Why Keywords Won’t Grow Your YouTube Channel
YouTube SEO and keyword research aren't the secrets to growing your YouTube channel.
As a YouTube strategist, I’m always focused on discovering the best strategies to help my clients grow their channels. Something that comes up in my research time and time again is that keyword research isn’t helping.
Yes, keywords are important for search engine optimization (SEO), but it isn't a strategy. You can’t rely on keywords to get your content seen. YouTube doesn’t care about keywords as much as they care about user data points in your audience — like watch time, audience retention, and views.
Instead, you’ve got to focus on building an audience and connecting with them.
I’ll give you some time to absorb the shock of this news…
When you’ve processed that YouTube doesn’t work with outdated strategies like keyword research, let’s dig into what you should be focusing on instead.
Focus on Browse and Suggested Traffic Sources
Over time, we’ve had several of our clients’ videos go viral, but it wasn’t because they had the best SEO or did massive amounts of keyword research. It’s because YouTube recommended their videos to other people, especially through browser and suggested traffic sources.
Targeting browser and suggested traffic sources are important when you consider how many eyes are getting on your videos. When videos get more views this way, they tend to have significantly higher watch time than videos found in the search results.
YouTube will always push the videos that people are watching to more people, therefore, landing your videos in people’s browse and suggested searches will get you better results.
Piggyback in Your Industry
I want to quickly add the disclaimer that piggybacking IS NOT copying. When I use the term piggyback, I don’t mean taking ideas and claiming them as your own, nor am I telling you to be someone else and morph into a channel that isn’t uniquely you.
Piggybacking is just research. It’s tapping into what your audience is looking for, paying attention to the types of content they’re responding to.
You want to be associated with the channels that are pumping out that type of content.
The main idea is to get to know your target audience. You want to niche correctly and to make sure your niche wants what you’re offering. You can’t just slap up a video that you think is the best thing since sliced bread and call it a day.
You have to be mindful of what your audience wants to see and start incorporating that into your content. You're serving others through your business, not just an audience of one (aka yourself).
Create Click-Worthy Thumbnails
You’ve got to get people to click on your videos if they’re going to see them (duh). If you can get people to stop their scroll, you’ve won half the battle. If you’ve been skipping over your thumbnails and letting YouTube auto-populate a wonky image of you looking like you just popped a lemon into your mouth, it’s time for a makeover.
Your thumbnails can make or break your video. If no one is seeing your videos, then it doesn't matter how great the content inside it is — YouTube is going to BURY it.
You need a catchy title that’s easy to read and differs from the title of the video. You also need to use high-quality graphics and photos. There’s no amount of click-bait-worthy headlines that will make up for graphics that people have to squint to see.
And please, for the love of all that is good, DO NOT lie to your audience. Don’t stick some super spammy title on there that has nothing to do with your video. You need to deliver on what you say you’re going to cover (aka that thumbnail text) in the first few moments of the video.
Reiterate you will be covering the same topic. Ease their minds that you’re not just here for views — you’re here to provide useful information they will get some kind of benefit from.
Create Quality Content
Creating quality content goes beyond high-quality videos, editing, graphics, and audio. It also involves thinking about the meaning behind each video.
It almost becomes second nature to get caught up in the content creation hamster wheel when you’re working for yourself. You hear ALL THE TIME that you need to post more content, whether it's on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook, or Pinterest, and you’re the only one there to do it.
This pressure makes it easy to forget who you’re creating content for.
You DO need to show up and be consistent with your content, whatever platform that may be, but one of the reasons why I love YouTube is that they prioritize intentional content that has value for your target audience rather than pushing out trendy videos.
When you incorporate the needs of your target audience into your content creation process, your videos start to take on a deeper meaning than just getting views. You remember what the end goal is — to offer value, whether through your videos or eventually through your offers.
Build Connections
Focusing on keyword research also disconnects you from your audience because you’re building a search-based channel. You can do all the how-to videos stuffed full of keywords that you want, but nothing is going to change until your audience can get to know you and vice versa.
YOU are the selling point of your business, not your offers. People are buying an experience with you over your peers because of your personality. If all you’re doing is sharing information and peacing out, they don’t get that opportunity. You want to leave room for them to come back each time you post. You need to make a connection!
In my online membership, Video Strategy Academy, we dig deep into what it takes to build those connections while still being intentional with the way you sell your products and services.
It’s a six-week program that walks you through exactly what you need to create a YouTube strategy that helps you generate leads around the clock — no Facebook ad game, no wrestling with the IG algorithm on Reels. Just you creating long-lasting content that builds your audience, and ultimately, your sales.
