YouTube SEO: How to rank your videos on YouTube w. Nate Woodbury

[00:00:00] Monique Idemudia: Hi, welcome everybody to a new episode of the dragon digital marketing podcast. I'm your host Monique and you're listening to episode number 37. And this episode is going to be all about YouTube SEO.

[00:00:15] YouTube is not only a super important social media platform. It is also the second largest search engine in the world. And it's super important to be on there as a small business nowadays and create video content and connect with your audience through video. Use it as a traffic source to generate high quality. Qualified traffic to your website and thus generate leads and sales from YouTube as well. There's a lot of potential in YouTube as a platform. And it's such a powerful tool. If you know how to leverage it the right way and get the most out of YouTube for your small business. That's why I'm so excited to talk.

[00:00:58] What YouTube SEO expert, Nate Woodbury today, who's joining me as well. Special guests in this episode, you're going to get a lot of value from it. So without any further ado, let's get started with the show.

[00:01:12] Hey Nate, how are you doing today?

[00:01:15] Nate Woodbury: I'm doing very well. Glad to be

[00:01:16] Monique Idemudia: here. I'm happy to have you. And I'm so excited to talk about YouTube SEO today with you, but first of all, what you like to introduce yourself a little bit for the audience?

[00:01:28] Nate Woodbury: Well, sir. Yeah, Nate Woodbury. I live in Utah, look to mountain bike and I've got a wonderful family and I've got a very successful company. We produce about 20 different YouTube channels. and many of them have, have become quite huge. A few of them are generating seven figures, monthly and the type of channels that I produce are not for entertainment.

[00:01:48] They're more for education. Like how to videos. And the reason they generate so much revenue is they're backed by businesses. So we use our YouTube channels to educate, and then when people want to know more, they go to the website of the, of the person and become a lead in their, in their business. So, yeah, it works really well.

[00:02:06] And I've got a great track record of success and excited to, to answer any questions or share any secrets with you about my strategy.

[00:02:14] Monique Idemudia: That's amazing. I can already see all of the YouTube awards that you have in your background. And YouTube is great for lead generation and video. It's just a great content format overall.

[00:02:25] And I think that educational videos and how to videos specifically are great especially for small business owners who want to start their own YouTube channel for their business and use it as a lead generator. For sure.

[00:02:40] Nate Woodbury: Yeah. I mean when, when you have expertise, people all around the world are searching for your expertise.

[00:02:47] They're going to Google and YouTube and they're asking questions. And what YouTube does is it, it helps those people find you. So as long as you make videos, that answer the right questions, then these people find you and they see you as their hero. And they trust you. They like you, they admire you.

[00:03:05] And when, when the timing is right, they'll buy from you.

[00:03:08] Monique Idemudia: Yeah. That's so right. Especially because you've already proven yourself as an expert through the video content that you produce and they've watched it that's for sure. So let's start with the basics for the people who don't know what SEO is, what YouTube SEO is.

[00:03:26] Can you give us like a little explanation about what YouTube SEO actually is?

[00:03:31] Nate Woodbury: Yeah, well, SEO itself has been around for, you know, in my world. It's been around for a decade. I know it's probably been two decades. Okay. So in the past it used to be. You would try and get your website to rank on the top of Google.

[00:03:47] And so you would do things like link building or article Marketing that would all link back to your website to prove to Google that your website was worthy of ranking number one for your topic or your, your industry. And it's been very, very competitive. And as soon as you ranked number one, you know that number two and number three, they are working really hard to pass you up and get back to their number one spot that they had before.

[00:04:13] Well, the world of SEO has changed all the, all the web design and SEO companies out there. They're still doing the same thing. So they don't realize it's changed. but I noticed about eight years ago, something amazing happened. One of the ingredients that I would put on one of these website, SEO pages was a how to video.

[00:04:33] And then I was looking at the stats and I noticed, well, this how to video over on YouTube is getting 50 times more views. Yeah. Then this whole page, we have ranking number one on Google. And a light just turned on in my mind and I realized, wow, this is a good opportunity because that one piece was, was really simple.

[00:04:55] Whereas the whole SEO page was a lot of work and I thought well you fast forward to today. I still I've enhanced and I've refined that strategy, but essentially I don't worry about getting my website ranked anymore. It's not, my website is no longer a place where I want traffic today. My website is where.

