How to Get More Views on YouTube (FAST)

Key Takeaways

today you're gonna learn exactly how to get more views on your YouTube videos step-by-step and I should point something out right off the bat this video is meant for advanced youtubers so I'm not gonna repeat the same tips you've heard a hundred times already like share your videos on social media instead you're gonna learn advanced strategies that work fast in fact I use the same exact process from this video to quickly grow my views from almost zero to over a hundred thousand views per month i'm brian dean the founder of backlinko and if you want to get lots of views on every video that you publish make sure to watch the rest of this video [Music] nothing is more frustrating than creating a great video putting it up on YouTube and getting no views and trust me I can relate when I first started on YouTube my video struggled to get any views refresh refresh refresh still no views but I stuck with it and over the years I developed a process for getting views that actually worked this step-by-step process helped me grow my views subscribers and traffic in record time now it's time for me to share this process with you and show you exactly how to get lots of views on your YouTube videos let's kick things off with step number one get more audience interaction does you to pay attention to how many people interact with your video according to youtube definitely in fact they say that videos are ranked based on a variety of factors including how well the title description and video content match the viewers query beyond that we look at which videos have driven the most engagement in other words YouTube promotes videos that people engage with so if you can get more likes comments and subscribes YouTube will show your video to more people and the data backs this up according to a YouTube ranking factors study I did last year audience interaction signals turned out to be a huge YouTube ranking signal in fact we found that audience interaction signals like comments likes and subscribes all correlated with higher rankings in YouTube okay so how do you actually get more audience interaction signals here are two strategies that work great first give your viewers a multiple choice question at the end of your video why people love giving their opinion but they hate thinking so instead of asking your viewers to share their thoughts give them an easy multiple choice question for example in this video I outline a bunch of different SEO strategies and at the end of the video I asked my viewers which of two specific strategies from the video they're gonna try first second reply to every single comment that you get when someone sees that you actively engage with your audience they're more likely to leave a comment and more comments equals more views also according to YouTube cool if your viewers love what they see and have positive interactions they're more likely to share your videos and recommend them and that means even more views for example you can see that a reply to all of my comments in the first week after one of my videos goes live and now it's time for our second step promote your videos on Quora and other online communities forums Quora reddit and other online communities are awesome places to get more views on your YouTube videos here's the exact process first search for a question that your video could help answer for example a while back I published this video about link building so I searched in Quora for keywords like SEO and link building and it came across this question now I knew that just link it to my video as an answer would be spammy so I wrote out a helpful response that could stand on its own then I embedded my video at the end of my response in case people wanted to see more details that's all there is to it and now it's time for our third step for getting more views on YouTube optimized for session time which is a little metric that might be YouTube's number one ranking factor right now so you probably already heard about audience retention which is the percentage of your video people watch and you may have also read about total watch time which is the total amount of minute that people have spent watching your video over its lifespan both of these are important YouTube ranking factors that said there's one huge metric that not as many people talk about session time session time is the total amount of time that someone spends on YouTube after they start watching your video for example let's say that you just published the video about the Paleo diet and someone watches your video all the way through that's great this will boost your audience retention and total watch time but here's where things get interesting YouTube also pays very close attention to what the user does next if they click away from YouTube or close their browser that's bad but if that person watches another one of your videos that will increase your session watch time and because your video is keeping people on YouTube they'll thank you by ranking your video in the search results and have you show up in the suggested video sidebar in fact YouTube has said on the record that that algorithm for suggesting videos includes prioritizing videos that lead to a longer overall viewing session the question is how do you increase your session time playlists playlists are awesome whenever someone watches a video that's on a playlist it'll automatically play the other videos on that playlist boosting your session time automatically and for my own testing I've noticed that creating playlists has significantly increased my session time which has dramatically boosted the views for all the videos on my channel so I recommend creating a few different playlists that each have four to five videos then put these playlists on your channel page and as a quick pro tip I recommend using benefit rich playlist titles that way more people actually click on and watch your playlists for example I used to name my playlists whatever came into my head and that led to a boring playlist titles like link building strategies and white hat SEO today I give my playlist a compelling name that will encourage people to click and if you check out my channel page you'll notice that I now use playlist titles like how to get higher Google rankings an advanced SEO strategies and case studies and with that let's get into step number four which is to optimize your videos around video keywords you might have noticed that YouTube videos are dominating Google search results in fact over half of all Google results contain one video most of which are YouTube videos and if you optimize your video around keywords that already have videos on the first page of Google you can get more views I call keywords that have video results in Google video keywords not the most creative name but it gets the job done you see many Google search results only link to web pages but video keyword results reserved a section of the page specifically for YouTube videos and these are the type of keywords that tend to be video keywords why is this so important well let's say you wanted to create a video around the keyword YouTube marketing and when you searched for that keyword in Google you don't see any video results well even if you create the best video about YouTube marketing ever made it's not gonna rank in Google so how do you find video keywords it's easy just search for your keyword in Google if you see at least one YouTube video in the search results you just found a video keyword and give yourself a high five with that it's time for step number five optimize your channel using the PAS method when I first started out on YouTube I didn't put a lot of thought into optimizing my channel page instead I focused a hundred percent on each video that I published I thought to myself my channel doesn't matter as long as my videos are optimized I'm all set as it turns out I was wrong the more I studied successful channels the more realized that they put a lot of effort into optimizing their channel to maximize views and subscribers and sure enough when I finally optimized my channel my views and subscribers significantly increased for example my old channel had an ugly header that cost me about 5 bucks even worse my videos were listed in random order there wasn't any rhyme or reason for how my channel was set up or structured today my channel is professional and appeal it's also keyword-optimized four terms that my target audience searches for more on that later with that it's time for me to show you how it optimized