SEO is a waste of time! Well, not really but kinda

carlylespicks

Liking YTtalk
I have multiple video that are #1 in search. For example imagine having a video about baseball tips and when you search "baseball tips", you are first. Or maybe you are first for "car review". Those are super generic terms with tons of competition so I'm proud to top lists like that HOWEVER....I never seem to get the full benefit. I have videos with around 30,000 views from 2013 that are top in youtube search.

Case in point right now I'm number 1 for "how to lane split" but only got 20k in a year. A video like this on my channel should be near 100k by now. The video UNDER mine has 759k views. I did the math and the rate of subscribers/view on my video are WAY higher than the other video. They got 2600 and at that rate, I'd have 7000 new subs on 700k views. It also seems like everybody who liked my video subscribed so I'd get around 7000 likes in theory. They did get just under that so it's liked at the same rate as mine but not enough to get the same subs.

All those stats are pointless however because I'm not getting the views. I got 50 views in last two days. It averages 800 a month. I have 70 videos right now that get more views/month than this and they are probably not as highly ranked in search.

Here is the reality I've found, search helps but it can be very limiting. MOST of my views are GIVEN to me by YouTube. YouTube algos decide my videos will want to be seen by you folks and they essentially promote it. So not matter how good my video is, if YouTube does not think it's good, it does not go anywhere. Another idea is kind of like a gun. A gun alone does nothing. A gun in your hand has great potential to kill. A gun in your hand WITH a bullet in it CAN kill. So:

having the best bullets does nothing
Having the best gun does nothing
The best gun and bullets on a table does nothing
Having the best gun and bullets in your hand CAN be VERY lethal

So is it then:

A great video may not do well
A great video with great SEO may not do well
A great video with great SEO on a popular topic will do well

Like I saw a video that was well hated got 80k in a day. My video was better and uploaded first BUT my SEO was horrible. For whatever reason it ranked horribly in search. I had tags in keywords, title and description. Guy with 500 subs destroyed me with my 2k subs AND people hate his video. I got more thumbs up. Stupid algo!
 
I wouldn't say SEO is a waste of time at all, I've spent the past few weeks really focusing on SEO and I don't think I have ever had growth this significant.
 
Well like in my analogy it's a formula that requires all parts. If you have OK or better videos about popular topics and you have horrible SEO then SEO improvements will help a lot I'm sure. If however you have good videos about something that is not popular enough AND YouTube thinks your video sucks, then SEO won't do much for you. Most of my views are handed to me on silver platter by YouTube. There are only a few search terms that are doing any good. Interesting thing is any video doing good in search, usually does well with YouTube algos. This means just about every top video I have is mostly getting traffic from recommendations and then from search. Sometimes, search will fall WELL behind suggestions while at same time tons of views are coming in from suggestions.

I wouldn't say SEO is a waste of time at all, I've spent the past few weeks really focusing on SEO and I don't think I have ever had growth this significant.
[DOUBLEPOST=1412718995,1412718548][/DOUBLEPOST]If my video is ranking number 1 in search how can I not be doing it correctly? Is the not the goal of SEO to get as close to number 1 as possible?

SEO isn't a waste of time, chances are you aren't doing it correctly.
 
Well like in my analogy it's a formula that requires all parts. If you have OK or better videos about popular topics and you have horrible SEO then SEO improvements will help a lot I'm sure. If however you have good videos about something that is not popular enough AND YouTube thinks your video sucks, then SEO won't do much for you. Most of my views are handed to me on silver platter by YouTube. There are only a few search terms that are doing any good. Interesting thing is any video doing good in search, usually does well with YouTube algos. This means just about every top video I have is mostly getting traffic from recommendations and then from search. Sometimes, search will fall WELL behind suggestions while at same time tons of views are coming in from suggestions.

[DOUBLEPOST=1412718995,1412718548][/DOUBLEPOST]If my video is ranking number 1 in search how can I not be doing it correctly? Is the not the goal of SEO to get as close to number 1 as possible?

That's where I am a little confused, the idea behind SEO is just to get your video to #1. That is the only purpose behind it, now if your video is number 1 and gets less views than a video lower down on the page, or isn't grabbing the subscribers that you want, then it has to be something else, not SEO
 
What else is there? My video performs better(other than views) so it's not the quality. Only thing I can think of is promotion. Still, should not my video do well on related videos alone? Another video about same topic and you let 700k people slip by and never show them my video? Hmmm..let me see what DOES get shown...

That's where I am a little confused, the idea behind SEO is just to get your video to #1. That is the only purpose behind it, now if your video is number 1 and gets less views than a video lower down on the page, or isn't grabbing the subscribers that you want, then it has to be something else, not SEO
[DOUBLEPOST=1412731306,1412728868][/DOUBLEPOST]Interesting. It's not really linking with other lane split videos properly. I think they used strange tags. The related videos are mostly about other topics.

What else is there? My video performs better(other than views) so it's not the quality. Only thing I can think of is promotion. Still, should not my video do well on related videos alone? Another video about same topic and you let 700k people slip by and never show them my video? Hmmm..let me see what DOES get shown...
 
I know what you mean. I have a video for a common search topic "Pokemon X and Y Mysteries" at the top of the search that only has 16-17K views, and several videos under mine have over 1 million views.
 
It would be so much better if we could complain about this. I HATE this black box model! We need a way to talk to YouTube. I know there are tons of channels but maybe only channels of a certain size? Maybe use polls so we can vote?

I know what you mean. I have a video for a common search topic "Pokemon X and Y Mysteries" at the top of the search that only has 16-17K views, and several videos under mine have over 1 million views.
 
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