How to Get More YouTube Views: Tips for Singapore Digital Marketers

Video marketing has become a rising trend in recent past years. It is one of the channels through which brands are becoming more popular while increasing accessibility. Although there are many sites that support sharing video content, YouTube remains the biggest platform for the purpose.

It is often termed the second largest search engine in the world. People search through YouTube, spending a lot of time watching videos on the platform daily. It is a platform that allows users to view videos that are relevant and useful, therefore, making it a necessary strategy for digital marketers.

When it comes to sharing content on YouTube, the difficult task is to get people to view the videos. People are turning to use scrumptious methods to achieve a high number of views on the site.

Some are paying to get more views in a bid to promote their content.

YouTube has, however, put measures to discourage people from using unparalleled methods to gain views. These measures are focused on detecting any activity that is canny and also focusing on the behaviour of viewers rather than the views.

The platform has the ability to reach billions within a short time, making it crucial for business owners.

The question is how to get more people to view your content at absolutely no cost. The algorithms used by YouTube help determine the most relevant content to avail to viewers. Below are some of the ways that you can increase your views:

How to Get More YouTube Views?

1. Build the Videos around Keywords

This is one of the best ways to get the traffic you intend and increase your audience. A highly descriptive title has two functions:

• Provides a basis for the YouTube algorithm to sort your content and ensure its relevance.
• Appeal to viewers and give them information on your content.

The best way to look for keywords is to use SEO methods or even a keyword tool. Some of the keyword tools are specifically for YouTube, which will help you look for the most searched keywords in the market niche you are targeting.

Also, optimize the descriptions issued with the title to ensure you have a great chance to encourage people to view your content.

2. Using Quality Descriptions

Before creating any video content, it is important to come up with a keyword. This will be important in creating the best information and descriptions for your content. This will also help in remembering to include the keyword easily in the video.

Quality descriptions are an important overview of what your video will be about. Optimising the description will encourage viewers to watch your content. The description should also stand out in order to be enticing.

3. Generate Tags

On YouTube, one of the important ways to rank your video content in the search results is through tags. Tags help users find your content as when they key in keywords to search, your video will appear on their search results.

Tags also make it easy for the algorithm to analyze what your content will offer viewers while also distinguishing your content for others.

Using major keywords, quality descriptions around the keywords and generating tags for your video content is the first step to increasing views on YouTube.

4. Use Compelling Thumbnail Pictures

A thumbnail picture or image is a small and reduced image that represents the larger one. They also sometimes serve as a link to the larger picture. Thumbnails appear as a representation of your video content on search results, social media platforms and other video sites.

A thumbnail image can be a vital piece in generating more views for your content. The key is to use the best quality images, engaging fonts and close-up*s for facials. The thumbnail should have the content of your video as a visual accompaniment to your title and descriptions.

5. Generate Captions

Creating various transcripts for your YouTube content is a topic that has been scrutinised for a while.

Although it wasn’t considered at first, captions have become one of the important ways to create an outreach throughout the world.

Subtitles and closed captions open up your content to larger audiences, including people who speak a different language from the one on your video and also those with hearing impairment.

6. Offer Educative or Entertaining Content

When it comes to uploading content on YouTube, it would be important to ensure that it has value to your viewers. The video should either offer educative information on how to use or do something or be entertaining enough to keep viewers engaged.

This not only increases the number of views for your current content but also increases the chances of viewers searching for more of your content in the future.

7. Alignment with Trending Topics

Nowadays, people prefer to watch content that is aligned with trending and other viral content. This should be a sign for anyone wishing to share their content to take advantage of to increase viewership.

Viral trends offer a ready market and audience as people are more inclined to view content that is linked to these trends. Although it may prove cumbersome, nailing this step would prove very useful to increase views.

8. Feature Other YouTubers as Guests

Just like bloggers who feature on special editions of fellow bloggers, YouTubers also have the same feature. This includes featuring other YouTubers as guests on your video uploads, other influencers from your sector and other keynote persons.