my channel using the PAS method the pas in pas method stands for playlists about subscribers first up we have playlists we already talked about playlists and how they can help you improve your session watch time so now that you have some playlists set up it's time to add them prominently to your channel page that way when someone clicks over from one of your videos to your channel you'll have a bunch of awesome playlists for them to watch for example you can see that my channel has three playlists strategically placed on my channel page next it's time to optimize your pages About section so why is your channel's About section so important first your About section helps YouTube understand what your channel is all about just like with a video description and video tags so it can help your video SEO also a well optimized channel can rank in YouTube for popular keywords to optimize your About section just include keywords that you want your videos to rank for without keyword stuffing for example you can see that my About section content sounds nice and natural but it also makes sure to sprinkle in keywords that I want my videos to rank for finally it's time to optimize your channel to get more subscribers imagine that you just watched a great video but when you go to that videos channel page it looks like this how likely would you be to watch more of their videos or subscribe to their Channel not very on the other hand let's say their channel look like this you'd be much more likely to subscribe right of course this channel is about Star Wars which makes it automatically awesome but you get what I mean fortunately it's not hard to create a nice-looking channel all you need is a channel icon a professional channel or banner and a trailer that briefly tells people why they should subscribe to your channel let's dive right in to step number 6 promote your higher attention videos as a card sometimes you have a video on your channel that has the potential to be huge it just needs a little push here's how to give it that little push first login to your YouTube analytics and click on audience retention then look at the average of you duration column this is the average amount of time that each person spends watching your video and if you can get more views on a video that already has a high view duration that video will rack up lots and lots of watch time which means YouTube will promote the heck out of it and the best way to send more people to that video feature that video as a card on one of your other videos to do that just head over to a few of your most popular videos and add a card that links to the video you want to promote for example this video from my channel has an average view duration of 5 minutes 22 seconds I haven't done much to promote this video and that's probably why it doesn't have that many views so I added a card from some of my most popular videos to that video that way my video will rack up a more total watch time and get promoted across YouTube's platform as a pro tip you can also feature the same video on your channel page just set that video to appear at the top of your channel page and bada-bing bada-boom more people will see that video let's move right along to step 7 so Facebook preview this is a little hack that I recently discovered and it works great so you already know that you should promote your video on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook but if you just link to your video in your post you're making a big mistake instead I recommend using the Facebook preview let me show you how this works with a real-life case study so I wanted to get more views on this YouTube video that I published on my channel so the first thing I did was grab a clip of my video and uploaded it to Facebook this clip should be between 30 and 90 seconds then I wrote a post that contained the title of the video you don't need anything fancy here or to sell your video that much short and sweet works best that way the focus is on your video I also mentioned that the full length of the video is in the comments and I left a comment that linked to my video on YouTube and this strategy worked out great my facebook preview video was viewed more than three thousand times and lots of those people went to YouTube to see my full video which led to a huge spike in views on day one and that's all there is to the Facebook preview and let's move right into step number eight optimize your videos for SVO get more views it's crazy everyone in there mom focuses a hundred percent on ranking their videos in YouTube search and they sleep on suggestive video this is a very very bad idea in fact the vast majority of views on YouTube don't come from YouTube search they come from the suggested video sidebar even though I rank for lots of competitive keywords I actually get more views from suggestive video than YouTube search that said how do you actually get your videos to appear as a suggestive video the secret is to optimize your video or on the same keywords that popular videos are optimized around I call this process SVO suggested video optimization here's exactly how it works first find a popular video in your industry now the exact number of views that you want to look for will depend on your niche but in general though more views this video has the better next create a video on the same topic as the popular video but make it even better you can make a video better by including more content making your advice more actionable or including more visual elements finally optimize your video or on the same keyword that the popular video is optimized around specifically you want to use the same keywords that video uses in your video title description and tags and if your video is awesome enough YouTube will pop your video next to that popular video leading to lots and lots of views okay so now it's time for our last step to help you get youtube views create emotionally compelling titles it's no secret that the right thumbnail can get more clicks on your video which will lead to more views but I don't see as much people talk about your video title and the truth is your video title can make or break your entire video in fact YouTube states that according to their own internal data well-written titles can be the difference between someone watching and sharing your video or scrolling right past it that's why I make sure all of my video titles are optimized for SEO but also to generate clicks and from lots and lots of testing I found that emotionally compelling titles work best on YouTube now emotional titles have been shown in industry studies like this one by Basu mo to get more clicks on articles and as it turns out this also applies to video titles on YouTube videos the best way to add emotion to your video title is to pop your title into the american marketing institute's headline analyzer this tool will rate the emotion of your title and you want your title to get a score of at least 25% but in general the higher the better now if your title isn't racking up a high score consider adding these emotionally compelling terms to your title for example when I put this video's title into the tool it gets a score of 33.3% that's more than good enough okay so let's cat things off with a quick bonus tip publish your videos at the right time so what's the best time to publish a video on YouTube believe it or not but there's data on this specifically a study by a YouTube network called Frederator recently shed some light on this question and they found the best time to publish a YouTube video to maximize views is between 12:00 and 4:00 p.m. Eastern during the week and between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. on the weekend they also found that the best days to publish are Thursdays and Saturdays so that's my 9 step process to help you get more views on YouTube did you learn some cool new stuff in today's video then make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel right now just click on the subscribe button below this video also if you want exclusive SEO and traffic techniques that I only share with subscribers head over to Becca calm and hop on the newsletter it's free now I want to turn it over to you which take from today's video are you gonna try first are you gonna make more emotional titles or try the Facebook preview let me know by leaving a comment below right now boom about session section mmm when I first started out on YouTube this is a mmm playlists so how you say it now what I heard that tune I think it's eight or nine that explains it