[00:05:14] Conversions happen where sales are made. Traffic now happens on content itself. So I can create a, how to video and I get daily traffic to it. I mean, right now my, my YouTube channel is averaging 7,000 views every single day. So I'm getting traffic to my channel. And then when people want to take action, right.

[00:05:35] They go to the website or they go to a landing page, you know, and it starts out with a free gift. It's like, Hey, if you found value in this video, go ahead and, and, and get my free gift by clicking the link below. And so that's when they go to my landing page and and it really, really works. So that's, that's the modern form of SEO.

[00:05:51] And you don't have to worry about the, the keyword tags. I mean, if you'd like me to, I can go into more detail about how you actually get a video ranking on day one on YouTube. Would you like me to go into that? Oh

[00:06:04] Monique Idemudia: yeah, for sure.

[00:06:06] Nate Woodbury: Okay, well, so again, contrasting it to the former SEO strategy where you'd go after a phrase that, that had lots of search volume and lots of competition.

[00:06:19] What I do now is I go after really long phrases that have virtually no competition. So a, a phrase and I'll, and I'll give you examples. These phrases have like eight, nine or 10 words in them. So how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics, or how to invest in real estate with no money. Or how to get your kids to listen without yelling.

[00:06:43] Okay. So if you do the keyword research, right, you'll find long phrases like that, that still have a trickle of consistent search. Fine. Even if it's just 10 searches per month, those are golden phrases. Because here's the scenario. Somebody goes to Google or YouTube and they type in that really long question, your video pops up and they think, Oh, that's exactly what I was searching for.

[00:07:07] So of course they click on it. They watched the whole thing. Well, the YouTube algorithm watches this interaction and says, okay, that just happened. This video is valuable. Let's find more people like this that we can suggest this video to. So all you need is a little trickle of traffic. And by the way, this is your target audience.

[00:07:26] These are the people that you want to find your video, right? So they're your ideal customers, but then YouTube starts doing work for you to, to find more and more people. And so for years, and years and years, this continues to work. You get found for that search. See no one else out there is going after these low volume, but high value phrases.

[00:07:47] And so typically. You do, if you do the keyword research, you find this really long specific question. You film a video afterwards, now that you know what the title is, you film your video, you put it on YouTube and you start getting that instant trickle of traffic. That's

[00:08:03] Monique Idemudia: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that tip.

[00:08:05] I mean, YouTube after all is the second largest search engine in the world. Well, after Google, a lot of people don't really realize that it's a search engine and they get a lot of traffic and it's definitely a great lead generator as well. So the magic is in the long tail keywords, as you said, and you want to try to aim for evergreen keywords that don't got a lot of searches every month.

[00:08:30] But they get those searches consistently and it's better to consistently having like little traffic to that video and then over to your website than like a keyword that's just, you know, trending, you maybe get a lot of traffic in the beginning and then it's just like debt and it doesn't get any clicks anymore.

[00:08:48] Because those consistent signals, even if it's not a lot of traffic, make the YouTube algorithm, pushed the video more and show it to more people like that and help you out. What you're Marketing by doing that. So it's like a win-win right.

[00:09:02] Nate Woodbury: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll share with you an example. So there's a woman named Noelle Randall she's in Orlando and she teaches people how to invest in real estate, specifically Airbnb.

[00:09:16] So big cation rentals and things like that. That. And she worked on her channel for a couple of years and she grew her channel, her YouTube channel to 6,500 subscribers. It did not generate leads for her business though. And there was no ad revenue. but she did have really good content on there. Well, she learned about my strategy of doing keyword research.

[00:09:36] you know, I teach a five ingredient formula and she learned about that. and this was, she learned about it right at the tail end of 2019. And so she hired me to produce her channel. We began, you know, very aggressive campaign. I call it aggressive because we filmed 260 episodes per year. That's launching five episodes a week.

[00:09:56] Nate Woodbury: So we launched with five episodes a week starting January 21st, just a year ago. And From there till today, she's almost at 220,000 subscribers. Her ad revenue is through the roof. Ad revenue has never been our focus, but she's, she's making multiple five figures monthly just from ad revenue. And what's even more.

[00:10:20] important is her channel is generating between four and 5,000 leads per month for her, for her business. And a few months ago, when I was talking to her about it, she said that she had a four month waiting list. I don't know where it's at right now because she's been. Really hiring to scale things up.

