Every YouTube channel, from those, which discuss science, to those, which discuss celebrity gossip, all know this truth: Branding and SEO are your only tools for success. Without good SEO you won’t be found. Without good branding you won’t be remembered. This article is going to look at both of these important concepts so that you can get more YouTube views, subscribers, and become YouTube famous.
Branding practices to get more YouTube views
Every successful YouTube channel has done some branding, even the notoriously goofy PewDiePie has his brand. Branding means more than just logos, it means establishing who you are, what type of content you’re going to post, and clearly establishing that in a number of ways. A few aspects of branding that you’ll want to consider include:
● Having a regular schedule for when you post
● Using a header and profile image that shows what you’re about
● Having a regular background if you’re a host
● Choosing a consistent custom thumbnail style
● Have a regular presentation style
Take a look at how quickly you learn about Philip DeFranco’s channel right from when you first see his homepage.
You see his face, his text based logo, his schedule, and his monkey logo is the profile image. This is the kind of branding I talk about. Going a step further with Philip, watch one of his videos and you’ll see that he has a regular intro and outro, and a pretty consistent background, so that every video has a similar feeling:
Having a tagline
All the great YouTube users have their own tagline that they use in every video. This can happen at the beginning, or at the end. A few examples include:
● PewDiePie: How’s it going, bros? My name is *falsetto voice* PewDiePie.
● Philip DeFranco: “S’uuup nation? Today is (the date), and this is the Philip DeFranco show. This is where I talk about newsie type stuff and things that matter to me today.”
● Epic Meal Time: On the next episode we eat (something absurd).
● Smosh: SHUT! UP!
Where would some of your favorite TV shows be without their taglines? Big Bang Theory with no “Bazinga!” How I Met You Mother without “Legen.wait for it… DARY!” South Park’s Stan and Kyle never saying “Oh, my god! They killed Kenny!” Create your tagline as a cultural brand building moment.
Good SEO practices for YouTube
Your SEO techniques are pretty much as important as your branding activities. SEO techniques are for people finding you right now, branding is for them coming back on their own and wanting to know you.
Why is search so important to YouTube success? Well, you know who owns YouTube, right? Google! Having that ability to create searchable videos is going to be your key to finding viewers via the Internet’s best strength.
The easiest keyword planner I can suggest to you is Google Adword. Yes, you have to sign up or login via your Google account. Yes, they’re going to track your data. But you’re getting free access to the most important thing online: the search stats for words that people are really using online. For example, what’s the difference between ‘repair a laptop’ and ‘fix a laptop.’ Let’s find out:
More than twice as many searches per month means more than twice as many YouTube views all thanks to choosing the right word. How you will use your keywords comes down to the places where you can enter them. You’ll want to use your keywords in the:
● Title: This is often the first thing people will read about your video. Grab their attention and put your keywords in there naturally.
● Description: You’re not going to use this as a chance to do keyword stuffing. You need to describe your video quickly to viewers, as this is the second piece of text they get about your video. You can use the keyword naturally, for sure, but do not make it all about the word.
● Tags: Don’t add every single popular tag; use your keyword, synonyms for the keyword, and a couple of variations that are related.
What you’ll be doing is creating a mix of copywriting and SEO work that first attracts the search engines, and then entices readers. Each one of these two is important and you can’t neglect one for the sake of the other.
User experience optimization in search results
While this isn’t directly related to SEO, it is directly related to getting more YouTube views through search. This relates to the information you’re conveying in search results and knowing what people are going to see. Let’s do a search right now for “Air Jordans” and see what we get:
Of those four video two clearly stand out: Fung Bros Comedy, and Bleacher Report. Both have worked hard to be sure that their thumbnail image and title are showing people the same information with text being used on the thumbnail. Creating custom-made YouTube thumbnails is an important aspect of user experience optimization.
Bleacher Report goes a step further and gives YouTube users the best possible short description of the video. There’s not much space, but it matters for your views.
The third, from Eddie Win, got its views in this instance from its large subscriber base and social media following, and not the user experience. If you look at most of his videos you’ll see a clear focus on user experience in his search results, which were lacking on this one.
Any way you look at it, user experience is the last step before someone clicks on your video and gets you more YouTube views. Be sure to optimize for this as much as you can to maximize your chances of someone hitting that red button with the white arrow!
Author bio: Ernest is social media marketer with a love for video, both in how it’s created, and how it’s shared. You can learn more about his YouTube views service as well as marketing ideas by asking him questions in the comments below, What’s his favorite YouTube channel? Probably Epic Rap Battles of History, but he also enjoys Epic Meal Time.
