- I'm gonna tell you how to get more views on your videos,
using YouTube's built-in search features.
And we're starting right now.
♪ That's just how it is ♪
♪ It might be lonely ♪
- What is going on?
My name is Nick from TuberTools.com.
Welcome to another video.
If this is your first time here
and you wanna learn how to grow your channel,
make videos, and all types of other YouTube-related stuff,
start now by subscribing and clicking the bell,
so you don't miss anything.
Okay, we all know that getting views
on YouTube can be challenging,
especially if you are just getting started
and you don't really know how to tap
into the discovery features of YouTube.
So, in this video,
I'm actually going to show you
what you can do to get your videos to show up
when people are actually looking for things on YouTube.
We're gonna go over titles,
we're gonna go over descriptions,
we're gonna go over tags,
and some other things that are extremely important
to make sure that you're going right,
so that YouTube will want to show your videos
to other people on the platform.
First, let's talk about title.
When it comes to titling your videos,
a lot of people will actually title their videos
as the very last step in the process
of putting a video up on YouTube.
However, that's actually the backwards way to do it.
Instead, you actually want to come up
with your video idea first,
and then from your video idea,
you wanna start thinking of titles
and thinking of how you're gonna title your videos,
and how you're going to structure all of the information
that you put into YouTube,
so that YouTube will help put your videos
in front of other people.
Here's what I mean.
Let's say that you have a particular topic
in your brain that you wanna make a video about.
What you would do is you would go into YouTube
and you would start typing in exactly what it is
that you are thinking
or the topic that you are thinking
about making a video about.
From there, what you're going to see,
is as you start typing that information in,
YouTube is actually going to show you a list
of different ways that people are actually looking
specifically for that topic
that you are wanting to make a video about.
So, using that information,
what you wanna do is you want
to see exactly how people are looking
for the particular topic
that you're wanting to make a video about
and then from there,
you're wanting to actually take one of those suggestions
that YouTube is giving you,
and you're wanting to make sure
that you have that as all of,
or part of the title of your video.
Now, just by doing this by itself,
you are drastically increasing your chances
of people being able to find your video
when people are actually searching for something on YouTube.
But we're gonna go deeper.
Another thing that you wanna make sure
that you do when you are typing
in the topic that you're wanting to talk about
to see what YouTube is gonna present to you,
is you actually wanna hit search
and you wanna see the list of videos
that actually come up for that specific term
that you are considering making a video about.
Here's where it gets fun.
What you wanna do is you wanna look
and see the results that are shown
when you search for that specific topic,
because those are your competition.
Those are the people that you're gonna be going up against
when you are trying to actually show up
for that specific term.
There are tools like TubeBuddy
that can help you identify your chances of ranking
for specific phrases or specific terms,
but what you wanna do,
if you wanna do it manually,
is you want to look and see exactly who is ranking
in those particular spots.
What you wanna do when those results are presented to you
and you are doing this manually,
you wanna say,
"Okay, are there any other channels
"that are about the same size as mine
"that are ranking for any of these results?"
If the answer is yes,
then that's the go ahead to move on to the next step.
If the answer is no,
then basically you just keep repeating that process,
over and over again,
until you find one of the ways
that people are searching for the topic that you wanna make
that you do have a chance to rank your video for.
And real quick, before we move on to the next step,
I wanna let you know that search inside of YouTube
and using Search Discovery inside of YouTube
or tapping into I should say,
Search Discovery on YouTube,
is really important because when you do that,
what you're doing is you're basically creating assets
for all these specific terms
that are gonna continually drive traffic
to your channel over a long period of time.
In addition to that,
by using the techniques
that we're talking about right now,
you can also show up in search engines,
like Google and Yahoo and MSN for example,
when people are searching for that topic in those as well.
So, search is very powerful
and it can bring you a ton of traffic,
but it's also important to understand
that the recommendation features on YouTube
actually have the largest amount of traffic,
so some of the stuff that we're gonna talk
about later in the video is actually gonna help make sure
that YouTube internally
is also promoting your content as well.
With that said, we're gonna move on to step number two,
which is your description.
Basically, how the structure works is you have your title,
and then to help prop up your title
or to give more context to your title,
you want to use your description.
I recommend that do you not pollute your descriptions
with anything at the very top of your description,
except for an actual description of the video.
In fact, YouTube actually recommends
that the first paragraph or two
of your video description does exactly that.
It describes what's happening in your video.