[00:10:37] Nate Woodbury: But yeah, a lot of, a lot of growth, a lot of profit and success. And you know, she, she's got, you know, 220,000 people that just love her channel. You can see. So in the, in the comments, so. Yeah, it really works. Yeah.

[00:10:52] Monique Idemudia: That's so amazing. You know, video, you feel like you really know the person by watching them, interact and speak and move their, mimics their gestures.

[00:11:01] And you really built this relationship with your audiences. And what's also so powerful. You've mentioned that you've created a Mindshare content for YouTube. the old videos, all of the content that you create still continues to generate leads. For you and you add to it and add to it, and it becomes this snowball effect and becomes more and more powerful over time.

[00:11:22] Now you've also touched up on keyword research. That's my next question that I wanted to ask you. How do you do keyword research for YouTube?

[00:11:32] Nate Woodbury: Well, yeah, great question. My favorite way is there's a tool that I used that makes it simple. It used to be really hard. I used to use a whole variety of tools, I think back from one to the other, cause I needed to find some ideas and then I would check to see if those ideas had searched for them.

[00:11:49] And I found, Oh, most of them don't so I need more ideas. Let's try another tool. there's a website called SEM Rush, semrush.com. I used that tool many years ago or their website many years ago with my website SEO company. Well, two years ago, they came out with a tool called the keyword magic tool.

[00:12:09] And what you do is you can put in a, just a broad topic, you can put in something like real estate or. You know, mountain biking or anything like that. And then you hit the questions button. And then I also like to turn on a word count filter. So it'll, it'll filter out anything that's less than eight words.

[00:12:26] You can set whatever number you want. So typically I'll put in the phrase, let's say it's real estate and then, or real estate investing. Right. And then I'll, I'll hit questions. Word count minimum of eight, and then I'll just comb through all the results that are there. And, and that's where I find the topics that tells you the search volume or not.

[00:12:45] So, you know, if it's at least 10 searches a month, that's usually the minimum that I go to. and it's, it's, it's kinda, it's so simple to do that search yet. Admittedly, it's, it's boring. You know, it's boring to take that step because when we have an idea for a video, we want to just turn on the camera. We want to share that idea, share that concept.

[00:13:02] but it is so worth it to do this boring step first, because otherwise, even if you had Steven Spielberg producing your video, you put that video on YouTube and it doesn't have a marketing strategy. No, one's gonna see it. Right. And in Hollywood they have a huge campaign. You know, they go on late night shows, they do ads and they have a big buildup to the launch of their, of their movie.

[00:13:25] Nate Woodbury: Well, for us, You know, we don't have advertising budgets like that to put out every episode. But if we do the keyword research first, we automatically have a built-in audience. We put that video on YouTube and now the YouTube search engine will bring people to it. Google sends people to YouTube videos.

[00:13:42] And so we have that built-in marketing strategy right off the bat.

[00:13:46] Monique Idemudia: Absolutely. Especially for the title you want to use your keyword in the title of this, the most important thing. you know, as everybody knows the saying 70% of people, they're going to read your title or your headline. but not going to click through so.

[00:13:59] You want to really nail that title and use a keyword in there so you can make it rank. And you just entice more people to click it and to view your video because you can produce the most beautiful video it's worth nothing. If nobody's gonna see it and SCM rush keyword magic tool is your go-to YouTube SEO tool.

[00:14:18] What other YouTube SEO tools can you recommend for YouTube SEO?

[00:14:22] Nate Woodbury: No, that's really the only one that you need. The problem is for some people, a hundred bucks a month is, is not very nice. I do recommend that you pay a hundred bucks one time, so you sign up for it. You use that tool and within a few days, I mean, you'll have.

[00:14:39] But definitely a year or more worth of keyword phrases that you'll use for your, even if you're as aggressive as me launching five episodes a week, and then you could just cancel it. I, I use tube buddy, tube buddy is a great tool, but I don't really use their keyword tools. They're they're getting close, but they just, they don't have the search volume.

[00:14:58] You can't filter them as easily. And so it just takes me longer. and I, and I still need to take them over to another tool to check the search volume anyway. too, buddy, what I really use it for is for split testing thumbnails. I mean, thumbnails have been important my whole time being on YouTube, but they've, they seem to be getting more and more important.

[00:15:15] If you put a video out there and you just let YouTube choose a random screenshot of your video to show is the, the banner for this video, you know, that doesn't work so well because everyone is designing custom thumbnails that are bright, that are exciting, that create curiosity and what to buddy allows you to do.

