Why YouTube Keyword Research WON'T Grow Your Channel!

Wait, what? Yeah, I said it. YouTube, SEO or all the keyword research in the world is not going to help you grow your YouTube channel. And I've got some pretty solid statistics and data to back this up. And if that leaves you wondering now, well, what the heck do I do to grow a YouTube channel? I'm going to tell you exactly what we've done. For clients who have gone from 200 subscribers to 80,000 subscribers, from 20,000 subscribers to 50,000 subscribers, and to clients who are getting consistently new clients and new sales because of their YouTube content. All of that is coming up in this video. So I was really debating on when in this video should I show you the proof that I have that keyword research isn't the answer to growth on YouTube. But I want to make sure you're listening. Then I want to make sure you stick around for this entire video. So I'm going to drop the goods right now. So what I'm about to show you is the analytics for some clients videos that went viral. The videos that shot up and performed much better than their normal videos and they didn't go viral because of YouTube search, I. E. The keywords we selected, they went viral because YouTube recommended them to more people. YouTube promoted them. YouTube put them on the homepage. The browse feature and suggested videos. The search traffic is almost non existent in these videos.

So here's the goods. So this is a great case study. You can see this particular channel in the last 28 days is getting over 200,000 more views than it normally gets in 28 days. Okay. Subscribers are up over 3.7 thousand more than normal. Views are up over 145,000 more than normal. Where is that traffic coming from? Why is this happening? So if we go up here to reach, we go down to the traffic sources that is blowing this channel up. Browse feature, 52% of the traffic is from the browse feature. The homepage suggested 32%. Where is YouTube search? 3%. 3%. So what this tells us is 84% of the traffic that this channel is getting the month that it has blown up the last 28 days that has blown up. It is coming from YouTube recommending this channel to people. YouTube has deemed this channel good. YouTube knows where to classify this channel. YouTube knows who to put this channel in front of that's going to watch it. And that's why browse and suggested are so very important and much more powerful than search can ever do for you. Let's also dive down into specific videos and see how this works for specific videos as well. Here's a video that's been live for just about two months, you see and then this video is over performing all.

Of this other video by a landslide. You can see there's this teeny tiny.

Little gray sliver right there and that's where the video typically performs for this channel. This channel typically gets around 24,000 to 36,000 views in a two month period. This video has had 1.1 million views in this particular time period. But what is the traffic driving it? Well, if we go over here to reach again, 76% is the browse feature, 19% is suggested. Where is YouTube search point 8% this video is so good in YouTube's eyes, meaning people click on it and people watch it to the end. And YouTube knows who to put this in front of. That 98% of the traffic that this channel is getting from YouTube recommending it not YouTube search. Here's another client of ours who has gone through my program Video Strategy Academy and implemented the tactics that I teach for how to hit the browse and suggested. This particular video has over 122,000 more views than normal. It has garnered over a thousand new subscribers.

And you can see the videos typically.

Perform right here on average. But when we look at the traffic sources again, guess what it is. So 78% is from the browse feature, 14% is from suggested and YouTube is YouTube searches way down here at 1.4%. Again, YouTube has deemed this video valuable. YouTube knows who to put it in front of and that's why YouTube is recommending it.

Now there's another benefit for you if you start showing up in browse in search and I'm going to show you what that is here in a minute. But I want you to stick around because I'm also going to show you how you can start doing this where what is the strategy you need to implement to see the results that we are seeing time and time again with our clients? Because it's awesome to see this data and see how this is working. But how can you start doing it for yourself? Now the biggest benefit that you get when YouTube starts pushing you on the browse feature, the homepage are suggested is people watch your videos longer. Here's the data.

So now we are in my analytics and I'm going to show you what why the viewer that finds you in suggested or browse is way more valuable to you than the person that finds you in search. So if we go here to traffic source and we look at average view Duration look at the browse features. People who find me on browse watch me over five minutes. Over five minutes.

People who watch me in suggested watch.

Me over 5 minutes, 4 minutes. People that find me in search less than 3 minutes. Remember, YouTube values how long you're keeping people on your video and the longer you can get them watching, the more valuable you are to them. So when you just focus on a YouTube search strategy, you're getting a less valuable Viewer over on YouTube search. When you could be focusing on browse and suggested and almost doubling your watch time on your videos. The data doesn't lie here.

Now remember, YouTube is going to push videos. YouTube is going to promote videos that people are actually watching. So when you start showing up in the browse and the suggested, you're getting a higher value viewer that's going to watch your videos longer. You're going to continue growing that particular video. I also want to address kind of a problem that happens for those channels that are just focused on keyword research and trying to show up in YouTube search. And this is really important. When you build a channel focused just on keyword research and just on getting traffic from the YouTube search, you're not.

Really making a connection with your audience.

