One of my favorite research to do
is actually on YouTube itself.
I'm gonna go to how to dress for your body type.
And now I'm gonna kinda look at the top videos.
I'm gonna study their thumbnails, their titles,
the video length, and think about, okay,
how could I jump inside of this conversation?
You gotta just press the record.
- Hey, my channel is about style for women over 40.
When I do keyword research,
I'll get like a 100 score on one of the videos
and that's not a video that ends up doing that well.
- Sure.
- So I'm just kinda confused.
Like I just researched a couple of videos.
I was just working on a couple of new ones,
like four ways to make any outfit more interesting.
So I got a 100 score on that topic,
but then I go in and do a video about that
and I optimize it the best way that I can.
I loved your tip about making the thumbnail copy different
that was so good.
Cause I'm, you know, always working on that, but, yeah,
I just wonder why those aren't always the videos
that ranks really well.
And if there's something that you're seeing that I can do
that might change the trajectory of my channel right now,
it's kind of like slowly growing
at about 100 people a month, I would say.
I started it about a year ago.
Almost exactly a year ago.
So keyword research is so critical.
I consider it topic research,
but there are also other ways to do topic research.
I'm a huge vidIQ fan.
And so if I think about I'm gonna go actually back
to like this video, just to use it as a jump-off point.
One tip, always success leaves clues,
and it's been a year since you've made things
related to body type, so it might be good to circle back.
We always like to kind of remake and update our winners.
If we go to keyword inspector here though,
and vidIQ, kind of talk about a couple of things,
I go by search volume, but also some of these things,
these are very vague.
These are a little too short,
how to dress for your body type, so that's medium,
there's some decent search volume, 45 out of 100,
but where it would really get interesting for me
is one of my favorite research to do
is actually on YouTube itself.
So I'm gonna take that keyword that I just learned in vidIQ,
I'm gonna go to how to dress for your body type.
And now I'm gonna kinda look at the top videos
and I'm gonna study their thumbnails, their titles,
the video length, and think about, okay,
how could I jump inside of this conversation?
And then I also oftentimes will just use
the YouTube search bar.
So like women over 40 and the workout
I'll go underscore before let's see,
or I'll go over 40 fashion and then we'll go,
you know, okay, kind of see what that is,
we are gonna underscore plus size fashion,
what to wear fashion over 40 petite women's fashion over 40.
So then, you know, this is sort of you're going through
exact, hey, great job, really great job.
So that's a great example of finding a smart idea,
hitting it very specific.
In fact, what we are taught today, answer specific questions.
It's a very specific, best petite brand.
So I love that, but do you see,
is that helpful at all?
I guess what I'm trying to say is to use the tools,
but also use your intuition
and do more study of YouTube itself
to maybe find video ideas that don't maybe fit nicely
inside of the keyword tools.
And when you are using keyword tools,
don't even put too much stake in the score.
I mean, even this, I just use this as a reference point
that petite women's fashion, let's say,
vidIQ in this case, on the right side,
it's telling me it's a 31 out of 100.
I'm gonna look at that and be like, o
but then I'm gonna look at maybe some of the channelsI could study, I'm gonna scroll down.Definitely, I'm gonna look at the trending videos
in terms of like, okay, black blazer, spring outfit,
maybe I say a little liny thing, women over 40.
I look at the trending videos
because you want your videos
to be suggested alongside these.
And YouTube really works related to trends
and specific niches.
- That's not a search term, but it's doing well.
So then I dig into that video and I think, okay,
what can I learn about this particular video and traffic?
The number one traffic source on YouTube
is recommended videos, not search.
I believe that search is the foundational place to start
and even reach in the recommended videos
So the keyword research matters,
but then see how it took us to this place
of trending videos and then we synthesize that
in terms of what are you inspired by right now?
What do some of these videos inspire you to think about?
And the final thing I'll say is to remember suggested videos
are so powerful on YouTube.
And a lot of people will watch more than one video
on a very specific topic.
In my case, if somebody releases a new video
about the Sony A1 camera,
I'm like I watched three, four videos about it
to get different perspectives,
I wanna watch test photos.
I want to watch the 4K example footage.
Somebody catches me with a headline in suggested videos
about why'd you shouldn't buy the new Sony A1,
I gotta click that too.
So when someone is looking for secrets
to wearing youthful fashion and a video
and maybe a much larger channel is doing well,
when you make related videos,
your chance of showing up in suggested is pretty high.
Maybe someone looks at that individual and says,
I don't really look like them.
And my body type is not the same as theirs,
but they see you in the thumbnail and they go, oh,
she looks nice like maybe let me give her a try,
see how that could work.
Let me give her a try.
They click on that and you're getting a new audience
because your vibe attracts your tribe.
And especially in fashion, different body types,
different styles.
So someone might be super famous,
but there's a trickle from their influence
that could lead to you as you just are bold
with your best features, your uniqueness, right?
They're like, oh, cool.
Like it looks like I can maybe relate.
And you then think about how that's in the title.
And none of that might be keyword-based.
It's more human-based
and it could really lead to your videos.
So was that making some sense?
The keyword research was kind of confusing to me.
I'm not ranking for any words yet.
And I'm so specific.
So I'm just like, it's style, you know, for women over 40.
I'm not the only one in the space, of course,
but I was just perplexed.
Like I don't think I'm showing up in search and suggested,
at least not that I can tell.
- Let me stop you.
I bet you are.
I'm gonna show you how to look.
So what you wanna do is I'm sure you are,
so here's a quick analytics crash course on traffic sources.
So just look at your last month and the last 28 days
and if it says YouTube search, you are showing up in the search.
If it says suggested videos,
you are showing up in suggested videos.
And so I promise you you're showing up in both
because you are getting views.
To be even more specific, this is a huge mistake
people make when it comes to ranking is they think,
let me go to maybe a very search-based video
like YouTube versus Instagram.
See the mistake people make is they'll use vidIQ,
they'll put some tags on a video.
They won't see any blue ranking numbers,
although this one is ranking number one
for Instagram versus YouTube,
so that's kind of the ultimate goal,
but let's say you didn't see that.
The question is though, are you even using the right tags?
Cause if they weren't there,
it actually doesn't mean that the video wouldn't rank.
The way to actually test things
is to go into the reach of the specific video
and come down here to YouTube traffic source, YouTube search
and verifiably it will tell you,
even if it quote unquote doesn't rank right now,
it'll say that people typing YouTube versus Instagram
has gotten this 15 views.
People typing Instagram versus YouTube
has gotten this video nine views.
Some people search think or Sean Cannell.
So that's a little bit different.
And then some people searching for all kinds of other stuff.
This video popped up about how to grow on social media.
This video got a view,
it doesn't rank for how to grow on social media,
but it did at that moment if that makes sense.
So definitely I think you're probably being too hard
on yourself in terms of thinking you're not getting traffic
because I promise you, you are,
you can check out where it's coming from in your analytics.
- Wanna know the exact strategies, Sean Cannell
and the Think Media Team use to consistently get
over 3.5 million views on YouTube every month?