[00:15:34] And, you know, once your video is launched and it's kinda got over that initial excitement with your subscriber base, then you can, you can turn on a feature that will test two different thumbnails. And so half the audience will see one half the audience will see the other and you'll be able to test and see which one gets clicked on more.

[00:15:51] So that's, that's another tool that I use, but I don't really use it for the keyword research side.

[00:15:56] Monique Idemudia: That's amazing. So you really only knew one tool for the keyword research and that's SCM rush and two buddies optional. If you want to split test your thumbnails, which I highly recommend split testing, right.

[00:16:06] Is so important for, you know, any digital marketing tactic, whether it's YouTube, whether you see your email marketing, you always want to optimize and see what your audience likes better. And sometimes you're going to see like a huge deviation in the Lake one, way better than the other. Then obviously you want to go with that, then don't leave all of that potential on the table as to share.

[00:16:27] Nate Woodbury: In the beginning. don't worry about to buddy either because you might not have enough views on your video to really get statistical significance. Right. But to test both of them. So for beginners, you don't have to worry about a whole bunch of tools you know, start filming using your phone your camera, the camera on your phone that you've got on your purse or your wallet or your, your desk or your handbag.

[00:16:49] That's an amazing camera. And if you're facing a window, then you'll have really good light on you. And if you're close enough to your phone, you don't need an external mic. Just answer, answer these questions after doing keyword research. So to start, you don't need to invest in any other gear. And if you're an iPhone user, just use I movie on your phone, it's free.

[00:17:08] You're finding an equivalent if you're, you know, an Android user, but You know, do the keyword research. I do recommend investing that a hundred bucks, finding these really long, specific questions that you can answer, and then just film them on your phone and use I movie to do simple edits. You don't want to add any of the, the flashy stuff because it'll make you look like an amateur and we are an amateur, but it's really.

[00:17:32] Simple to just Polish it up and actually make, make things look pretty clean. And, and if you're talking about what, you know, what you're good at, what your expertise is or what you have experienced in that's what people want to see. They just want to see the authentic you and get your advice. And it'll really work.

[00:17:49] Monique Idemudia: Absolutely. So what video tips do you have for beginners? They don't have a lot of subscribers yet. They don't have a lot of views yet. How can you approach that to get going and to gain some traction in the first place. So it's worth it to test and optimize, and you have some numbers that you can actually work with and, become more significant on YouTube.

[00:18:12] Nate Woodbury: Yeah. So two, two pieces of advice. The first one I, I got the phrase start ugly from a friend of mine, Chris . He wrote a book with that title start ugly and, and, you know, when we first begin. We just, we just need to start. We just need to get going and put content out there. If we wait for perfection or wait for it to be polished and beautiful or refined or wait for ourselves to sound better, we're gonna, we're gonna miss out.

[00:18:42] And you know, every, every successful YouTube. even the one that I was telling you about Noel Randall, she, she looks back and she was awesome. You know, she was awesome. But when you compare what our videos are like now, compared to what they were just a year ago, there's a big difference. She's made a lot of improvement and everyone does that.

[00:18:58] one of the biggest YouTube channels that I follow Mr. Beast, Yeah. Hit the fifth over 50 million subscribers. Yeah. Go back and look at his early content. He's he's quite funny. Quite hilarious. Like how anyway. Everyone's like that. So you've got to start there too. You've got to start there too. And then the other point is there are, there are, so there is so much content being uploaded to YouTube every single minute.

[00:19:25] Nate Woodbury: Right. Just understand that it's going to take time. It takes time, but if you have a strategy, like, like I've shared in this episode, just starting with that keyword research first, know that over time you will build momentum. And so stick with it. Here's the crazy thing. When, when I produce a channel for a client we're launching five episodes a week, it takes four months before things really happened significantly.

[00:19:52] Like it looks flat. I mean, we, we look at it's like bam. And so I prepare all of my clients, like, look these first four months. Don't expect anything exciting. Don't expect to be impressed. Wait till the four month Mark until we start to see some suggested traffic from, from YouTube. And so that's the same advice I give to you is just to be patient with it.

[00:20:15] if you're going to blonch, you know, at least start with one episode per week, I know that it'll even be more gradual for you. so just stick with it. Long-term and you'll start to see the gradual results over

[00:20:26] Monique Idemudia: time. Yes, that's right. I'm so glad that you've mentioned it. SEO in general definitely is a long-term digital marketing strategy and expect to see results overnight.

