channels and even channels dedicated to exposing online scams.
The idea is to research your market, analyze the top 10 YouTube channels in
your niche and create a plan for your channel before you even begin to create
content. That way you have a clear blueprint in place that will guide you with
clear direction and a strong focus.
Regarding Channel Names:
If you haven’t yet decided on a name for your channel, you’ll want to consider
this very carefully. Your name represents your brand, your business and tells
potential subscribers what to expect from your channel.
This means you don’t want to choose something generic or vague that people
won’t instantly associate to a topic.
While there
are countless examples of successful Vloggers who created a channel in their personal
name, it’s often much easier to launch a channel and connect to your target
audience if you choose a channel name that represents the type of content you’ll be offering. In other words, your theme.
This means that you first need to ensure that you understand your market and
what kind of content they’d be interested in.
Creating a successful
YouTube channel requires a strong focus on specific
content formats. Creating a random
channel that tries to be all things to everyone will make it hard, if not
impossible, to build a recognized brand and to stand out.
Instead, you want your content to be geared towards one main niche. At least
when you’re just starting out.
Again, while
you aren’t restricted to creating content in just one niche, by deciding to
focus the initial phase of your channel on one segment of your market, you’ll
be able to launch faster, grow a following easier and solidify your brand.
Plus, it’ll
be easier to create a content plan and schedule if you take a laser-focused
approach to launching your channel.
Tip: You also want to make sure that the name you choose has an available
domain, or closely related one. You’ll want to register that domain in advance,
before you even launch your channel.
Acquiring
the domain as well as the username on all popular social media platforms will
help you protect your business because it puts you in full control of your
brand. Plus, it’s a great place to sell
merch later on!
Step 2: Creating a Keyword Strategy
Keywords
help people find your channel. They serve
as signals in the major search engines that will connect your audience to the
content they’re looking for.
In fact,
just by optimizing your channel so it includes relevant and highly-targeted
keywords may be all you need to do to drive in traffic, especially if your
content caters to a hungry market.
This means, you’ll want to add relevant keywords in the “About Section” of your
channel.
Doing this
will help you rank organically in the search engines and make sure your channel
appears when someone enters search terms directly into the YouTube search bar.
You’ll find the About Section here: https://www.youtube.com/advanced_settings
Try to come
up with 10-15 relevant, long-tail keywords that best describe your content.
You can use
them throughout the different areas of your channel as well as within the
description of each video.
You don’t want to keyword stuff to where a subscriber reads your description and it doesn’t make any sense to them.
Your most important keywords should always appear in the first line of your description otherwise it’ll be truncated with a “Show More” link, but again, make sure your description isn’t just a series of keywords – it needs to provide your audience with important information about your content.
In addition, you’ll want to include relevant keywords in your video titles as well, especially your focus keyword (the main keyword you’re hoping to rank for).
Keep your
video titles short and focused on engagement. You want them to be exciting and
to immediately capture attention.
Always take
advantage of any opportunity to include keywords in your content. In addition,
vary the keywords used so that you’re able to rank for a variety of long-tail
keyword phrases.
Here are a
few ways to leverage free YouTube keyword tools:
HyperSuggest: https://www.hypersuggest.com/
There’s a free version of this keyword tool that will allow you to search by
country while providing important data, such as potential search volume.
WordTracker: https://www.wordtracker.com/
This tool will provide search volume, overall competition and other information
that will help you optimize your channel such as the number of times keywords
appear in the anchor and title of popular YouTube channels.
This tool makes it easy to uncover relevant, high-traffic keywords while being
able to reverse-engineer popular channels in your niche.
And
finally, you’ll want to create a secondary keyword list that focuses on tags.
Tags function the exact same way keywords do and so they’ll become a very
important part of your channel.
Unfortunately, tags aren’t displayed by default in video descriptions so you
won’t be able to uncover them just by browsing popular videos in your niche. However,
there are a handful of free tools that will solve this problem.
These include:
TubeBuddy:
https://www.tubebuddy.com/
Tags for YouTube: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tags-for-youtube/dggphokdgjikekfiakjcpidcclbmkfga?hl=en-US
Once you install these Chrome plugins, whenever you visit a YouTube channel and
look through the description, you’ll be able to see what tags are being used by
the creator. This spy tactic is
invaluable because it’ll show you exactly what others are using
successfully.
And while
tags aren’t the only way to optimize your videos and overall channel, they’re
important when it comes to signaling to YouTube search and Google what your
video is about.
Tags will
also help your videos populate in search as well as in related video views.
We’ve discussed the importance of choosing a theme for your channel but now it’s time to connect that theme to your brand.
Branded videos always outperform unbranded videos and there’s good reason for it: People begin to recognize your content just because your brand is prominent and memorable. They’ll share your content with others (if it’s entertaining), and in turn, your brand will gain even more exposure.
This includes creating stand-out channel artwork. Consider hiring a professional designer to create a logo, banner and thumbnail templates that you can repurpose.
You’ll find qualified designers on websites like https://www.Upwork.com and https://99designs.com
What you’re looking to do is highlight your brand in every way