This is a great way to increase viewers as they may be inclined to want to watch what the content is. Just like in influencer marketing, this is a strategy that brings a new perspective to your videos while creating a greater appeal to viewers.

Also, make sure that this relationship is mutual so that both parties can benefit from it.

9. Your Content Should Mirror Other Creative Contents

While copying ideas from other YouTuber’s contents, it should be done perfectly to avoid plagiarism which can be a crime.

When viewers visit YouTube, after watching a video, there are normally other suggested videos on the sidebar or below it.

Although they may not be mostly related to what the viewer searched for, they are much related to the content they just viewed.

Matching your content’s keywords to other successful content posted on YouTube can drive more viewers to your videos. YouTube will also automatically suggest similar and related content to those searched using information from the algorithm.

10. Focus on Using Cards

YouTube cards are panels that are interactive that slide in and out when a video is playing to appeal to a viewer to engage more with the page. These cards can be links, images or texts that may have the following functions:

• Promoting other content
• Gather more subscribers to your channel
• Create awareness on charity organizations
• Generate traffic for your site
• Encourage people to fill out forms

These cards are a great way to increase the viewer experience on your site. Analyze the end viewers’ behaviour on your site as cards can keep viewers on your site if they wanted to leave.

11. Use End Screens

End screens are a powerful tool that can encourage viewers to take any action at the end of the video.

They can extend the watch time of your videos by directing viewers to something next at the end of the video. It is also an important opportunity to share more information about your site, other recommended videos and a legitimate website.

12. Promote Marquee Videos

Having this video on YouTube can help share information about other lesser-known videos from your site and your channel also. A video that has more than 5,000 views is a vital marker to ensure your video is featured on more search results. End screens, cards and other links can also be added to the marquee video.

13. Put Embedded Videos on AutoPlay

When you embed any of your videos, AutoPlay will play them automatically. However, this has proven to be annoying sometimes to viewers. It should be a carefully executed strategy in order to minimize the chance of pushing away viewers from your content.

Here is how to do it:

14. Generate Playlists

Statistics from YouTube show that the best-performing brands create and promote twice as many playlists as the rest.

The reason is that playlists are always on AutoPlay. This makes it hard for viewers to leave the site when they have more content to view. Make sure you post the playlists to your channel to increase viewership.

The playlists should have content that has flowed in the order of their relevance and importance to the preceding video. For the more educative or entertaining content, this is important as it creates the feeling of telling a story to viewers.

15. Be Active On Your Niche

Selling your expertise on your videos is different from actually being an active participant in the market niche.

For whatever sector you are aiming, make sure you view other related content, review them and even offer advice to the other YouTubers. Try to be helpful to viewers who will, in turn, view more of your content.

When it comes to increasing the number of viewers for your content, it is also important to focus on other means outside YouTube. These include:

16. Focus on SEO Ranking

Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can greatly increase your YouTube views. Videos have the opportunity to even beat the website they have been featured on.

When viewers search for content, SEO will provide backlinks to related YouTube videos which match the keywords typed in. A high ranking on the SERPs can generate more views while minimizing traffic to your content.

17. Promote Your Videos on Other Social Channels

If you have followers on other social media platforms, sharing new video updates with them can generate views. This can be achieved by providing a short teaser video. This is also known as cross-platform marketing. This not only is a great way to drive viewers to your channel, but also provides great ratings for you on the YouTube algorithms as a motion maker. It will also increase your rankings on the search engines.

18. Find Opportunities to Share Your Content with the Society

There are a wide variety of platforms on which you can share your content, it is important to look for platforms that focus on your immediate community. These include platforms such as Reddit, Pinterest and Stumbleupon

19. Influencer Marketing

When it comes to new and upcoming marketing trends in the world, one of the most prominent is influencer marketing.

This involves using influential people to promote your content on various platforms. This is important to driving more people to view your content as they listen to what these influencers have to say.

Other ways to increase the number of viewers for your YouTube content is through:

• Adding a watermark to your videos
• Posting promotional and giveaways on your YouTube channel
• Create video plugins for subscriptions.