[00:20:36] So if you publish five episodes a week, it already takes four months. So if you do less than that, like maybe just one a week, it's going to take you even longer, but it's going to be so worth it. If you stay consistent with it. Now, what about the YouTube SEO optimization, the tags and the timestamps and all of the things that you can do with that video?

[00:20:58] what is the best way to optimize your YouTube videos?

[00:21:03] Nate Woodbury: Yeah. So it's a great question. And when you mentioned timestamps, I'm like, Ooh, you're kind of in the know with the, with, with current, because. If you do the keyword research first, then you have the title and that that's the first step and that'll get your video.

[00:21:19] Well, part of the reason why it gets your video ranked right off the bat is when you then film that video, you're naturally going to say all the right things to get that video ranked and, and YouTube transcribes your video automatically. So you could, you could leave the keyword field blank. And YouTube will transcribe your video and know what all the right keywords are.

[00:21:40] Right? So your video will automatically get ranked now in the last year or so. YouTube has added a new feature called chapters, two YouTube videos. And what you can do with that is in your description. As long as you start out with zero zero, colon zero, zero. Space. And then you can even just put intro or whatever you put to like, as the beginning of your video, then you can put timestamps of different moments throughout your video and, and kind of choose.

[00:22:08] Okay. Well, at one minute and 12 seconds, I talk about this principle. So just name it. Well, here's the cool thing just in the last few months it's it's been noticed that Google is starting to index chapters of YouTube videos. So you can actually do keyword research, like I've said for the title of your video.

[00:22:29] And now you can do keyword research and find, you know, other, other phrases or questions that you can use as chapters within your video. And that the goal with that is to get Google, to index your video. And so instead of linking to your whole video, it'll just skip to that moment of your video and say, Hey, watch the segment because that's going to answer your question or that's what you're, that's what you're searching for.

[00:22:51] So the, the simple answer to your question is if you do the keyword research first. And you use that as your title, that that will take care of the work for you. We do go in and Polish the transcriptions. So YouTube transcribes that automatically, but we'll add capitalization. We'll add punctuation. We'll see if there's any spelling errors.

[00:23:11] but that's, that's it. And now if you want to, to add a little bit more complexity to it we're doing keyword research for some of the chapters within the videos and just putting those in the description.

[00:23:22] Monique Idemudia: Right. So the timestamps or the chapters feature is really like passage indexing for regular SEO texts, content with black articles now also for videos and it's super handy.

[00:23:35] It's happened to me a couple of times that have Google something and click on a video search result. And the video starts right in the middle of the video exactly where the content creator answers, the question that I've had. And it's so useful. Well, it's the best user experience. And it also pushes content creators to create more quality content and not go for quantity and Lake split it up into,too many two short videos that are maybe out of context, not as good to follow.

[00:24:02] So you can really make more comprehensive content cover multiple topics that are related. Of course. Yeah. in your video and then add the chapters and it's not going to hurt you. the opposite actually, it's going to help you right. And you can get your chapters indexed and even more traffic from that as well.

[00:24:21] and you said that you see a difference when you refine the automatic transcript, that YouTube gives you and you add your own subtitles with the right punctuation and you fix the spelling errors and so on and so forth is. That's something that you recommend and that you say it's definitely worth doing that extra step?

[00:24:41] Nate Woodbury: Well, I feel so. I don't know how to, to really track or quantify that, but you can see it in the, you know, the closed captions or the actual subtitles, because they're more, they're more reader friendly. and, and just the fact that. You know, YouTube uses the transcription for SEO or for the keywords of more than the keyword field.

[00:25:01] it just makes the most sense. And if there's, if there's phrases that are really important, you know, that might be jargon, you know, industry jargon or whatnot. You want to make sure that those are spelled correctly so that you can show up and be ranked for those phrases.

[00:25:15] Monique Idemudia: Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess it depends if you use a lot of jargons or every variation words that sound similar to other words, and you definitely need them to be spelled correctly to rank, or you don't.

[00:25:28] there are some other best practices for YouTube SEO. And how about the description? What you recommend people going to the maximum amount of characters that you can use in the description, or like keep it short and simple. there is a lot of controversies using hashtags versus not using hashtags putting the video link of the same video, basically in the description again things like that linking to other videos or in general, putting a lot of links, all of your social handles all of your, whatever and the description. What are the best practices and what have you seen the best results with?

