How To Use VidIQ For Better YouTube SEO

For over a year, I struggled with getting views on my YouTube video, trying to grow my channel. I was uploading every single week like people told me to do, and even uploading daily for a while, but nothing was happening. And I was pouring my heart into my content, thinking that just putting out content was enough to grow my channel. But I was wrong. I made the mistake, like so many other content creators do, of not doing my research before I created a video. Frustrated with my lack of growth, I started researching how to grow a YouTube channel, and I found a man named Rob Wilson who introduced me to his company, vidIQ. vidIQ VidIQ is a YouTube-certified keyword research tool that allows you to look up whatever topic you wanna create videos around, and you can find the search volume around whatever topic you're thinking of along with the amount of competition there is on YouTube. Now because VidIQ is YouTube-certified, it actually pulls data straight from YouTube. So it's not just throwing you random numbers, it's genuine data. And by having all that information, you can create more findable content. Is findable a word? Findable. So you can create more searchable content, and it really works. I mean, if you look at my old videos from back in the day, from 10 months ago or a year or two ago, I was just kind of winging it, and there were some times where I would get a couple hundred views, but it was just random and I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just kind of guessing with everything, but on average I get about 4 views, maybe 1, 3, 5, and there was 7, 2, 3, and then 31, and that's the time that I started using vidIQ. I even had a video that right now is at 6.7 thousand views on how to use Google Calendar effectively because I looked up that topic on vidIQ and found that there was a low competition with a high search volume. Today we're gonna take a look at how to use vidIQ so you can start creating better content that people are actually looking for. Let's hop onto the computer. Okay, so this is vidIQ. Now what's cool is that when you use vidIQ, it's actually going to connect with your YouTube channel when you get everything set up. It's gonna pull the data from your YouTube channel and show you what you can improve, how close you are to monetizing your channel so you can reap the rewards of some AdSense that you get, which you shouldn't rely on by the by the way, but it's such a great tool because it will give you goals on how to grow your channel. Like if we look down here at the monetization tracker, in order to get monetized on YouTube, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, which may seem like a lot, but don't get discouraged. vidIQ will even pay attention to your subscribers and the habits that those subscribers have. Kinda creepy, right? But that gives you great insights on the best times to post for your days, the time zone, etc. But the coolest part is right here, the keyword opportunities. Now this is where you're gonna do the bulk of your keyword research. Now the video that has taken off on my channel is how to use Google Calendar effectively. So let's take a look at what that looks like on vidIQ. Okay, so I typed in how to use Google Calendar effectively, and if you look down, the overall score is in the yellow, which means that it's actually not that great of an overall score. But if you look down to just Google Calendar, there's a 64 for the overall score, and it's in the green, which means that that's a good topic to go for. The reason I called it how to use Google Calendar effectively is because that sounds like a better title that's a little more intriguing than just saying Google Calendar. Okay, but when we want to do some digging and find out what the best keyword to go after is, we can click on these different keywords that have a better overall score because that's going to generate even more keywords for us to look into. So let's click on Google Calendar, and now here we get a couple more options on what's a good topic to look for or what's a not so good topic to look for based on our channel. Now when we go up to the top bar, we can see what these different columns actually mean. So what's a keyword? Keywords can be used to improve your video's rankings in YouTube search results. Now do understand that keywords are not the end-all be-all. It's not what's gonna make or break your channel, but it does play a role in people actually finding your videos, much like a blog. And then we go over to related score, and it says related score is a measure of how closely this keyword is related to the keyword you search for. Search volume is the average number of times people search for this exact keyword on YouTube each month. Competition score is a measure of how many videos are competing for this keyword in YouTube search results. A lower number is better. Google Calendar has a low competition, but you can get lower than low because some keywords actually have written there very low, and those are obviously the best videos to go for, assuming that it does have a high to relatively high search volume. And then the overall score is a measure of how attractive this keyword is to you as a creator. A higher number is better, and that's why they even color code them. So if you had a really low score, it's going to be down in the red or orange. And then lastly is the number of words, and that's just the number of words in the keyword. So when using vidIQ, what I recommend when you start typing in different topics that you're thinking about creating for your next video, a couple things to pay attention to are how low the competition is. Ideally, you want to find as low of competition as possible, especially if you are a small channel. And for the search volume, you don't need to have hundreds of thousands of views every single month. Even as low as 1,000 would be a good basis for you to get started. If you have like 1,000 people in the search volume and then a low to very low competition rate, that's a good video to go for. What I look for in video topics is 60 or above for the overall score. Now what's cool too about vidIQ is that you can actually select the keywords that you wanna use. So you can select every single keyword in the entire column, but if you look down here, it's gonna say copy 288 tags. Now tags are important important for you to put inside your YouTube videos before you upload them because it shows YouTube the relevancy of your video when people are searching for those tags or keywords. So obviously we don't want to copy 288 tags because you can't even add that many tags. But what you do is you go through and like I'd say, yeah, I want to do Google Calendar, how to use Google Calendar, I'm doing a Google Calendar tutorial, Google Calendar tips and tricks. I'd probably add productivity, you know, why not just add it in there. Google Calendar how-to. Now look, it's got a very low score, so maybe that's actually not the best one. It's got a very low search volume. It's a medium competitive rate and it's got a 45 overall score. But if we scroll down, maybe we can find some more. How to use Google Calendar effectively. That's got a 60. So that's like the bare minimum of pretty good, pretty good search volume and low competition. That's what I made my video around and it's doing very well and continues to climb. We also have time blocking Google Calendar. That's what the video is about. So that is a great option as well. High search volume, low competition, 62. Relevancy score. And then I would still add like time management, Google Calendar tips, even though they're not the best keywords. But you would go down here and then Google Calendar reminders, you can even add that and then talk about that in your video as well. So what happens is you go down here to copy 11 tags, and then when you start uploading your video, you go down to the tag section and you can copy those tags. Now what's also really cool about vidIQ is that they have an entire academy that teaches you how to best use their platform. You can get access to the Academy by going right up here to the top right corner, and they have tons of different videos for you to watch from other content creators on how to create better quality content so that you can really start ranking and winning in YouTube. So if we go down, we look at the plans and pricing. You can do annual or you can do monthly. Most people do monthly, so we'll just pay attention to this. The most popular is going to be the Boost plan. I'm just on the Pro plan, and I've been able to grow my YouTube channel just using the Pro plan, which is only $10 per month. And then the Boost plan is $49 per month, and the Boost Plus is $500 per month. But I'll put a link down in the description at the pricing page so you can decide which one you want to try out. If you're new, then I would recommend just going with the Pro plan just to try it out because it's only $10 a month. Me personally, by using it, it's really helped grow my channel. Now, like I mentioned before, if you're really serious about growing a YouTube channel and growing as a content creator or an online business owner, you should be on YouTube and you should be creating content that's actually going to get searched so that people can find out who you are, what you do, and the awesome value that you provide to the marketplace. But if you're like the old version of me who was struggling with what niche you actually wanted to really find and go after, and maybe you're trying some ideas or maybe you're thinking about just getting started with creating YouTube videos, before you start creating content and really getting out there, you want to make sure that the ventures that you're going after, the business that you're considering going after, is truly in alignment with you. And you can do that by going through a simple 5-point test that I show you how to do in this video right here. So take some time out, play with vidIQ this week, and pay the $10 a month. You can cancel any time you want, but just get used to actually doing some research before you start making videos and putting content out there and putting all that energy into it so you don't have to make the same mistake that I did. Take what you learned here, get out there, and start making an impact. I'll see you in the next one.