What Most of You are Doing Wrong

[PictureFIT]

With 51 subscribers. Trying to rank for a keyword that has a competition of 40 will get you nothing to be honest. at 50 subs, you need like <5 competition score per my experience.[DOUBLEPOST=1485820825,1485820779][/DOUBLEPOST]

Says the person with 50 subscribers. How well is reddit working for you?[DOUBLEPOST=1485820871][/DOUBLEPOST]

Well put! I agree 100%[DOUBLEPOST=1485820917][/DOUBLEPOST]

Like I have said, it wont work over night. It is a great habit to get into and sometimes the light shines on your channel. Good work!

Reddit is the reason my channel was able to climb to its heights today. You can discount reddit because of the low retention rate all you want, but the goal is not to improve retention nor watch time. The goal with reddit is exposure, and there is almost no other website that can garner exposure for free like reddit. You're speaking like someone that has never been successful with reddit, thus, find it much easier to just discredit it because it didn't work for you. Gaming channels never do well on reddit.

And the problem for the majority here isn't the fact that they just don't know SEO. It's the fact that they are all looking for that quick fix. All the resources are right in their faces, in the stickies, in the answers of people that have seen success using certain strategies. Once they realize that it's not a simple wave of a magic wand, they decide not to even listen to the advice and sulk in their lack of success. The problem with saying "IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR SEO," is that it wouldn't matter for 99% of the people here. Most of them will be competing for highly competitive keywords against channels thousands of times larger than theirs. They falter when they realize that even doing what you suggest does not get them anywhere close to what they want. You need that initial exposure to push through the masses. Anyone that thinks SEO will fix their problem outright is not realizing how many others are doing exactly what they are doing and doing it better. You don't have to be the best to be successful. You need to find ways to get yourself an audience outside of the most competitive platform. Once you establish that exposure, then we can talk about optimizing SEO.

 

[GamingwithNick]

Reddit is the reason my channel was able to climb to its heights today. You can discount reddit because of the low retention rate all you want, but the goal is not to improve retention nor watch time. The goal with reddit is exposure, and there is almost no other website that can garner exposure for free like reddit. You're speaking like someone that has never been successful with reddit, thus, find it much easier to just discredit it because it didn't work for you. Gaming channels never do well on reddit.

And the problem for the majority here isn't the fact that they just don't know SEO. It's the fact that they are all looking for that quick fix. All the resources are right in their faces, in the stickies, in the answers of people that have seen success using certain strategies. Once they realize that it's not a simple wave of a magic wand, they decide not to even listen to the advice and sulk in their lack of success. The problem with saying "IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR SEO," is that it wouldn't matter for 99% of the people here. Most of them will be competing for highly competitive keywords against channels thousands of times larger than theirs. They falter when they realize that even doing what you suggest does not get them anywhere close to what they want. You need that initial exposure to push through the masses. Anyone that thinks SEO will fix their problem outright is not realizing how many others are doing exactly what they are doing and doing it better. You don't have to be the best to be successful. You need to find ways to get yourself an audience outside of the most competitive platform. Once you establish that exposure, then we can talk about optimizing SEO.

I am not discounting reddit at all. If you find a good community, then it's great. Problem is, these people with less than 100 subs spam reddit, facebook groups and G+ without learning how to properly title tag and describe their videos. Everything is ok in moderation. Reddit in moderation is a wonderful tool. I didn't mean to come off like reddit is terrible. Heck, I use it. But in moderation.

You say that it isn't a case of SEO, but then you say this " Most of them will be competing for highly competitive keywords against channels thousands of times larger than theirs. ". <-- This is SEO lol. If you understand SEO, you wouldn't compete against these channels with highly competative keywords. The point of SEO is to find the less competative keywords that are highly searched.

It's easy to say this when you have had 20k subs since may of 2016. Congrats on your channel! You will notice that even YouTubers with over 1 million subs don't SEO. It's because they don't need too. The more subs I gain, the less important my SEO becomes (at least that I have noticed). But for these small channels spending their time learning SEO with benefit them more so then spamming reddit. That's all I was saying.

 

[PictureFIT]

I am not discounting reddit at all. If you find a good community, then it's great.

Then don't prod at someone that found success with reddit just because they have 50 subs.

You say that it isn't a case of SEO, but then you say this " Most of them will be competing for highly competitive keywords against channels thousands of times larger than theirs. ". <-- This is SEO lol.

You missed the point here. Optimizing your SEO against people that will be placed in front of you no matter how optimized you are isn't going to help. A channel with 100 subs can share the same keywords as channels with 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000, 20,000, and on and on will never find the success they need. YT algorithm isn't going to favor their channels in the first place. The only time that SEO will give them a competitive edge is if they already have an established following. Sure, optimizing SEO at 50 subs will serve you better than a non-optimized channel at 50 subs, but both of them will have limited exposure against larger channels competing in the same genre with the same keywords.

