The title of your video or article is often the first impression readers get about your published work. Always choose a title that catches attention, describes your video or article content accurately, and makes people want to read more.
The title of your video or article is often the first impression readers get about your published work. Always choose a title that catches attention, describes your video or article content accurately, and makes people want to read more.
You may be wondering where I've been all this time. I think the last episode I did was about two, three months ago nearly, well, I took some personal time, and I also took some time to do a lot of research.
I started a brand-new YouTube channel, which is all about, meditation and inspirational music, that sort of thing. So, I've learned a lot and I think the important thing here is with YouTube and YouTube channels is that every business should have one.
And of course, it's all very well to say, set up a YouTube channel and just slap up some videos and traffic will come. It's like what people say about website; build a website today and you'll get a ton of traffic tomorrow. Well, as we know, that is just not true.
I've heard it said so many times in videos and online, that all you need to do to be successful on YouTube is set up a channel, put in your description and add a few, key words and slap up some videos and you'll be a YouTube star. All that I'm afraid is just not true. It isn't for SEO or search, and it's certainly not true for YouTube.
How to set up a YouTube channel, that is something that is a totally different topic. But what I want to concentrate on with this episode is when you do create a video, make sure that the title you use is an SEO friendly title and that it is about something that people are searching for. From what I've been able to figure out, because YouTube and Google search, they're kind of two separate things, even though they're owned by the same company. The way their algorithms work is a little bit different.
But what I found is, the videos that I have posted, the ones with the catchiest titles, the ones with the SEO friendly titles, if you want to call it that, are the ones that seem to do the best as far as views go. Now this of course can apply to Google search as well.
So, if you’re posting blogs or articles or whatever, make sure that your title is well, first, SEO friendly, and it's something that is going to peak people's interest. An example of a poor title is something like, “the benefits of outsourcing your agency's services”. Now that is very generic. It really doesn't
pique anybody's interest I wouldn't imagine. But if you rewrote that to something along the lines of “why paying someone else to do your work actually increases your income”, now that would be an article that I would be interested in reading or a video I would be interested in watching. Just like with everything in SEO, digital marketing and whatnot, there are a few rules or guidelines that you should keep in mind when you are picking titles or creating titles for your video or your blog post. First and foremost, you should know who your audience is. In other words, who are the types of people that would read or watch your videos? What content are they most likely to watch or read? You need to be very specific. You need to get to the point and share the most important information at the beginning of the title. And I'll give you a couple of examples of that a little bit later.
Above everything else, Ignore the advice that goes around a lot on the internet, in YouTube videos, and that is to make up a title just to get people to watch your video. That's called click bait. I'm sure everyone, at some point has read a title to a video or looked at the thumbnail, and you said, “oh, this is something that I want to watch” and you click on it and it's about something totally different than what you were expecting. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to finish watching that video? No, you are going to move on to another, and you'll probably give the the video a thumbs down and that's not a good thing. Obviously, the thing is that watch time is a big indicator on how well your video is going to do or is doing because if people click on your video and they're there for 10 seconds or something like that, then
YouTube is going to think, okay, people are leaving this video very quickly. So, it's probably not that great quality. They're not going to give you as many impressions. They're not going to suggest your video on people's feeds. They're not going to make the video come up on people's home pages when they log into YouTube.
That's a little bit simplistic, I know, but watch time is a big thing. So above all else, no matter what you name your video, even if it's a boring title, make sure it is about what the video contains. Don't do clickbait because that will only hurt you in the long run. Not only that if you have subscribers and
they keep clicking on your videos when they get notified that you put up a new video and it's always about something different to what the title is, they're going to unsubscribe, and that will hurt you as the content producer or your business if it's a business YouTube channel as well.
Not only is it important for YouTube video, but it’s also important for article titles. It is also, if you do a podcast, for example, it is also important to do a creative title for your podcast. I've seen so many podcasts and I've listened to so many as well that just give you a very generic title. If you're looking for something new, you are not going to click on that.
And I can tell you from experience that my podcast episodes, the ones that are the most popular, the ones that get the most listens, are titles that are a little bit unusual or titles that are pretty much up to the minute at that time. For example, I did an episode a few months ago about the metaverse and there was huge movement about what the metaverse is and lots of noise about it. It's died down a little bit now, but that was one of my most popular videos. There was also one entitled, I can't remember the exact title, but it started off with the words, “put that cookie down”. And of course, it was about Google's use of cookies within their browser and the privacy issues and all that sort of stuff.
And another very popular podcast was the episode about which was entitled “Google's latest stuff up”. And of course, people see that and think, oh, what has Google done now? What have they stuffed up this time? How's is it all going to affect me? So, people listened to it. And so having a good catchy title that draws people in, that makes them watch your video or listen to your podcast or read your article.
Very, very important. I cannot stress that enough. I’ve experimented with YouTube for the last few months now, trying to figure out what is the best way to get views. That is what I found the title seems to be the most important thing within YouTube.
When you are posting a video, you go through the uploading process and then a window pops up that lets you put in your title and your description and your keywords. It seems from what I've read and from what I've also seen with my own research is that keywords just like in Google search, they don't really have a great deal of benefit anymore. So sure. Put the keywords in there, you still need it because it, it gives YouTube or Google the idea of what your your video's about, but it is not going to guarantee you high rankings because you're using those keywords just like in search. It seems to be because YouTube is obviously owned by Google. So, there are a few things that they would have in common as far as how the algorithm works.
Another one of the videos that I posted, had a very generic title and it really didn't do very much. So, I changed the title of this video. It was a YouTube short, which is just a short up to 60 seconds, video. And maybe that's another episode for another time on how you can use YouTube shorts as an advertising tool for your business. But anyway, this video I changed the title to, “this is exactly why study to cinematic music blew up so quickly” and the video kind of did blew up. It did nothing for a day or two, but then suddenly it just started to get views and it was recommended on the YouTube shorts feed. And it just grew from there.
So that is a great example. I did change the title to that from, I can't remember what the other title was, but it was very, very generic and it did nothing. And it seems that if your YouTube video does nothing within the first 24 hours or so, give it a bit of time, change the title, and see what happens.
And I've done that with quite a few of these videos and in the last week or two, some of them have started to move as far as getting some views and getting some good impressions through the YouTube algorithm.
So, there you have it, there's a, a few things that we can talk about a little bit later, as far as YouTube goes, because YouTube seems to be here to stay, but it seems to be more and more of a thing now.
And, if you do have a business, think seriously, if you haven't already about setting up a YouTube channel. Like I said in the intro, it's not as easy as just slapping it up there. There are ways to optimize it and to make the most of it so that you can get the traffic that you want, so you can get the traction that you want. So obviously you want the people watching your videos to turn into clients or customers or whatever. And there are lots of ways now that it can be done. Even if you've got a business channel, you can monetize your YouTube channel so that when people are watching your videos, YouTube will present certain ads, whether they be video ads in the beginning, halfway through or towards the end or banner ads throughout the video. And you can make a good little side income out of that. Not that that should be your business' focus, but obviously if you're going to go to all the trouble of having a YouTube channel and hopefully the views that you get converting to clients or customers to buy your product or your services, why not get paid a little bit extra? It's free money so in that sense you might as well.
However, there are a few criteria that you need to meet before your YouTube channel can get monetized through Google AdSense, but that once again could be another episode.
So, there you have it. We've got quite a few things that we could talk about in the next few weeks about YouTube and how to make it work for your business
Thank you for listening once again. I look forward to next week where we can talk more about YouTube and how you can monetize it perhaps, how you can use it for your business and how you can make it work for your business. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.