As we all know, the competition on YouTube in pretty much any type of video category (how-to guides, music, documentaries, product ads and others) has exponentially grown during the last few years, making it harder to get viewers to your content.
I believe that we’ve now arrived at a point where creating the actual content is only half the work – so in other words, it is becoming necessary to spend more time promoting your video through various available traffic sources (we’ll list a few in this article) in order for it to become successful.
So, here are my 3 favorite ways of getting more traffic to YouTube videos:
1. The Power of Related Videos
Never underestimate the amount of traffic that “related videos” get. You’ve probably noticed that while watching a random YouTube video, that on the right sidebar (and after the video ends) that YouTube lists other videos that have similar content to the one that you’re already watching.
Part of this algorithm works by comparing the similarity of the video title, description and tags (keywords) with other videos. This means that videos with similar meta information are more likely they are to be placed together.
So, research a few videos that are getting large amounts of traffic, and use a similar (but not copy-pasted) description to theirs.
Once the listings get updated, your traffic will begin to spike.
2. From Readers to Viewers
While or after watching a video, many users like to read the comments below and sometimes reply-back, or if they find a comment amusing/controversial/educational enough, they check out that user’s channel.
So, what I’ve hinted at here is that you should be active in the comments section of videos that have similar content to yours by posting your own genuine comments. These comments should not be generic (i.e. “Wow, nice video!”) so you should try to make them either funny, controversial or educational/insightful.
This is required in order to grab the attention of passive readers, and get them to click over your username so they can check out your channel – and with that – your videos.
3. Google Rankings
Perhaps you’ve noticed this trend, as some time ago, Google started to link to a lot of YouTube videos on its search pages.
The next time you try searching for something on Google, notice how at least on 30-40% of its search pages it’ll place one or two videos (these are either links to YouTube or DailyMotion). Now, Google receives millions of searches per day – and ranking for just a few of these searches can skyrocket the amount of visitors your video has.
The secret to rank like this is in building backlinks to your YouTube videos – so, the more backlinks you have pointing to your content, the higher the chance that it’ll start getting traffic and viewers from the search pages.
There are just two rules to follow in order to get this right:
– Absolutely Crucial: Make sure the title of the video includes the keywords or phase that you would like to rank (ex. “PC Repair Service” + some generic words). Mentioning the phase once in the description helps as well.
– What are backlinks and how to get them: Backlinks are one-way hyperlinks that point to another page (in this case, they link to your video – example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aYFivXy9FE). Once done, you should start placing these links on pages that you have access to, like Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Tumblr, your own blog/website, forum signatures, profiles, posts and other places.
Make sure that you don’t create too many backlinks in a short period of time as that can be considered “spammy”, a label which can have a counterproductive effect on your video rankings.
To conclude, these are just a few of the best ways to becoming proactive in increasing the amount of views and traffic that your videos are going to get.
If done properly, you can be sure that your videos and hard work will finally be rewarded with a large increase in views and traffic – otherwise what’s the point in creating content that no one watches, right?
Ian McFadden is a regular author on the Playinator blog – Playinator is a YouTube views software that can get you thousands of new viewers per month and also increase YouTube video views. Try it out today!
