How to do Good SEO for Popular Games?

ScouseMouse

ScouseMouse

Active Member
If you've clicked on this thinking it's a guide on how to do SEO then sorry to disappoint... I'm the one asking the question ;)

So I have a gaming channel and my first series has been me doing a playthrough of the original Doom (doing 1 video for each of the 4 chapters/episodes of the game) and I keep hearing how important SEO is to grow your channel.

The problem is... Doom is a vvv popular game, there's a hell of a lot of videos out there of it so how would you go about trying to get some good/unique SEO on the go? For example, all the keywords/tags I can think of have probably been used in every other Doom video.

How do you get around this issue? Would you just not do games like this (where there isn't a lot of room to do anything out of the norm in the game) while you're new because it'll be so hard to get ranked?
 
First I'd say before Seo, have a very interesting video that's rather long so that it will rack up watch time. Make sure the game name is in every possible tag and say the game's name in the video every so often. You have about a week where YouTube will push the video and then it all. Depends on those mystery factors including watchtime and engagement. I made a video that ranks #10 for Atari, a rather broad term with a million videos for it. Maybe not as many as others but still, a good example of what can be done
 
Look young padowan, think about everything you know about SEO and then forget it, throw it out. SEO like what you're thinking is for the big boys, people with hundreds of thousands of sub or more that can just put in a tag like "games" and be ranked in the top ten- NO! "That's not you, you're better than that and that ain't you!"

Being a small channel which I assume you are and likewise, I am, we have to get creative with how we tag, and even how make and focus our video content. What you put in your keywords LITERALLY, LITERALLY, LITERALLY, needs to be what someone would type in the search box.

I know what you're thinking, but I make videos about games so my tag should be "games"- WRONG! You will be ranked SURE, but you will be rank 1,0000,000,0,0,00,0, and no one will ever know of you or that you exist. You have to be more specific and your videos must follow suit. Instead of making a video about Overwatch, make a video about how to win a game if you are down 0 to 50, or the best spots for sniping. When you make specific videos you are making them for a very few amount of people (1,000 - 1,000,000 [small in youtube terms]) who are looking for that very specific more likely to find your video because there is very little content that matches your video.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

NO COMPETITION MANG! YOU HAVE THIS PART OF YOUTUBE ON LOCKDOWN (If you SEO right and make it something with little competition). Which means every person looking for that specific thing will only have your video to go off, which means a lot of traffic for you, potential subscribers, money, riches, fame, glory and above all, you could be ranked for that search.

Not sure if this made sense to you but that's basically SEO. It's different for everyone based on your channel size, your audience and the subject of video you are making videos about. And even if you're SEO is as good as it can be you can still be met with a lot of competition, this is where hard work, consistency and keeping up with trends comes in to play. ONE DAY YOU WILL HIT THAT PERFECT NOTE AND ALL THE VIEWS WILL FUNNEL TO YOU. Stick to it, no matter the squalls! And when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show what you're made of... well, I hope I'm there, catching some of the light coming off you that day.

GOOD LUCK AND REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN!
 
I've been posting videos for 5 weeks, but let me tell you what's worked for me so far, anyway. Currently, I'm at 5,500 views and 143 subscribers.

First, I do believe it's true what everyone says - An interesting title and thumbnail are probably vital to getting that first click. Try to put a good tag word in the title at least, either by starting with the game title or by adding a key word like Gameplay into it.

Second, don't be afraid to look around at your competition and see what they're doing. If you're not using a tool like TubeBuddy or VidIQ, then figuring out what works for other, similar audience bases, may help give you tag ideas. I tend to use all my tag space (500 characters) and also copy/paste my tags into the very bottom of my video descriptions, so they're outta the way.

Third, try to play games that people are at least kinda looking for. Know what I mean? For example, I think the original Sierra game Phantasmagoria is great, but no one's really searching for it (~65,000 people per month - not a lot of room for discovery once you factor in the videos that already exist for that game). If no one's buying what you're selling, you're gonna go bankrupt.

If you're gonna play a game that isn't super widely searched for, then SEO the hell out of the keywords the best you can. For instance, if I wanted to post a video on Phantasmagoria, I'd use the tags Phantasmagoria, Sierra, Retro Games, horror, Roberta Williams, FMV, etc etc etc. Yeah, some of the tags throw me into a sea of thousands of other videos, but at least when I copy/paste them into my description, they help YouTube figure out what my video is about.

In the end, it's also kinda hit or miss. Sure, your video might get eyes on it, but audience retention matters quite a bit too - I've watched this have an affect on my own channel for the last month. My videos with higher audience retention greatly outperform the ones with lower.

The main reason I claim that a lot of this works, at least it has for me, is that within my first 10 days of posting, I had a (not at all super highly searched) game video rank as a "suggested video" for another, much more popular youtuber, which resulted in 2,000 views on that one video alone, and probably 15 subs, both still growing residually. I attempted to rank again doing the same things, for a more well-searched game (Secret World Legends, since it just went F2P) and the video I posted a week ago, has gotten 500+ views (still growing, slowly) and is ranked #3 for both "secret world legends" and "secret world legends gameplay" search terms - at least on my screen. In the last week, my audience retention for that video (which is 50 minutes long) has only stood at about 10%, which is pretty low, so the views have dropped off in the last few days, but the video still ranks.

Anyway, that's all I got for ya. Hope this helps even a little. Like I said, I've only been posting 5 weeks, so I could be wrong on some of this. Good luck.
 
Quick Question said:
Look young padowan, think about everything you know about SEO and then forget it, throw it out. SEO like what you're thinking is for the big boys, people with hundreds of thousands of sub or more that can just put in a tag like "games" and be ranked in the top ten- NO! "That's not you, you're better than that and that ain't you!"

Being a small channel which I assume you are and likewise, I am, we have to get creative with how we tag, and even how make and focus our video content. What you put in your keywords LITERALLY, LITERALLY, LITERALLY, needs to be what someone would type in the search box.

I know what you're thinking, but I make videos about games so my tag should be "games"- WRONG! You will be ranked SURE, but you will be rank 1,0000,000,0,0,00,0, and no one will ever know of you or that you exist. You have to be more specific and your videos must follow suit. Instead of making a video about Overwatch, make a video about how to win a game if you are down 0 to 50, or the best spots for sniping. When you make specific videos you are making them for a very few amount of people (1,000 - 1,000,000 [small in youtube terms]) who are looking for that very specific more likely to find your video because there is very little content that matches your video.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

NO COMPETITION MANG! YOU HAVE THIS PART OF YOUTUBE ON LOCKDOWN (If you SEO right and make it something with little competition). Which means every person looking for that specific thing will only have your video to go off, which means a lot of traffic for you, potential subscribers, money, riches, fame, glory and above all, you could be ranked for that search.

Not sure if this made sense to you but that's basically SEO. It's different for everyone based on your channel size, your audience and the subject of video you are making videos about. And even if you're SEO is as good as it can be you can still be met with a lot of competition, this is where hard work, consistency and keeping up with trends comes in to play. ONE DAY YOU WILL HIT THAT PERFECT NOTE AND ALL THE VIEWS WILL FUNNEL TO YOU. Stick to it, no matter the squalls! And when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show what you're made of... well, I hope I'm there, catching some of the light coming off you that day.

GOOD LUCK AND REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN!
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Absolutely spot on. I've had some great success lately with my SEO and its put a few videos of mine on the first page 3rd or 4th from top by doing this type of thing.
 
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