How to Dominate YouTube SEO with Andrew Kan from TubeBuddy: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 150
“YouTube wants to make you money… because when you make money, YouTube makes money.”
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When it comes to growing and optimizing your YouTube channel, there are few tools as well known and loved as TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy’s Head of Video Production and Community Management, Andrew Kan, stops by to share all the details you can use to crush it at YouTube SEO.
YouTube SEO isn’t some buzzword for you to ignore. When it comes to serious channel growth, it starts with understanding that YouTube is a giant search engine, and if your content is optimized for search, YouTube will help promote your content. Forget the notion that “the algorithm is working against you”. The algorithm will be your greatest ally when you start doing SEO correctly, and this episode takes a deep dive into how you can start doing that.
“A random viral hit isn’t as fun as a calculated success strategy.”
Andrew has been a YouTuber since 2007. He started with a passion for film and has helped build YouTube channels over the years for brands like Family Feud, BBC and Fox. He has connected with his love for helping others and through his work at TubeBuddy, he makes informative videos and has helped our own bootcampers grow their channels. Listen in for the all the keys to unlock YouTube SEO and have a successful YouTube channel.
“If your own twist is enough, people will stay and become invested in the channel.”
7 Key Interview Takeaways
- Know your why. If you’re just getting started on YouTube, or even if you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s essential to know your why. What is your goal, what are you trying to create and why? That will help you chart the direction your channel will go and the relationships you’ll build along the way.
- Remember, YouTube is a search engine. While you’re making your amazing, engaging content, you also need to ensure it’s getting viewed by as many relevant people as possible. That means first recognizing that YouTube is a search engine and then designing your titles, descriptions and tags with the user’s searches in mind. That’s what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about.
- Four parts of the same whole. A huge concept that a lot of YouTubers don’t understand is that great SEO is a result of doing well at these 4 parts of a video upload: Title, Description, Tags and Thumbnails. If you aren’t connecting each one under a central theme, set of words or topic, you’re missing out on huge SEO benefits. Andrew gave an example of a carpet installation DIY video which really cements this idea together.
- Optimize the beginning of your video. For smaller channels under 50k subscribers, pulling people in at the start of the video is crucial. You want to share exactly what the viewer will be getting from the video to give them the peace of mind that you’re answering the question they have been searching for. If they don’t get that peace of mind, they’ll find another video to watch, so jump straight into what the video is about and avoid the fluff.
- One-word tags are a waste of time. Think of your tags as different ways people might search for your video. There’s just too much content on YouTube for you to rank highly in search when you use one-word tags like “DIY”, “Beauty” or “Fashion”. String together sentences that would match search terms like “YouTube SEO with TubeBuddy” to get the most bang for your buck.
- Recycle concepts that inspire you but add your twist. Copying other people’s work or style is no good but using it as inspiration and adding your unique insight on top is how some of the biggest masterpieces were made! Instead of reinventing the wheel, use other content on the topic as inspiration to build your own videos. You’ll be getting good ideas of what already works – working titles can be used as tags – and an opportunity to start building on top of a strong foundation.
- Success takes work. Implementing a plan that yields results feels amazing! Using tools like TubeBuddy, building engaging content, creating videos that meet the needs of your audience – that’s a recipe for success. To have all that goodness working in your favour takes hours of sweat and effort to test, try, fail and figure out. Go in with eyes wide open: there’s no such thing as an overnight success. If you have a plan and you put in the work, you will get there.
Resources
My favorite free SEO tool for YouTube: TubeBuddy (Discount code ErikasBuddy for 20% off the paid version)
PR Guide: How to Get onto PR Lists and Get Lots of Free Product
Getting Started on YouTube: The #1 Downloaded Free Niche Discovery Workbook
Connect with Andrew
Facebook Group:
Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
Music provided by Free Music for Vlogs youtu.be/o52xQkQWzyU