And you need to make a connection with your audience so that they come back and watch you again and again and again. Especially if you are a business owner and you're trying to sell your coaching program, you're trying to sell your course, you're trying to get them to your digital shop. If they find you in search, they watch one video and they're done. How are they going to make that connection? To want to take that next step and learn from you, buy from you, work from you. So when you are so focused on ranking in YouTube search, you're actually hurting yourself. And because you're not focused on making a connection of people who are going to watch your videos, they're going to watch another video and they are going to want to work or buy from you. So you can do all the tutorials in the world to make sure you rank on YouTube. But how are you making a connection with that viewer? How are you making a connection that the viewer wants to watch another video of yours and another video of yours and then decide, oh man, I love this person, I need to buy their course, check out their digital shop or hire them as a coach. If you're focusing on just search based content, people are going to take that information and leave. You're not making that lasting impression and you've got to make that connection. Okay, so now the question you're probably having is okay, how do I do that? How do I pick videos? How do I create a YouTube strategy that allows me to make a connection with my audience, but also shows up and browse and suggested like you just showed me? Well, I dive much deeper into my process that led to all of those clients videos skyrocketing in my program Video Strategy Academy. Inside my program Video Strategy Academy, I show you the exact steps on how you can create a YouTube strategy that's going to generate you more customers, that's going to generate you more views and it's going to get you on the homepage, the browse page and suggested. And the best part of this, especially for you business owners listening, this is a lead generation for for free. You're not spending money on Facebook ads to do this. You're not having to dance on TikTok and you're not having to dance on reels. You're creating one YouTube video a week following the strategy I teach inside of Video Strategy Academy. And you're going to get customers around the clock with the strategies that I teach inside of Video Strategy Academy. In fact, I just had a client inside of Video Strategy Academy send me this message. After just a few videos on her YouTube channel this the traffic to her website increased by 100%. That's something Facebook ads can't even do for you. That's the power strategic YouTube content can do for your business. If you're interested in learning more about Video Strategy Academy, the piggyback strategy, the firework approach, everything we teach inside of my program, head to treanalittle.com forward/vsa. The doors are currently open for you to enroll and get everything that you need to set up your YouTube channel. That's going to drive you more customers, more sales and more clients. And I'm going to give you a little sneak peek into what you will learn inside of Video Strategy Academy. As promised in this video, I would tell you our tactics for hitting the browse and suggested in this video. So here they are. The first step is a strategy we call piggybacking. This is how you are going to get YouTube to figure out what other channels to cluster you with. And if YouTube can quickly realize your content is is similar to A, B, C and D channel content, then YouTube is going to take your videos and put them in front of subscribers of those channels. That's going to immediately get you clustered with them and you're going to piggyback off of their traffic in their suggested videos. You also are going to potentially get into channel ABC and D subscribers homepage or browse page. Because if YouTube can understand who your audience is and YouTube can easily figure out the channels that your audience is, then YouTube knows where to put you. And inside of Video Strategy Academy I talk you through the process of what piggybacking is, how to find your piggybacking channels and an entire spreadsheet that makes this super simple to be able to do. The next step that you need to do to get on the homepage more is increase your click through rate. So how well your title and your thumbnail are getting people to click on them. Because it doesn't matter how great your content is, if people aren't going to click on your video, YouTube's not going to put that video on the homepage. That is valuable real estate to YouTube. And if your title and your thumbnail doesn't get people to click, your content.

Isn'T going to be found.

And it honestly doesn't matter if you have the best keyword research strategy around, if people don't click on your video, it's going to get buried in the millions of videos that are on YouTube. So inside video Strategy Academy, not only do we have templates for for you to get started with, but I walk you through my entire process for figuring out titles. I've got swipe copy examples of titles where you can just plug and play specific titles for your videos. And I have an entire workshop on how we create thumbnails for our clients.

And my videos as well.

And the third step for getting into home and to browse is to create good content. Look, if people aren't watching your videos again, YouTube is going to bury it. So I walk through how to create a video game plan what that looks like to make sure you can get people from the beginning of your video to the end, different ways that you can add B roll, different ways you can make your videos more exciting inside of Video Strategy Academy because again, if you can get people to click on your videos but you can't get people to watch them, YouTube is not going.

To be suggesting them to more people.

So if you're ready to make sure the time you're putting into YouTube videos is actually paying off, meaning getting in front of more people, getting more views, getting more leads, getting more customers, then definitely check out Video strateg academy@trinalittle.com forward/vsa because this is the process we've been doing for years to take clients from 200 subscribers to 80,000 subscribers. We also helped a client release a beta course with her 30,000 subscriber channel and she immediately selled out of her program. She made 10k on her very first launch of her program without any Facebook ads because of her YouTube strategy. You've got everything that you need to be successful on YouTube inside of video Strategy Academy, including templates, checklists, spreadsheets, and detailed training on how to read, understand your analytics, and act on your analytics. And if you aren't ready to jump in just yet, make sure you check out the playlist that is on your screen right now. This playlist is going to walk you through exactly what I would do if I was just starting a YouTube channel today, how I script all my YouTube videos, and a sneak peek into how I create my YouTube thumbnails. So click that playlist or join me inside a Video Strategy Academy.