- When you're trying to grow a YouTube channel,
you'll hear over and over to just make videos.
And that is important, but also there are some strategies
that you can use that's gonna help you along this journey.
So in this video, I wanna dig into two strategies
that I personally use to grow my YouTube channels
that you can use as you're building your channel.
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So there's a few strategies depending on the style
of content that you're producing.
There's search-based strategies
and then there's suggested strategies or home or browse.
And they're gonna be different.
So if you wanna focus on search,
say you're a review channel, tutorials,
anything where there's gonna be keywords
that's gonna help people find your content,
well, you should try to use search to your advantage,
especially as a smaller creator.
Now, as you grow and as you get bigger,
search is not as important.
However, I do still have videos on my channel
that are performing super well in search.
For example, I have this video here
that's on multi-caming for Final Cut Pro
and it has over 70,000 views,
which is pretty good for this video.
Now, when you look at the data,
the majority of these views are actually coming from search.
And this video has brought over 1,000 subscribers
and over $1,800 to my channel.
So this was a solid video that worked well in search,
but not browse and suggested.
Now if you type in the search term, "How to Vlog",
you'll see that my video ranks first for that search term.
And also, when you go over to Google
and you type in, "How to Vlog",
my video pops up first on Google as well.
And this video has almost 3 million views
and 50% of those views come from search.
Now, this video alone
has brought in almost 60,000 subscribers and almost $20,000
to this channel.
Depending on the kind of content you're producing,
there might be more opportunities for search,
especially when you're getting started out.
And then suggested and browse will kick in later.
But for other strategies
like more entertainment style channels,
well, browse suggested homepage
like that's all gonna be where you're gonna get the majority
of your views.
So if you're going down this path of reviews, tutorials
or just guides or anything that's gonna be super helpful
in that way, you should use search as a tool
to get more eyeballs on your channel.
But if you're someone who's going more entertainment route,
well, then you're gonna have to apply strategies
that are gonna work more for suggested and browse.
When I really started seeing my channel take off,
it came from the keywords that I was using
when I started doing my initial tutorials and reviews.
And still to this day, I use keywords in my content
because it does help reach a broader audience
even though the majority of my views
come from suggested and browse.
So let me give you one strategy for search
and one strategy for suggested browse.
Let's start with the search.
So I use an extension called TubeBuddy.
And this has a free version and there's also a paid version.
Now, TubeBuddy is super powerful because you could see
how many people are actually searching for a keyword.
So let's look at the topic, "How to Fly a Drone".
This is just a broad keyword
that a lot of people are searching for.
So using TubeBuddy, I can type it in here in the search bar
and then down here it shows the number of monthly searches
for this topic.
Now with a paid subscription to TubeBuddy,
you could see how well your channel compares
to the other channels that are producing content
in this specific keyword.
And so you'll have these three different metrics
that are gonna help tell you if your video will perform
based on your channel history.
So the first one is Search Volume.
Is there search volume for this specific topic?
And then it has Competition Weighted,
which tells you that your video
might either perform really well for this keyword
or it might not perform well at all.
And then the last one is Optimization Strength.
So it's telling you if other creators videos
are optimized for this keyword or they're not.
So if it's in the green,
it means that all the creators
have optimized for this specific keyword,
whereas if it's in the red,
it means nobody's really targeted this keyword
in these specific search results.
And then at the bottom, it says Top Ranked Videos.
So it shows you the average views for these videos
that are in the top of the search results.
And then it shows the lowest barrier to entry.
So this is the video with the least amount of views
that's in the top of this search.
And then it shows your channel,
what your average is in the last few videos
that you've produced.
So the last few videos I've produced,
my average is 120,000 views
versus the barrier to entry which is around 10,000 views.
And so there's a good chance if I produce a video
that has the keyword phrase, "How to Fly a Drone" in it,
that it will rank in the top of these search results.
And as a new creator,
you're just trying to establish your audience.
So finding keywords where you can rank in the top
of the search results will help bring new eyeballs
to your channel and start getting the whole process moving
so that your videos will start getting pushed
in home, browse and suggested and all of that.
Now also at TubeBuddy, you can go to the Results tab
and you can see which videos are ranking
for this specific search result.
And as you can see the top result is, well, my video.
So my video is performing well in this search already
because this is a keyword that I've gone after.
But if this specific keyword is too far out of reach
for your channel and for the average views
that you're getting right now,
what you could do is use other keywords
around this keyword phrase by using the tools
on the right-hand side, which show you related searches
on YouTube, on Google and some different trends.
And this is just gonna give you some different ideas
for keywords and as you start exploring each one of these,
you might find a keyword
that doesn't have as much competition
and something that you might be able to rank in.
And so the key with using this search strategy
is you're looking for those keywords that has search volume.
So a lot of people are looking for this keyword,
but you can rank with your average views
that you're currently getting on your channel.
So all of it is gonna depend on your unique situation
and where you're at on your journey.
But this is just a good tool to be able to find keywords,
especially when you're working more
in these search-based topics.
Now let's go over a strategy for building suggested traffic
to your videos.
So the key here is you wanna do research.
You wanna find all of the creators that are in the niche
that you wanna produce content in.
Now, what you wanna do is have a YouTube channel
where you're only watching these creators.
You're not watching anything random.
You're not watching the news, you're not watching,
you know, the funny video that someone sent you.
You have a YouTube channel dedicated to only watching
the content from the creators that are in the niche
that you're trying to produce in.
Now, the key here is give YouTube a lot of viewer data.
So watch all of these creators,
all the videos that you like from these creators
and the videos that you would see yourself producing
and start interacting.
Like, comment, subscribe and just continue to watch videos
and watch them through their entirety.
Don't just like click on one and bounce off.
Now what's gonna happen over time,
is that you're basically creating a profile of the user
who's gonna wanna watch the content that you wanna produce.
And so the more that you use this YouTube account
and interact and watch these different videos,
whenever you log in,
the homepage is gonna be all of the types of content
that the YouTube algorithm thinks
that you're gonna want to watch.
This is a ton of data for you to use
to be able to figure out what kind of content
is being suggested and pushed on the homepage.
And also as you're watching these videos,
see what's popping up on the sidebar.
That's your suggested traffic.
So having this account where it's dedicated to only watching
the kinds of content that you wanna produce
is gonna give you a lot of information
on the types of things that people are actually watching
on the platform and give you an indication
of what types of stuff you should be producing,
if you want YouTube to be suggesting your content.
So depending on the style of content that you're producing,
you might be able to use both of these strategies.
If you're not doing search-based topics like reviews,
guides, tutorials, then you really wanna focus more
on the algorithm and what YouTube pushes
using this second method so you can really see
what is working on the platform right now.
If you wanna see my full hour and a half masterclass
all around building a YouTube channel,
make sure you check out this video right here
and I'll see you on the next video.
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