Researching YouTube For Video Success

If you are planning on submitting videos to YouTube or using YouTube videos on your niche blog or website or even building a website based on YouTube videos then it is important to find out what tags and keywords are popular and which videos are getting most views.

Visitors to YouTube are presented with a search box as the main mechanism for finding videos of interest. Using keywords you will be shown videos relating to that word and then a list of related videos that you can watch, add to your viewing list or ignore.

With basic keyword research you can find which videos are popular. Type in a keyword and look at the thumbnail to see the title, tags, and view count of the videos in the search results. The popularity of the video is revealed by ‘views count’ but the video results are returned by ‘title’ and ‘tags’ used to describe the video.

It seems that the ‘tags’ are the most important item to optimize, rather than the title, excluding the fact that you need to make a great video in the first place. As most YouTube users have no knowledge of keyword optimization, you can make your videos more ‘findable’ by a little thought and work. Find the best keyword ‘tags’ to use and also include one or two of these keywords in the video title.

Using a keyword research tool such as WordTracker or Keyword Elite to do your research then check the keywords one by one using YouTubes search box you will have a good idea of how competitive your niche is. Results can be sorted by relevance to your keyword and view count, which is important as it shows which videos are getting viewed the most. Searches can also be made by ‘Channels’, ‘Groups’, and ‘Playlists’.

Tips For Success

1. Make a video that is worth watching. Aim to do the best you can. There are so many bad videos on YouTube yet it is ironic that worthless videos have had six figure views in the past.
2. Use the search refinement tools to sort by view count and relevance.
3. Repeat No.1 as there is no way to customize your search at YouTube.
4. Create a custom profile and your own custom channel information for your YouTube account. Create at least one group and a playlist. This will give you a big advantage when visitors sort for ‘Channels’, ‘Groups’ and ‘Playlists’.