[00:26:02] Nate Woodbury: Yeah. Well, one thing that also right off the bat is once you launch a video, you never want to change the title or the description, unless the video is just. Non-performing right. It just tanked because what happens is it will reset the video. It'll reset it for the algorithm. So if it's getting any views, if it's got any traction or momentum, it will stop.

[00:26:26] Even if you just change one letter. And I know the one letter thing, because I've experimented with that. And I killed the video for about five hours and then I went and changed the misspelling back and it went back. But So you can change the thumbnail. You can change the cards or end screen elements.

[00:26:42] but the, the description is one of those, one of the two things, the title and the description that you do not want to change. So it's like, okay, we've got to get the description ready before we send it live to the public. You know, we want to make any tweaks or enhancements to it that we want. If people are going to go to the effort of looking at your description, you definitely want to have a variety of links there, depending on what they're searching for.

[00:27:06] Nate Woodbury: Obviously in my recommendation, every one of those links goes to your website. You know, maybe one is to your book. Another one is. To, you know, a program that you offer and, and kind of, you know, put a, put a little description of what they're going to click on. You'll often reference it in the video. Hey, if you want my book, you'll find it in the description below, but things like social media links.

[00:27:27] I would say never, never, never put those in your description. let's just take Facebook. For example, Facebook and YouTube are arch enemies and any, any link, any link that people click on that takes them away from YouTube to go to another place. YouTube will penalize you. You know, the penalty for Facebook has gotta be pretty big your own website.

[00:27:50] You can get your own website approved and approved mean to the point where you can have a link within the video and on a card. You know, one of those clickable elements, you can get your own website approved. That's what's you're in the partner programs, you've got at least a thousand subscribers, but YouTube has said that if you get your own website approved, Then that penalty for taking people away from YouTube is reduced.

[00:28:13] And so it's a much smaller penalty and it's worth it. Obviously, if they're going to your website if you're using it to promote your Facebook, your Instagram or LinkedIn, or tick-tock anything else? I would say it's not worth the penalty because. You're sending them. People are ready to have a YouTube experience they're on YouTube.

[00:28:32] And if they're looking for something, definitely take them to your own website. Why would you want to send them away to get lost on another social platform? So that's my personal preference. I guess another best practice for descriptions is, you know, have a, have a clear few sentences at the top, at least that describe the video.

[00:28:49] and you can, you can put some, some keywords in there. I've seen people succeed without a description at all. I think that's a mistake, but it, it goes to show that it's not required for your video to succeed, but if people are going to click on it you know, the first couple sentences. Depending on how people are searching or finding your video, they might see that and it might encourage them or discourage them from clicking on your video.

[00:29:14] Nate Woodbury: And then, you know, definitely have some well-organized information in there for them to take the next step with it. Yes.

[00:29:20] Monique Idemudia: That makes total sense. I mean, all of their social platforms. They're competitors at the end of the day. And they don't like you driving your traffic over to them. They want the traffic to stay on YouTube.

[00:29:32] So it's perfectly fine to link to other videos and even your own website, if you're approved or if you're not approved, but if you're approved, it's less of a penalty. So what you recommend for everybody to get their channel to a thousand subscribers as fast as possible.

[00:29:49] Nate Woodbury: Well, you know, I haven't the video that I put out called how to get a thousand subscribers in a day, but I didn't do it the first day or my first month.

[00:30:01] it just takes time to build momentum. So really it's, it's that consistency. You know, if you, if you make a video with a title that gets searched 10 times per month, well, you know, you're going to be bringing in, you know, a few subscribers every month just from that. And you put out another video and another video you know, just, just be patient with it.

[00:30:19] Nate Woodbury: I don't have any shortcuts. but if you're as aggressive as I am, you know, plan on getting to that thousand subscriber Mark within, you know, three to six months and you know, that four to six month Mark is where the exponential growth can start to happen. So, I mean, just to, just to put things in perspective with Noel who went from 6,000 to a hundred or 220,000 in just a year it was, it was.

[00:30:46] Seven months of going from 6,000 up to 16,000. So, I mean that that's nice. That's, that's a good amount of growth, but compared to the growth that happened after that, you know, the first, the first many months are the gradual momentum builders.

[00:31:05] how about YouTube? Analytics, what recommendations do you have for people when they analyze their video performance?

