Here's How To Ranking Your First YouTube Video!

Heads up. We are about to get a little controversial in this video. I'm going to convince you to stop worrying and spending so much time on finding the perfect keywords and tags for your YouTube videos and why keywords and tags aren't really what's going to make your YouTube channel successful. And hold on, before you say no, no, no, no, no. I want to show you proof why this process that I'm going to share with you works and why the old way of ranking your YouTube videos is so, so last year or a few years ago. Let's just jump right in the mud here and share why tags and keywords aren't the key to your Success here on YouTube. Let's do this example right here. Let's say I upload a 10 minute video of myself singing Justin Bieber Baby, baby, baby, baby. Oh, like baby, baby. Now I take that video of myself singing Justin Bieber baby and I upload it to YouTube. Let's just pretend there's not copyright problems with this video once I upload it. I decided to title it how to grow a YouTube channel fast in 2020. I put a thumbnail on it that says the same thing and all of my tags talk about growing a YouTube channel. How to grow a YouTube channel. Grow a YouTube channel. You know the drill. You see, this example shows you people can lie. That's the key here. People can lie about what their video is actually about. So YouTube has found a way to correct this situation. Now, when you upload your video, you know when it's processing, not only is it uploading, but YouTube scanning it to actually hear what you're saying in your video. That way you can't lie in your titles, tags, all that metadata about what your video is actually about. Now, I know most of you do not lie about your video, but this is to explain why all this metadata and tags isn't really the most important part of your YouTube success plan. Let's take another example. Family vloggers. There's lots of them and they grow really fast. Some of these channels have over a million subscribers, but if you look at the titles of their video, they're not searchable. Why are they not searchable or keyword optimized? Because they are using other ways that I'm about to show you to get YouTube to promote their videos. They're not using keywords and tags and ranking their videos to get YouTube to put their content out to more people. So how can you, as a brand new YouTube channel, or just getting started, do what YouTube wants you to do to get them to promote your video to more people. I'm so glad you asked. But before I tell you, I want to share with you one more example proof on YouTube that this system works. One of my clients, I had finally convinced her to stop worrying about SEO and putting all of those keywords in the right places on her YouTube videos. And we worked on the three things that I'm about to share with you. You can see in January alone she had double the amount of views on her channel and she did in December when she was focusing on adding all these keywords and tags into her video metadata. And if we look at her traffic sources, in January when she saw double the amount of views, her traffic from YouTube search, you know, ranking in search and actually declined. What is growing on her channel is browse feature traffic and also suggested video traffic. This is proof that YouTube is recommending her content to more people and YouTube would not be recommending her content to more people if she did not improve these three things. Okay, okay. I know you really want to know these three things, but again, I just really want to hammer home because we've been told on YouTube for so long to to focus on ranking in search and focus on keywords and titles. I just want to show you one more proof because I told you at the beginning I'm going to base this all on proof. Let's look at that same client's individual video. If we look at this video in the first 48 hours, none of her tags were ranking and in fact only 2% of her traffic in this time came from YouTube search and it got significantly more views than this other video that she had done in October. So how is this happening if we're focusing less on keyword in search? Here's the first thing that we did. We focused on our title and our thumbnail. Her channel as a whole has about a 2 to 3% click through rate. I wanted to double that, if not four times it. So what I convinced her to do was stop worrying about trying to shove those keywords into her title and let's focus on pitching a value in that title that's going to get her people to click. She also changed the coloring of her thumbnail as well. And I suggested some text for her thumbnail. What we saw was her click through rate skyrocket in her most recent video. You can see the numbers right here from around a 2 to 3% to now this one. Next we worked on the hook of her video. Typically she was losing around 40% of her audience. Retention in the first 15 seconds. Now so many people are like, well, how am I even going to increase audience retention? Here's what we did. We worked on crafting our title first so that she could really understand why her audience was clicking on that video and making sure she opened that video with a clear reason why directed towards them. So what were they struggling with? What had got them to click on that video and what can we say to get them to keep watching? How can we tell them that we are going to solve their problems? Then we focus on her content and really tightening it up. Really cutting out as much chatting as possible, getting to the point and sharing things and easy to follow steps. We also started adding more call out text B roll footage as well, showing examples as she talked about it. More of showing instead of just telling. And those were the ways that we started to increase her audience retention. Now by focusing on her content and getting more people to the end of her videos. That meant we got more people clicking on her end screen, which means we created a more binge