There are many ways you can grow your channel, including YouTube advertising and social media sharing. However, these methods can’t do much if your channel is not well-optimized for YouTube search. Yes, you may attract some quality viewers and subscribers using these methods, but it will be difficult for you to engage with them for a long term. And if your viewers and subscribers are not well-engaged with your channel and the content, you may lose them very soon. It is crucial to optimize your channel from the perspectives of both YouTube searches and users.
In this comprehensive guide, we have defined a few ways that can help in optimizing a YouTube channel and videos. If you have been searching for how to get YouTube subscribers and views, this guide may prove a turning point for your YouTube journey. Check out the tips below!
Create Outstanding Video Content
When you go to the market to buy a product, you look for the quality and check out whether the product is worth buying or not. Right? You buy the product only after ensuring the quality of the product and making a profitable deal. Similarly, when the audiences head over to YouTube, they look for high-quality informational and entertaining content to watch. They reject every piece of content that doesn’t meet their expectations and watch only qualitative videos. So, it is important to create outstanding video content that meets your audiences’ expectations.
Given below are some helpful tips for creating outstanding video content:
Choose the topic smartly
Know the expectations of your audiences
Target the trends and current topics
Plan and prepare ahead of the production part
Use high-quality cameras to shoot videos and editing software to edit clips
Create short and concise videos
Create Highly Searchable Titles and Eye-Catching Thumbnails
A YouTube video is identified by its title and thumbnail, and so it is crucial to create highly searchable titles and eye-catching thumbnails.
For creating highly searchable titles, you have to do keyword research on the topic on which you have created your video. You have to search for keywords that have high search volume and low keyword difficulty. You can use some paid SEO tools for this.
Once you get a few keywords, choose one of them and add it to the video title. Try to insert the keyword in the first few words of the title; it would be ideal for the search. In this way, you can create great titles for your YouTube videos.
For creating eye-catching thumbnails, you should follow the following tips:
Create a relevant and rational line
Use attractive graphics
Create an interesting background
Use your pictures
Use the right-size thumbnail
Create SEO-Friendly Metadata
Metadata includes the meta title, meta description, and meta tags. It is specifically created for the crawlers. When the crawlers come to a particular video, they learn about its content by reading the metadata. So, it is crucial to create SEO-friendly metadata that the crawlers can easily read and understand.
For creating SEO-friendly metadata, you have to define your video content in the meta description clearly. Also, add high search volume keywords in the meta titles, meta description, and meta tags. It would definitely help your channel grow.
Use Hashtags
In this age of digital media, hashtags are powerful tools that can be used for a wide range of purposes. Usually, people use hashtags with their social media posts to create a chain on a similar topic, issue, or interest.
Presently, using hashtags is not very popular on YouTube compared to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Only a few creators use hashtags with their videos. However, this is about to change in the near future, considering the increasing competition on YouTube.
Hashtags work on YouTube in the same way as they work on social media platforms. When a user clicks on a hashtag, YouTube recommends him/her more videos that use similar hashtags. In this way, a video with a hashtag gets higher visibility and response.
You should also either create videos on popular hashtags or add relevant hashtags to your videos. It will definitely work for your channel.
Utilize Call-to-Action Features
YouTube offers many call-to-action features that creators can utilize to promote their YouTube videos. A couple of most popularly used call-to-action features include:
YouTube Cards- YouTube cards are interactive elements that are designed to give viewers an awesome experience. You can drive more clicks and viewers to your videos using them.
There are a few types of YouTube cards, including:
Video cards
Playlist cards
Channel cards
Link cards
You can utilize these YouTube cards to feature a playlist, channel, link, and video.
End Screens- The End Screens are another powerful call-to-action feature that helps you increase your channel’s overall watch time. With end screens, you can direct your viewers to your next videos at the end of your video. It will help increase your channel’s overall watch time.
Create a Playlist
A playlist is another powerful tool that helps get more views and subscriptions to your channel. It allows you to create a collection of videos that are made on similar topics, niches, or interests.
When users click on a particular video of your playlist to watch it, YouTube recommends other videos of your playlists to them. In this way, you get more and more views on all videos that are in your playlist.
Add Keywords to Your Video Content
Adding keywords to meta descriptions and meta tags is essential as it helps crawlers identify your videos. At the same time, it is important to add keywords to your original video content because it helps both crawlers and users to understand the content.
Use long-tail keywords that define your topic or video content in the best way. You can use SEO analytics tools or keyword finder tools to find the right long-tail keywords for your YouTube videos.