10 Ways to Get More Views on Every YouTube Video

in this video i'm going to show you how to get more views on every video that you upload to youtube the secret video promotion in fact the promotional strategies that i'm about to share with you have helped my channel grow to 231 000 views per month i'm brian dean the founder of backlinko the place where marketers turn for higher rankings and more traffic and if you want more views and subscribers you'll love the actionable tips in

this video keep watching when i first launched my youtube channel i thought that all you needed to do was publish great videos and the rest would take care of itself hey mom go to youtube i'm about to go viral but i was wrong instead of my videos blowing up and getting thousands or millions of views my channel struggled to get any traction and eventually i realized why i wasn't promoting any of the videos that i published

and as it turns out when it comes to growing your youtube channel video promotion is key that's because according to youtube's own data 500 hours of video content is uploaded to youtube every minute so for your channel to stand out you can't just upload a bunch of videos and hope for the best instead you want to strategically promote every single video in fact promoting videos is one of the main reasons that my channel went from struggling

to rapid growth so without further ado let's kick things off with strategy number one share your videos on reddit forums and q a sites why does this work well if you think about it people visit online communities and forums for two main reasons to find new content and to get their questions answered and your videos can help with both of those things for example let's say you just published a video about the keto diet your first

step is to head over to quora and look for questions that people are asking about the diet then use your video as a way to help people answer those questions now obviously you don't want to start spamming quora and reddit with a link to your video that's gonna do more harm than good instead add some original content to the discussion and then feature your video as a way that people can learn more for example a while

back i wanted to promote this video from my channel so i searched for quora for discussions about my videos topic which was link building and then i added a full answer that could stand on its own plus a link to my video for people that wanted to dive a little bit deeper which helped my new video get some key early views which leads us to our second strategy optimize around trending topics you probably already know that

seo is huge for getting more views on your videos the question is what keywords should you optimize your video around well it's no secret that most keywords on youtube are super competitive and if you have a small channel it's going to be hard to rank above the big guys fortunately there's a simple way to get around this issue which is to optimize around new trending keywords here's how first type a topic idea into youtube search then

take a look at the words and phrases that youtube suggests these are all keywords that people are searching for right now on youtube which means they might not be super competitive yet you can also use a free tool called explodingtopics.com this tool curates hundreds of new trending topics across dozens of different industries pretty cool with that it's time for our third strategy boost your video ctr your video ctr or click-through rate is important for two main

reasons first a higher ctr means more views for example let's say you have a video that ranks in the number four spot for your target keyword and that video has a click-through rate of 5 well if you can improve that click-through rate to 12 you'll get 2.4 times more views without needing to rank any higher or do anything else to promote your video second ctr is an important youtube algorithm ranking signal in general the youtube algorithm

wants to promote videos that get lots of clicks in fact the youtube creator studio states that youtube recommends videos that people show interest in now to be clear i'm not recommending clickbait that's because if lots of people click on your video and then realize it's clickbait and stop watching it youtube's gonna bury that video i mean youtube even states that quote this sort of stuff can hurt your chances of being recommended to new viewers so it's

important that you back up your title and thumbnail with a legit high quality video now in my experience one of the best ways to boost click-through rate is to create super colorful thumbnails in my personal opinion most thumbnails on youtube are way too dark or they only use two or three main colors which makes them blend in instead you want to use thumbnails with lots of contrasting colors for example you can see that this thumbnail from

one of my videos uses five different contrasting colors which helps it stand out now let's check out strategy number four collaborate with other channels or as the kids say collab now this is kind of like guest posting but instead of guest posting on another blog you guest post on another channel and this simple approach can get you in front of thousands of new people and because publishing a video on another channel is kind of like an

endorsement from that channel people that see your guest video are super likely to subscribe to your channel for example a while back i did a collaboration with noah kagan's channel and because noah has a slightly different audience than i do this video got me in front of a ton of new people and led to lots of new subscribers now the key to a successful collab is to send someone a highly targeted specific pitch right off the

bat in other words don't say something generic like hey i'd like to collab i think it would help my channel what do you think channels that don't even have a lot of subscribers are gonna ignore lame pitches like this but when you send a pitch that emphasizes what they get out of the collaboration they're super likely to say yes here's an example of a good collab pitch let's move right along to strategy number five the sequel

