Small channel (below 500 subs) with ranked videos?

shahinmp

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When I was starting out my third video ranked #1 for Japan game shop and has for over a year since. I had 10 subscribers back then. Still get comments on it even though the shop is now gone hahahaha

I think you really need to deliver what the video is in the title and do it early and often to keep people interested

I’ve HEARD, can’t prove, that speaking keywords often in a video helps push it up over vids that don’t too.
I suspect you are right....
 

Crown

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It's definitely possible to rank as a small channel but you have to follow a "small channel strategy" - You have to go after the low-hanging fruit.

Here is some advice I gave to someone else on the forum about this. I'll just copy-paste it here. (Context for this advice -> The poster was a small channel and he was targeting tags like "Super Mario"):


******
From an SEO perspective, as a small channel you have a close to 0% chance of ranking for short keyword phrases like "Super Mario"

I don't want to derail the thread and I'm not going to spoonfeed you but very quickly let me explain. Since "Super Mario" is a short phrase about something that probably millions of other creators are making videos about and are also targeting the same phrase, then there is going to be a lot of competition to try to get ranked. Makes sense?

- Check out the results for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=super+mario Look at how many search results there are - over 14 million
- Now look at the top 10 results on that page. Nearly all of them are verified channels with 100k+ subs and/or the video has millions of views. Do you really think you can rank above them? If not, how long do you think it would take for your video to rise up in search and overtake them? (The answer is that it's impossible. )

Advice: Keep some of the short popular tags like "Super Mario" - No need to delete them. But you also need to add some less competitive terms by using "longtail search phrases" It's your niche, you should know what longer phrases your viewers would be searching for. An example could be "The red castle in Super Mario" (if there is a red castle obv) - By making the tag longer, it becomes more specific. Since it's more specific, fewer videos will have the same tag right? There will therefore be fewer total search results and the top 10 will probably be easier to beat. The potential traffic for a longtail search phrase like "The red castle in Super Mario" will obv be a lot less than the shorter "Mario Bros" because fewer people are searching for it per day BUT you have a better chance of getting well -ranked. So the decision is: Do you want a 1% chance of getting 20k views per day (only using short-tail tags like "Super Mario") or do you want an 80% chance of getting 50 views per day for a longtail tag such as "The red castle in Super Mario" ? As a small channel, you should be aiming for the latter. Like I said above, go for the low-hanging fruit.

The above advice is relevant for all your metadata, in particular the title and description. (Your titles are waay too generic and using short-tail phrases and your descriptions are not really SEO optimised either.) You should include the same longtail phrases in both the titles and descriptions. Oh and obviously make sure the content itself is actually about "The red castle in Super Mario" (or whatever the longtail phrase is) which brings me to my final point. - You should do the SEO analysis BEFORE even making any videos. Decide all your longtail phrases and they will form the topics of each video. Then you make the video about that specific subject. That way, the content matches exactly what people have searched for. Why is that important? Well they will hopefully watch the whole thing because it's exactly what they were looking for. This results in higher than average audience retention which will drive the video up in the rankings and ensures the algorithm picks it up. ie Your channel will grow.

**************
 

TYTD

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Edit: misunderstood the thread! Woops! my bad ^_^;
 

Darren Taylor

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It's definitely possible to rank as a small channel but you have to follow a "small channel strategy" - You have to go after the low-hanging fruit.

Here is some advice I gave to someone else on the forum about this. I'll just copy-paste it here. (Context for this advice -> The poster was a small channel and he was targeting tags like "Super Mario"):


******
From an SEO perspective, as a small channel you have a close to 0% chance of ranking for short keyword phrases like "Super Mario"

I don't want to derail the thread and I'm not going to spoonfeed you but very quickly let me explain. Since "Super Mario" is a short phrase about something that probably millions of other creators are making videos about and are also targeting the same phrase, then there is going to be a lot of competition to try to get ranked. Makes sense?

- Check out the results for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=super+mario Look at how many search results there are - over 14 million
- Now look at the top 10 results on that page. Nearly all of them are verified channels with 100k+ subs and/or the video has millions of views. Do you really think you can rank above them? If not, how long do you think it would take for your video to rise up in search and overtake them? (The answer is that it's impossible. )

Advice: Keep some of the short popular tags like "Super Mario" - No need to delete them. But you also need to add some less competitive terms by using "longtail search phrases" It's your niche, you should know what longer phrases your viewers would be searching for. An example could be "The red castle in Super Mario" (if there is a red castle obv) - By making the tag longer, it becomes more specific. Since it's more specific, fewer videos will have the same tag right? There will therefore be fewer total search results and the top 10 will probably be easier to beat. The potential traffic for a longtail search phrase like "The red castle in Super Mario" will obv be a lot less than the shorter "Mario Bros" because fewer people are searching for it per day BUT you have a better chance of getting well -ranked. So the decision is: Do you want a 1% chance of getting 20k views per day (only using short-tail tags like "Super Mario") or do you want an 80% chance of getting 50 views per day for a longtail tag such as "The red castle in Super Mario" ? As a small channel, you should be aiming for the latter. Like I said above, go for the low-hanging fruit.

The above advice is relevant for all your metadata, in particular the title and description. (Your titles are waay too generic and using short-tail phrases and your descriptions are not really SEO optimised either.) You should include the same longtail phrases in both the titles and descriptions. Oh and obviously make sure the content itself is actually about "The red castle in Super Mario" (or whatever the longtail phrase is) which brings me to my final point. - You should do the SEO analysis BEFORE even making any videos. Decide all your longtail phrases and they will form the topics of each video. Then you make the video about that specific subject. That way, the content matches exactly what people have searched for. Why is that important? Well they will hopefully watch the whole thing because it's exactly what they were looking for. This results in higher than average audience retention which will drive the video up in the rankings and ensures the algorithm picks it up. ie Your channel will grow.

**************
Solid advice. Thanks for this, it's becoming difficult to find those long tail terms in the niche I operate in (which is marketing, where ironically, "long tail" comes from :D )

But I think I am starting to find some because of TubeBuddy. I've started to build a list of long tail search terms and planned videos for them. I'll see how I get on!

Thanks,
Darren
 
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