able channel for YouTube. So on average her channel had about a 1.8% end screen click through rate. I went back to her, we restructured her scripts. I really pulled out any kind of language or wording that she was using that signaled that video was over. Remember, we want to get people to that last 20 seconds to click on an end screen and we wanted to have a specific video to recommend to people at the end of that video. So thinking about the viewer's journey, what would they want to watch next? After that particular video, she went from a 1.9% click through rate to an over 6% click through rate. Knowing that we increase her click through rate, her thumbnail and title, we increase her audience retention, meaning people are watching her content longer and we increase her end screen click through rate. She now became a binge able channel that YouTube wanted to recommend to more people. Thus the increase in browse feature traffic and suggested traffic. So what action should you be taking after watching this video? As a lover of checklists myself, I've got a little checklist for you. First, stop spending so much time researching the perfect tag or the perfect keyword. Take the time that you're generally spending researching these tags and keywords and focus on coming up with that title of your video before you even write any content. Titles can be tricky and difficult to come up with. So take that extra time and really come up with a title that's clickable, that really gets people wanting to see what you're going to provide in your video. Also take that additional time to work on your thumbnails. Don't just throw up any graphic and don't just repeat the title of your video in your thumbnail. Really think about coming up with imagery and text that's going to grab your audience attention. Any text that you put on your thumbnail should complement the title of your video. They should not repeat each other. The text in the thumbnail image should help get people's attention and then the title should get them to want to click on through. Then the third thing that you want to do is really focus on that content. Really hone in on knowing what kind of content your audience wants. Really getting their attention in that hook. Studying your audience retention graph for that first 30 seconds and seeing what are you saying that people aren't staying around for? And look at the good videos too. Which videos are keeping people engaged and watching and what are you doing in those videos? Repeat those and try not to do the things that you did in the videos with the lower audience retention. Next, find ways to make your videos more engaging. Look, I know you don't have a lot of time maybe to create these videos, but if there's anything that you can do, maybe make a template in your editing software. So for me, I create one template for my clients. We use the same text, the same transitions and similar gifts to use throughout the video. So once I create one template for them, it's easier for me to replicate video after video and it doesn't take me as much time. So maybe you take some time to hone in on a template with text and transitions and types of B roll that you're going to add in every single video. This is going to help you increase your audience retention and keep people more engaged. Don't overcomplicate it either. Okay then remember, you need to get them to binge watch your channel. You really need to focus on getting them to click on your end screens. This is where I've seen the biggest growth in channels is when we hit over a 10% increase and screen click through rate. So really think about what video should you tell them to watch next. Give them a clear reason why they need to watch that video Next. Understand what that viewer is going to need from you next after they watch that video. This is what I call the YouTube trifecta. Click through rates, audience retention and end screen click through rate. Now here's the deal. If you want someone to work with you through this and give you real time feedback on your titles, your thumbnails your audience retention help you look at your channel to see what's working. What's not working? My program, the Video Strategy Academy, is currently open for enrollment. This program is part course, part group coaching. So in the course portion of it, I walk you through every single step that you need to take to increase your YouTube trifecta numbers. I'm talking how to get more views, how to get YouTube recommending your channel, and more importantly, how to grow here on YouTube. Not only do you get access to the course content, you also get access to a private Facebook group where I'm answering your questions every single day. Need help on titles? Need help on thumbnails? I got you. You drop it in the Facebook group and I will give you feedback. In addition to all of that, we also have monthly group coaching calls where you can bring your questions and ask me live. We also have monthly hot seat opportunities where you can give me access to your YouTube channel and I will dig in and show you exactly what you should do next to really see growth on your YouTube channel. Not sure what content you should be creating? Ask me not sure why your last video didn't do as well as you expected? Ask me now. We just skimmed the top of the iceberg here on what's all included in this program, so I'm going to leave a link to it down below for you to get all the details on the Video Strategy Academy and how you can enroll before the doors close. And if you have any questions about this program, feel free to reach out to me. Email me@trinalittle.com because I really want you to have success on YouTube. I want you to stop struggling and I want you to reach the goals that you've set for yourself here on YouTube. So don't try to figure it out all on your own. Let me help you. So make sure you click that link on your screen right now to learn more about the Video Strategy Academy and how you can enroll today.