And what you wanna do is you wanna take the title
that you made for your video,
the actual phrase that you're trying
to get your video to show up for,
and you wanna take that and you actually wanna put it
in the description as well,
so it's a part of your video description.
Now, here's a tip.
YouTube recommends that you take the most important part
of what it is that you're trying
to get your video to show up for
and you put that at the very front of your titles,
and that you put that at the very top
of your video description,
because it's what people see first.
When you search for something on YouTube,
what you're going to see is you're gonna see the title,
so you wanna make sure that it doesn't get cut off anywhere,
that people can see exactly what it is
that they are looking for
when a search result comes up.
In addition to that,
they also show a snippet of the video description as well,
so you wanna make sure
that the very top part of your description
also fits into that teaser spot in the search results,
so that when people see the title,
if they want a little bit more context,
they're also going to see
that very top part of the description as well.
To recap that,
you want to make sure that you have the actual phrase
in your description that you're trying to rank for,
that you pulled from your title,
and then you also wanna make sure
that you're being a little bit persuasive,
so that when people do see that show up in search results,
they're more inclined to click on it,
and come into your video.
The third step in this process is tags.
When it comes to tags,
you want to make sure that you're optimizing everything
for the relevance of what it is
that you're trying to rank the video for,
or in other words,
the actual title itself.
Because of that, what you wanna do is you wanna make sure
that you put the actual phrase
that you're trying to rank for as your very first tag,
because YouTube specifically says that tags,
that you need to put the tags in there
in the order of importance.
Once you have that first tag in there,
that's your title,
and not your entire title,
unless its only that phrase,
but if you have the phrase or the keyword
and you have additional things on it,
then you don't necessarily wanna put that in there,
you just wanna put the actual phrase
that you're trying to get your video to show up for.
And then from there,
all of the other tags that you put into the tag box
should be things that are directly related
to the title itself.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say that your video is about the best camera lenses
or how to beat this particular game.
On the camera lens side,
let's say that what you're trying
to rank for is best camera lenses, for example.
Then what you'd wanna do is you'd wanna say
best camera lenses, best camera lenses 2019,
best camera lens reviews, camera lenses,
best camera lenses for beginners,
lenses for beginners, and so on,
until you fill out that tag box
with all relevant tags
that support what it is that you're trying to rank for
in the actual title itself.
And relevance is key here,
because YouTube's default sorting
when people are looking for stuff in search
is to sort by relevance.
So relevance is extremely important in this situation.
Let's say that you are making gaming content
and you are trying to rank for a specific gaming phrase,
then what you would do is you would take that phrase,
you'd put it in your title,
you'd put it in your description
or as part of your description,
and you would also put it in your tags as well
and you would build all of your tags
around that for relevance,
so every tag that you would use
would be relevant to that title
that you are trying to rank the video for.
Now, if you use something like TubeBuddy
that I mentioned before,
then TubeBuddy will auto-suggest tags for you
and then you can pick and choose
which ones are relevant to your video,
but if you are not using any types of tools for your stuff,
and you're just doing everything manually,
then what you wanna do
is you wanna go back to YouTube search,
and you wanna start typing in there different ways
that people might be looking for that particular game
that you are trying to rank your video for
or the specific phrase that you're trying
to rank the video for.
Now keep in mind,
relevancy is extremely important,
so you wanna make sure any tags that you are using
when you are pulling them from the auto-complete
or from TubeBuddy or wherever,
that they are relevant to the actual phrase
that you're trying to rank the video for.
I'm not sure if you noticed,
but I'm really trying to stress relevancy here.
(laughs)
Now, one question that I get a lot is people will say,
"Hey, Nick.
"I'm using the title in my description
"and I'm using relevant tags",
but what they don't think about is other ranking factors
that are extremely important when it comes to YouTube.
When it comes to ranking your videos in search,
what happens is even if you have the right title,
description, and tags,
if people are not clicking
on your thumbnails and your titles,
then what's gonna happen is YouTube is gonna say,
"Well, people are not responding to this,
"so therefore,
"we're not gonna keep this video in the search rankings,
"because when we have it there,
"nobody's clicking on it".
And this is why thumbnails and titles are so important,
because even though you might have everything perfect
on the actual information that you fill into YouTube
for your title, description, and tags,
if your titles and thumbnails are not getting clicked,
then it's not gonna do you much good,
because people are not responding to your content.
So what you have to make sure that you do,
is you have to make sure that you're
also making effective thumbnails,
because that is a part of ranking in search.
