Youtube SEO: Results of our study of #1 ranking videos

Key Takeaways

there's a secret to SEO on YouTube and it allowed me to take this really crappy video that I recorded on my cell phone put it on a YouTube channel that had zero views and get to 757 thousand views in just one year but it is a little bit of a process so watch this video through to the end so that you can implement it on your YouTube channel the very best way to grow your YouTube channels to see what's already worked for others so of course we did a study we looked at 100 YouTube videos to see what was getting people to rank number one so come jump in the truck with us and see how you can implement what we found out grow your YouTube channel as we did our study we found some really surprising findings so first let me tell you what we did we looked at a hundred videos of just totally random search terms things like how to speed up your computer how to tie a braid in your own hair how to French braid hair I mean we tried to kind of cover the gamut of some really trendy topics some a little bit more obscure topics and we looked at the number one ranking video and the number ten ranking video and made note of several different factors that we thought could potentially have an impact on the ranking we found four different factors that actually seemed to make a difference in how well a video ranked and we found one surprising factor that really made very very little difference and that one factor is actually the number of subscribers on the channel having a large channel with a bunch of subscribers seems like something that would really really help your rankings on any of your videos but what we found is that this actually was way less important than how applicable your video was to the topic of course if you have a big channel with a lot of subscribers and somebody searches something and you have a video exactly on that subject you're gonna outrank a smaller channel that is true we found that to be the case but big channels often tend to target broader keywords and they're beat out over and over and over again by much smaller channels that have that are that are covering the the more specific topics so let's talk about how to actually apply that so ricky mentioned that the bigger channels are ranking number 10 and the smaller channels are often ranking number one and the reason is smaller channels can make videos that bigger channels can't so my wife and a friend are making a youtube channel about makeup they really liked it they wanted to do that kind of channel on that and I said okay but let's do some keyword research and see what we can find to have lower competition if I mean they had keywords like contouring makeup which I've never even heard of before had hundreds of videos very well done from large channels so I said don't make this video if chances of ranking are pretty low and and we found a keyword Rodin Enfield's a specific brand of makeup and skincare and what we were seeing there is tiny channels with only a few hundred subscribers we're getting twenty forty thousand views on some of the keywords and this is why let's say you have a makeup channel that has 15 million subscribers you're killing it right you don't want to make a video that's so niche that it only applies to a tiny portion of your audience you're gonna ignore 15 million people right so they can't make a video on how to apply Rodan and fields lash boost it's too nice it's not going to appeal to their audience and they're not gonna like it but you as a new channel you can and that's how you beat them you can make a more specific niche answer to a question and because the bigger channels aren't making that content you can get in there and beat them so here's how you find those keywords go into YouTube in the search box in that search box start typing part of your keyword Rodan and fields and you see what comes up as an auto suggests maybe you wrote in and field slash boost and then you say search that and see if it looks pretty competitive with the videos if it's not go for it if it is keep drilling down now just type lash boost and then you see an auto suggest for something like how to apply lash boost and there is where you can get them it's a video that the bigger channels will not make and something that still has search volume which you can tell by the number of views already on the videos out there now you can beat out the bigger channels the second and third factors that we found actually impacted YouTube rankings was whether or not the video had a custom thumbnail image and whether or not that image had text on it in fact number one ranking videos were 14% more likely to have used a custom thumbnail as opposed to just the ones YouTube gives you by default and that tends to actually drop off as you work your way down the rankings and so lower ranking videos really really often just use what YouTube gives them we also found that number one ranking videos were 38% more likely to have put text on the thumbnail image I think the problem that YouTube has is when it gets a great video with great content and people watch it all the way until the end but it doesn't have a very good thumbnail so YouTube wants to show you higher in the rankings but even when it does nobody clicks on it because the thumbnail image wasn't that great so a few things that I have found work well with your custom images is first of all to have some kind of branding to those images so they kind of look all the same what that does is as your subscribers are kind of browsing through their feed they recognize hey that's the channel that I've subscribed to by having your face large in that image it also shows that because hopefully they're gonna recognize you but even just your colors I usually do them in Photoshop but you can use a lot of free software out there out there as well too just to get something quickly done and also a sense of mystery I think it's okay to be just a little bit click Beatty in the titles you use on YouTube more so than with a blog post where we usually find that something to click Beatty doesn't do as well but with YouTube where you have an image a little mystery and and a well-designed title with a kind of a promise or kind of what they're gonna take away is gonna be I find that that kind of image usually does very well the fourth and final factor that had any impact on YouTube rankings was the production value of the video if it was kind of TV quality edited well together that's on the top end if it's a one shot cell phone type quality camera that's going to be on the low end of the spectrum and what we found is that number one ranking videos tended to have on average just slightly higher product value.now one more tidbit I want to throw out there is ads we thought that maybe ads it have an impact on ranking maybe would rank them higher maybe rank him lower what we found is that videos that ranked number one were over three times as likely to have ads on them now is that because ads make them rank higher I don't think so I think the reality is is that when a video ranks well it gets lots of views and so the Creator is more likely to monetize that video with ads what this channel is about is how to earn an income online and YouTube is playing an increasingly big role in doing that so if you're ready to get started making an income online for yourself and for your family rover to income school comm slash project 24 where you can learn about our entire program that teaches you how to build your own website and a YouTube channel and monetize those so that you can earn an income for yourself and for your family