[00:31:12] Monique Idemudia: And what's the best way to use those analytics? Is there any external tools that you recommend for that and how do you go about it to, you know, also use those insights to always become better and better and optimize.

[00:31:26] Nate Woodbury: Yeah, so you can easily spend hours and hours in analytics of each video or for your channel because YouTube provides you everything like you can know how to the very second where people drop off on your video, where they lose interest, you can compare one video to the other and see, okay, this one has a 3% click through rate.

[00:31:45] This one has six. And, and you have enough data that you could probably figure out why that is or why it has a higher watch time. So when you first sign into the analytics, the dashboard shows you a few pieces of data. Whatever YouTube shows you first. That's a good indicator. That that's important. Okay.

[00:32:03] That that's important out of that you should pay attention to. So for example, one thing is it shows you, okay, here's your most recent video and how it ranks in comparison to your previous nine videos. So those 10 videos together is always a rolling 10 year, 10, most recent. And it's important when you launch a video, if it out out performance.

[00:32:25] The previous nine that video's probably going to be suggested a lot more after that. And so there's a lot of data that you can, you can take and just the, the, the advice would be don't go in there and think you need to understand everything and, and know how it's gonna transform your channel, but just go in there regularly and just start to familiar, familiarize yourself with what's there.

[00:32:49] When I start producing a new channel with a client. We, we go in periodically during the first four months and, and get familiar so that we kind of know what, what the norm is and what averages are. And then when we get past that four month Mark, we'll start to look for things that stand out like, Ooh, that's the first time that that's happened.

[00:33:07] And so then, then we'll know where to direct our attention. So hopefully that's helpful.

[00:33:12] Monique Idemudia: Yes. That's definitely helpful. And also love the tip that whatever YouTube shows you first, it's, what's most important because they regard it as most important. And I also didn't know that before. So thanks for that tip.

[00:33:23] is there any case or any event where you want to intentionally reset your videos by changing the description and changing the title?

[00:33:35] Nate Woodbury: You know, I've, I've never had too much success with that, where you take a video, that's a poor performer and try and reset it. You know, if I thought hard enough, I could probably come up with an example just by changing the thumbnail and changing the title. But where I found better success is just doing a reshoot of the video.

[00:33:52] It's like, okay, that one performed. How can I, how can I, you know, from what I've learned since, what could I do to, to make that, that video better? The reality is YouTube will basically tell you, okay, these videos are poor performers. These ones are high performers. And so if you keep going back to the poor performance, trying to make them successful, even redoing them, it's a hard task.

[00:34:14] But if you find some that are great and you just make a new video in that same category or topic. That's generally going to succeed, YouTube kind of giving you hints. You should make more of these videos. So that's more of what I learned from the analytics is just finding out which ones perform better and just make more of those.

[00:34:34] Monique Idemudia: Right. That's what I thought you always want to, you know focus on what's performing best and do more of that. Yeah. And don't be discouraged if you, you know, invested so much time and effort into creating a video and, and it's a poor performer, take it as an opportunity to learn. it's a free insight.

[00:34:51] It's some feedback, and that's just how it goes with everything in life as well. So that's just how it is. So it's really better to make a new video that performs better. And then, you know, YouTube is not your enemy. They're trying to delight their users and show them great content. So if you produce great content and that's actually great for the users, YouTube is going to reward you for that.

[00:35:12] So they don't want to punish you or anything. It's just a competitive platform because they have a lot of creators. They have a lot of content that's uploaded there every minute, like you said, so that's what you want to focus on. So for the WordPress users out there, do you have any YouTube SEO, WordPress plugins that you recommend?

[00:35:33] Nate Woodbury: You know, I don't just by, just by using the embed code is simple enough. I used to, when I, when I had my web design company, I would use WordPress. so I apologize. I don't have any good advice for you there.

[00:35:46] Monique Idemudia: That's good though. That's good news. So you don't need a lot of, you know, super fancy research tools and keyword tools and WordPress plugins.

[00:35:54] You can literally get started with simple means. it's not complicated. You don't have to spend any money. That's good news. Right. Are there any other YouTube SEO tips that you want to share? Something that you haven't mentioned yet that you definitely still want to share on the show?

[00:36:14] Nate Woodbury: Hmm, good question.

[00:36:17] I guess I'll I'll share one other, one other tip and that's. Find an example of success of somebody that's doing what you want to do that succeeding with it and just, and just be coachable, be teachable. no, well that I've mentioned a few times. She, she is really successful and, and she attributes it.

