Optimizing your videos to be found in search results
is really important.
It's a great way to gain exposure and be found by people
who are searching for what you have to offer to them.
And today, I want to give you the number one best tip,
the most important thing that you
need to do to optimize your videos for search.
That's coming up.
[INAUDIBLE]
Hey, guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer.
And it's Wednesday, which means it's time for some YouTube tips
and advice and ideas and suggestions
and all that type of good stuff.
One of the things that I've seen happen in the comments
here, around previous Video Creator's videos,
and what I want to address here is people who say,
I'm actually not really interested in building
my audience.
I just really want to optimize my videos as well,
so they get found in search results
so people can find me there.
And that sounds nice and everything.
But the thing is, the most important metric
that Google looks at to determine
how valuable your video is and thus how highly it will rank
your video in search is called watch time.
And watch time is simply the amount of time
that viewers have spent watching your video.
Writing good titles that contain all your keywords
and description text and tags that are all properly
researched and optimized perfectly, that's all fine.
But that mostly just tells Google and YouTube
what to rank your video for.
It doesn't necessarily influence how high up in the search
results your video will show.
That is determined by how much watch time
your video has accumulated.
Now, in the first week of setting it live
and publishing it, your video is kind of
given this grace period.
And it's actually promoted really
heavily in a lot of search results for one week
to kind of see, how does this video compare
against all these other videos that have been well established
and in this place with these search results for a long time?
And if your video performed very well within that first week,
well, then it's ranked accordingly.
And likewise, if it actually performs very poorly
and doesn't accumulate much watch time
and has a high abandonment rate and isn't
getting too many people sticking around and actually
accumulating time on your video, then
it also will rank accordingly.
So the key question for video SEO is,
how can I accumulate more watch time for my videos?
And the number one best way, hands down,
to do this is actually to build an audience.
A lot of statistics say, including
ones from Google themselves, that subscribers actually
contribute twice as much watch time to a video
and to your channel overall as someone who just randomly finds
it through search.
And so if you want to give your videos the best possible chance
at ranking well in search results,
you need to drive as much watch time to that video as possible
within the first week.
And the best way to do that is to build your subscriber base.
They also send a lot of really positive signals to Google
and YouTube that indicate to them that your video is
valuable, including the engagement that
happens around your video and the sharing
and the comments and the likes.
So if the number one best thing you can do for your video SEO
is to actually build a subscribership base,
then the question is, well, how do you
build a subscribership base?
And that is a very good question, and one
that we talk about a lot here on this channel at Video Creators.
And I'm actually writing a book about it.
I've already written one.
It's called The Secret to Building Your YouTube Audience.
And if you don't already have that,
I'll put a link in the description text below.
You can get it.
It's free for you to download, so that should be really easy.
And then I'm actually working on another one called 30 Days
to a Better YouTube Channel, which
will help you optimize your channel
and position it and create messaging around it
that really makes your channel highly stickable
is what I think I'm going to call it.
Basically, your channel really sticky-- for people
to find it and stick to it and actually
convert from being just a passive viewer to a really
engaged fan and loyal subscriber.
If you want to be notified when that comes out,
you can just sign up to get that other free e-book, The Secret
to Building Your YouTube Audience.
And then when that workbook comes out,
the 30 Days one comes out, then you'll actually be notified.
And you'll have access to get it before anyone else does
actually.
I'm sending it to you guys first.
But until that comes out, I'd love
to hear from you guys in the comments below about what
strategies and tactics have you put in place that help you
build an audience, that really help you convert viewers
into subscribers.
Share some of those lessons and strategies with us below.
And the rest of you guys, make sure you go down there
and read those comments from all those people,
because there's always really good stuff down there.
We have a lot of smart people hanging out here.
And if this is your first time here,
I'd love to have you subscribe to this channel.
Every week, we give you some YouTube tips and advice,
ideas, and suggestions, just like this for you guys.
On Thursdays, tomorrow, we do some YouTube Q&A,
where I answer some of your questions about YouTube
and audience developments and such.
And then on Tuesdays, we take a look at online video news
and talk about how this platform is changing,
the updates that are here.
We talk about the implications that it
has for us as creators and the audiences
that we're building here.
So subscribe, and I will see you guys again tomorrow
for some YouTube Q&A. See you then.
Bye.