technique now i've talked about the sequel technique on my channel before but i had to mention it here because it's killing it for me right now specifically it's helping me get tons of views from the suggested video section on youtube here's how this technique works first find a video in your niche that's already super popular you can easily find these by heading over to a channel page and then hitting most popular on the drop down menu

for example if you're looking at my channel you might want to use this video for the first step next take what's already great about that video and improve it here are some ways that you can make your video better than any other video out there on that topic now the idea here isn't just to rip off the original video instead you want to build on a proven approach and then push out a video that's 10 times

better and once your new video is ready to go it's time to optimize it for seo specifically you want to add the same keywords that the popular video uses in your video's title in the description and as some of your tags and if you do this right your video will start to show up next to the popular video and a certain percentage of people will click over to watch your video nice now it's time for strategy

number six go back and re-optimize your older videos back in the day i'd upload a video reply to a few comments and never look at that video again well i recently started to experiment with going back and re-optimizing old videos and it seems to be helping a little bit so as you already know there's not much you can do to edit or change an existing youtube video but you can always go back and change a video's

title description tags cards end screen and thumbnail to be clear this isn't some sort of magic bullet that's going to make an old video go viral but it can help some of your older videos get a few extra views every month moving right along to strategy number seven ask your viewers to subscribe with a call to action in my experience this is a super effective way to turn more viewers into subscribers in fact youtube themselves recommend

this exact approach all you need to do here is at the end of your video directly ask people to subscribe to your channel in other words you don't want to casually say like comment and subscribe comments are nice likes are okay but subscribers are the lifeblood of your channel which is why it's worthwhile to specifically ask people to subscribe for example i always ask people to subscribe at the end of every video that i upload to

youtube as you can see it's not a throwaway line that's easy for people to ignore i literally stopped the entire video to ask people to hit the subscribe button this strong and clear call to action is one of the main reasons that my channel brings in around 7 000 subscribers every month and let's dive right into strategy number eight use consistent channel branding when it comes to growing your youtube channel your brand's look and feel is

huge and if someone lands on your channel page and it just looks ugly and unprofessional they're probably not going to subscribe but if they see a channel that has a strong brand they're much more likely to hit that subscribe button for example i recently helped out my friend heidi zachariasan the founder of the vavino app with his channel at the time his channel was struggling to get views and a big reason for that was his thumbnails

colors and branding was all over the place so one of the first things i did was get his thumbnails video intros trailer and channel art all to match up which helps his channel have a strong and consistent brand my channel is the same way everything from my channel art to my thumbnails to the animations and graphics in my videos have the same look and feel and now it's time for one of my favorite techniques strategy number

nine uncover untapped keywords in the youtube studio all you need to do here is head over to the traffic source youtube search section of your youtube analytics and you'll get a list of all the keywords that you currently rank for in youtube search now if you're already using video seo to promote your videos a lot of the terms here aren't going to surprise you but if you dig deep enough you'll usually find at least a few

surprising keywords that you're not even trying to rank for so when you find a new keyword here what's next well you can create an entirely new video around that keyword or you can add that keyword to some of your older videos either way works which leads us to strategy number 10 preview new videos in a community post this strategy is super simple whenever you're about to publish a new video that's awesome make sure to let your

subscribers know a day or two before in a community post this builds up anticipation for your upcoming video which can lead to more views all you need to do in your post is outline why your video is worth keeping an eye out for for example i posted this video preview a while back nothing fancy here just a post that gave existing subscribers a reason to look forward to my video and as you can see people were

pumped about the new video that community post preview the day before plus a bunch of other stuff helped that video rack up 24 000 views in its first 11 days now before we close out this video i have a quick bonus tip for you which is to promote new videos as a channel trailer you probably already know that a high quality channel trailer can help you get more subscribers that said your trailer takes up prime real

estate on your channel page real estate that can sometimes be better used to promote your latest video so if you have a new video that you really want to promote consider making that video your channel trailer in fact that's exactly what dude perfect does they don't have a traditional channel trailer instead they use the trailer section to feature their latest stuff there you have it 10 ways to promote your youtube videos for more reviews if you

like this video 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 techniques that i only share with subscribers head over to backlinko.com and hop on the newsletter it's free now i want to turn it over to you what tip or strategy from today's video are you going to use first are you going to replace your trailer with a new video or

maybe you want to go back and re-optimize your old videos either way let me know by leaving a comment below right now okay so we're recording okay okay likes are okay but let's try like this you hear that right yeah okay okay those are good