Again, this is something that TubeBuddy can help you with
with their thumbnail testing feature,
but what you wanna do at the very least
is if your videos are not showing up
for those particular things,
you wanna go in and you wanna look
at the click through rate on your thumbnails
and you wanna just get an idea on how that compares
to the rest of the thumbnails on your channel
with about an equal view count.
If the number is extremely low,
and here in a second I'm gonna tell you
what the averages are,
but if that number is extremely low,
then that tells you,
"Okay, well I need to get to work
"on making a better thumbnail
"that people respond to in a better way,
"so that I improve my chances of showing up
"when people are looking for this specific topic".
To give you a benchmark,
the average on YouTube across the platform
is between two and 10% on the click through rate
on your thumbnail,
so what you wanna do is if you're at the low end of that,
you wanna say, "Okay, how can I make it better?".
If you're on the high end of that,
you still wanna say, "How can I make it better?".
But you can say, "Okay, well,
"at least my thumbnail's doing okay,
"so maybe it's one of the other things
"that he's gonna talk about right here in a second".
Now, before we move on to the next ones,
it's also important for me to let you know
that if your videos getting a ton of views,
then in that particular case,
having a low click through rate
is actually relatively normal
because YouTube is trying to show it to people
that aren't as qualified to see it,
whereas if you don't have a lot of views on your thumbnail,
then in that particular case,
then YouTube is showing it to a lot more qualified people,
which means you seriously have some work to do
if your number is low.
Now the two other things that we're gonna talk about
that are also important ranking factors
are the retention on your videos
and the engagement that you're getting on your videos.
When it comes to your retention,
YouTube shows us in our analytics
how people are actually responding
to our video content through our audience retention reports.
What you wanna make sure
is that you're getting as much watch time as possible
from each video that you upload.
And here's why that's important.
YouTube is judging our content,
based on how much watch time we can generate per impression.
What that means is every time YouTube shows
your thumbnail and title to somebody,
how much time do they actually spend watching your video?
If it's a lot,
and you're doing these other things that I'm talking about,
then your video's going to do well.
If it's not a lot,
then there's a really good chance
that those particular videos
are not gonna do that great.
Now with that said,
there are other factors in this as well,
like engagement,
that we're gonna talk about here in a second,
to where if your video retention is kind of average,
but you have tons of engagement on your video,
everything is optimized perfectly,
and you have a high click through rate,
then you can still rank in search,
you can still get suggested all over YouTube,
but you would get suggested more
if your retention that you're getting on your videos
or the watch time that you're getting on your videos
was higher for example.
Now when it comes to engagement,
YouTube also says that they also rank videos
based on the amount of engagement
that they generate as well.
So if you have content and you're not getting any comments,
then it's gonna be more difficult
for you to rank in search,
then it will be if people are interested
in what you're doing
and they're leaving a lot of comments on your videos.
And that's why it's common for bigger channels
to rank faster and to rank in more competitive spots easier,
because one, they've just had experience
on actually learning how to keep people watching,
learning how to get people
to click on their thumbnails, and so on,
but it's also because within minutes of publishing,
they can generate tons of engagement on their videos,
which helps them instantly go into those ideal spots,
until YouTube tries to figure out
if their video's a good performer or not.
But here's the thing that I want you
to always keep in mind,
if your content and your thumbnails are not on point,
then everything else that you can do isn't gonna help.
But if your content and your thumbnails
are proven to be on point,
through the data that you get in your analytics,
then that actually gives you a little flexibility
on the other things because
if people are responding to it,
YouTube is more likely to promote it.
And that applies to search
and it also applies to having your videos suggested
next to other videos on YouTube
and that also applies to having your videos show up
on people's homepages as well,
which is gold.
What you wanna do is you wanna make sure
that you are writing your titles correctly,
and that you're going after good topics
that you have a chance to show up for,
you wanna make sure that your description is on point
and your tags,
but you also wanna make sure
that your thumbnail and your content are on point,
as well as your title,
because if they're not,
then it doesn't matter how good the other stuff is,
YouTube isn't gonna help you out much,
but if it is on point,
and you also have your title,
your description, and your tags put together,
then you're just gonna make like a little power formula
to constantly be sending traffic into your channel,
which is what you want.
Now if you're new to YouTube,
and you wanna give yourself an edge,
make sure that you watch this video right here
of tools that I recommend for YouTubers,
because there's a lot of really good stuff in there
that'll help you out.
And to learn more about growing your channel,
making videos, and all other types of YouTube-related stuff,
start now by subscribing and clicking the bell,
so you don't miss anything.
Thank you so much for watching!
I'll see you next time.