[00:36:39] Nate Woodbury: And of course I do, I'm biased, but she attributes it that she's been really coachable to me. one thing that I, that I coached her on right in the beginning was to set content hooks. And that's that just giving little hints at the beginning of your video of what's coming throughout the video. typically we'll film 10 minute episodes.

[00:36:57] And if people feel like at the beginning, Oh, well, I already got the answer. I know what she's going to say. Then they just leave. Right. But if you give content hooks, okay. First I'm going to share with you this tip, then I'm going to talk to you about why it's important. Then I'm going to show you how this really works in real practice.

[00:37:12] Then I'm going to share one other piece of advice that you're going to need as well. Let's dive right in. Right. So they're kind of like, all right. Yeah. This is going to be a worthwhile 10 minutes of my time. so anyway, that that's a good strategy. And in the beginning she struggled with it. But now when you look at, look at our episode, she's like the all-star setting the most amazing content hooks.

[00:37:34] So that just, just fine, like, she'd be a good example to follow. And, you know, if you wanted to create a channel like hers, but find, find somebody that is doing it right. in the beginning for me, there's this science channel called Veritasium a guy named Derek Mueller and I loved the style of his videos and how they really helped.

[00:37:54] Teach and educate. And so I would just, I would like, wait a minute. I think I just saw his camera in there in the reflection that he walked by. What cameras are you using? And I'll try and figure it out. Or I remember looking at the reflections of somebody's eyes to see how they have their lights set up.

[00:38:08] yeah. Study, study, what works and figure out how to do it yourself.

[00:38:12] Those are great tips as well. And a lot of content creators They even, share all their tips and tricks now, nowadays, and what equipment they're using and what set up they have. so yeah, you can get a lot of knowledge and just learn and practice makes perfect.

[00:38:26] Monique Idemudia: You, you have to practice when you first start out with something, you can never. Expect it to be perfect and perform amazing. you just have to go through the process, So you improve, that's just the natural the natural process, how things work in life, right. do you,do you have some example channels that you can name for a couple of them?

[00:38:47] Example industries in case people, you know, don't know they're completely new to YouTube. and they're yeah, just trying to find some information for people who are really doing well in various industries or maybe some that you have produce as

[00:39:01] Nate Woodbury: well. Yeah, definitely. Definitely check out. No, well, Randall check out Stan, the annuity man.

[00:39:09] that channel is. Is rocking it and you wouldn't know by the size of the channel it's really, really niche, you know, and, and he, he's, he's a good example to follow as well for taking a topic that most people would, would be monotone and boring. Well, this guy is cool and he makes the newest he's cool.

[00:39:28] Nate Woodbury: So check out and learn from him. who else there is Nicholeen Peck. So her channel is called teaching. Self-government, it's all about parenting. She's a parenting expert. That would be, that would be a great channel to check out as well. Just to see if you find, cause there's lots of different personalities, lots of different styles.

[00:39:47] the one that I mentioned that I studied their potassium, Derek Mueller he he's. He's a master at using video to teach. and if you're wanting to create a channel, that's, that's more like the Mr. Beast entertainment style. Like obviously the Chi is a genius, his mentor and my mentor are the same person, Darrel eaves.

[00:40:07] Nate Woodbury: So study study Mr. Bass. Like it's hard to not be entertained by that, by that channel. But like, if you, if you actually break it down and what he's doing in his episodes you know, he's, he's a genius there. So hopefully those are some good examples for you.

[00:40:21] Monique Idemudia: Definitely. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for being here and joining me on this episode, I think you've shared a wealth of knowledge and it's going to be super, super helpful for a lot of people out there who want to start a YouTube channel for their business.

[00:40:37] So Nate, what's the best way to reach you and contact you. If people want to learn more about you or if they want to work with you and just connect in general.

[00:40:47] Nate Woodbury: Yeah, just come to my channel. So my YouTube channel is Nate Woodbury, and I look forward to seeing some people there. I'll

[00:40:54] Monique Idemudia: definitely link to it and description, go check him out

[00:40:57] Thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode of the Dragon Digital Marketing podcast. I really appreciate it. And definitely make sure that you also check out the show notes with further information and more resources and links to everything that we've talked about in the episode,

[00:41:15] you'll find the link to the show notes into description. That's Dragon dash digital dash Marketing dot com. And I'll see you there again. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you again in the next episode until next time.