It's easy to say this when you have had 20k subs since may of 2016.

What does that have to do with anything? I've been posting on reddit since I had 0 subs. Once I posted my very first video, I also posted it on reddit. By the time I reached 8k subs, reddit accounted for more than half of my subscribers. Then I started getting featured on Lifehacker which took my channel to the next level. Guess where Lifehacker found me? Reddit.

The more subs I gain, the less important my SEO becomes (at least that I have noticed).

Now that's dangerous advice. If anything, optimizing your SEO as you grow is of utmost importance. Now you're the big fish, and it's best served if you continue to be the big fish in as many keywords in your genre. Now you're actually being placed into browse features, search rankings, and suggestions. The reason so many big channels aren't as optimized with SEO is because the game was very different when they started (or they're a sh*tty drama/prank/reaction channel). The game has changed and if you ignore SEO as you grow larger, then you're planting your own demise.

 

[UserU]

Reddit is the reason my channel was able to climb to its heights today. You can discount reddit because of the low retention rate all you want, but the goal is not to improve retention nor watch time. The goal with reddit is exposure, and there is almost no other website that can garner exposure for free like reddit. You're speaking like someone that has never been successful with reddit, thus, find it much easier to just discredit it because it didn't work for you. Gaming channels never do well on reddit.

And the problem for the majority here isn't the fact that they just don't know SEO. It's the fact that they are all looking for that quick fix. All the resources are right in their faces, in the stickies, in the answers of people that have seen success using certain strategies. Once they realize that it's not a simple wave of a magic wand, they decide not to even listen to the advice and sulk in their lack of success. The problem with saying "IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR SEO," is that it wouldn't matter for 99% of the people here. Most of them will be competing for highly competitive keywords against channels thousands of times larger than theirs. They falter when they realize that even doing what you suggest does not get them anywhere close to what they want. You need that initial exposure to push through the masses. Anyone that thinks SEO will fix their problem outright is not realizing how many others are doing exactly what they are doing and doing it better. You don't have to be the best to be successful. You need to find ways to get yourself an audience outside of the most competitive platform. Once you establish that exposure, then we can talk about optimizing SEO.

QFT. YouTube alone isn't gonna get you far. More exposure means more people sharing contents. I've seen channels blow up thanks to Reddit if done right.

 

[Backyard Ninja Kids]

This is some great discussion! I honestly don't have a great vocab and have never liked English, so even though I know how to populate tags, I honestly feel like I suck at it. My tags are very much like your first set.
All of that said, like many things, there's not a silver bullet. Do you need good tags? Sure, it helps. Do you need Reddit traffic? Sure, it helps! Do you need to do XYZ for audience retention? Sure, it helps. I like these discussions because I think the nuggets that come out are all the pieces needed. Depending on our niche some may be more valuable than others, but I think we can agree they are all a piece of helping viewers finding us. Great stuff here!

 

[YouTubers United Podcast]

With 51 subscribers. Trying to rank for a keyword that has a competition of 40 will get you nothing to be honest. at 50 subs, you need like <5 competition score per my experience.[DOUBLEPOST=1485820825,1485820779][/DOUBLEPOST]

Says the person with 50 subscribers. How well is reddit working for you?[DOUBLEPOST=1485820871][/DOUBLEPOST]

My main channel has 55,000 subscribers. So it's working out pretty well.

 

[Lightsen]

tumblr worked nicely for me, all the undertale fan blogs caught wind of my YouTube embed and shared it.
think of where you can find your audience, if you won't find them on Reddit, don't bother.

I used to use keywords like the first set shown in the example. I was never ranking for anything, now I'm using better ones and they are all ranking which is wonderfully explained with tubebuddy.

I still keep a couple of basic ones in, I was ranking 1st for "Undertale" for over a month which surprised me quite a bit!.

 

[Dalindcy]

SEO is definitely one of the most important tools out there. I think it really depends on the type of content you make when posting on Reddit, Tumblr & other websites. I post in relevant subreddits sometimes and it can help to give a video that first boost of views, which then later helps me to push through the YouTube algorithm and end up in search/suggested videos (but you need good SEO for that!)

It is fickle though and you need to really be part of the community/know the platform well to know how to use it.

 

[Keyser Reveal]

I don't disagree with what your saying about tags..but I don't think you can discard reddit, fb groups and other means of driving traffic to your videos..they definitely work. I think the problem is people think that there is only 1 solution..when in reality you should be doing multiple things. Just my opinion. Good topic

 

[zirukurt01]

Thanks for the advice, maybe i should make my videos more focused to viewers who want to watch my MUGEN videos.
I think MUGEN community is dying because of new games like Mortal Kombat X or Street Fighter 5.