you've done an A/B test
on your title, not your thumbnail,
and you have awesome results to show tag
TubeBuddy on Twitter so that we can retweet you and perhaps
even show your example in another future video.
Now, remember at the end of the day we are going for,
Click worthy not click bait titles,
and of course you need to marry it
with an awesome thumbnail.
I'm going to link this video over here
make sure you go check it out. It's all about thumbnails.
Thank you so much for hanging out with us TubeBuddies,
We'll see you in the next one.Bye.