YouTube, being the second most popular search engine in the world after Google, continues to grow every day with more subscribers and viewers. This makes the platform one of the most important when it comes to promoting and marketing your content.

Offering a video-only platform is a great way to market products and services since the current generation prefers to watch videos to reading texts.

While also using other platforms for online marketing strategies, small business owners should ensure that YouTube is one of the options.

Although in Singapore the highest percentage of people use Instagram, YouTube is also one of the most popular sites. People prefer to view YouTube videos to look for demos and info concerning the products they intend to purchase.

It is therefore important for all business owners to take advantage of this platform to market their products and services. YouTubers should also ensure that the content shared on YouTube is creative, relevant and useful to viewers.

This not only helps in branding but also generates a lot of views for your content.

Increasing the number of views, however beneficial to a site, should also be accompanied by encouraging better consumer behaviour when engaging with your channel or videos.

Consumers should be able to stay on the site without getting bored. The above are some of the discussed ways through which you can generate more views for free.

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YouTube SEO: The Ultimate Guide

Ever wondered how some YouTube channels record millions of views one or two days after posting a video? Well, it all boils down to YouTube SEO.

The tips discussed earlier have the potential of helping you get more views, but if you don’t work on SEO, your videos will soon slip to the bottomless pit of lowly ranked videos.

Google SEO is different from YouTube SEO, but some strategies work well for both. Since YouTube is the second largest search engine globally, Google is keen on making sure that it always offers accurate results to its users.

How you optimise your videos will determine whether or not they will be displayed on the search results page for various queries. 

Here is everything you should know about YouTube SEO and strategies you should implement to grow your channel. Like the Google algorithm, YouTube has an algorithm that uses a set of signals to rank videos.

Ensuring that your videos send the right signals to the algorithm will increase the chances of getting listed in one of the top positions.

1. Carry Out Extensive Keyword Research

Like the other website content, keywords are the pillars of YouTube SEO. They help the search engine to understand the video’s subject, context, and relevance to the searchers’ intent.

As you embark on creating a YouTube channel for your business or personal use, it’s important to carry out extensive keyword research to know which keywords or phrases people often use to find videos related to your niche.

These keywords should be used in the tags, description, and title. The ideal keywords are those that resonate with your videos and with a high potential of attracting more people to your channel.

As you can see, these are the common terms that people use in videos about digital marketing. Use them in the description and title tags to increase the visibility of your videos. That’s not all; you also need to look at what keywords competitors use to rank their videos.

Manually visiting the competitor’s channel and reviewing the terms they often use in the description and titles will get you started. However, it may take days or even weeks to complete the analysis.

Why put yourself through such a gruesome process when there are many free and freemium YouTube keyword research tools. Use them to save time and get accurate reports as well as recommendations.

The best tools for doing YouTube keyword analysis are:

• • SEMrush
  • Keywords Everywhere
  • Keywords Heaven
  • VidIQ
  • Tube Buddy

Compare and contrast the features and prices of each tool to find one with the greatest potential of helping you grow your YouTube channel. Start with the free version, then subscribe to the premium version once your channel has a firm footing and starts ramping up views and subscribers.

2. Use Keywords with Decent Reach Potential

Not all the keyword suggestions provided by the YouTube keyword research tools will benefit your channel. Yes, using widely used keywords is good, but unfortunately, hundreds of other YouTubers use them to optimise their videos. Therefore, competition is high, and it’s difficult for new YouTube channels to rank well for them.

Experts recommend putting aside the competitive keywords and focussing more on the long-tail keywords that most people ignore. These keywords usually don’t have huge traffic figures, but they are easier to rank for as they are less competitive. 

For example, if you intend to create videos about content marketing, it will be challenging to rank for the “Content marketing” keyword. However, you can narrow the search by using longer keywords such as “Instagram content marketing” or “content marketing Instagram Stories.” You will realise the search volume reduces as the keyword becomes more specific to a particular platform. 

Using such laser-focused keywords will give you an upper hand by locking out competitors who use generic keywords that are highly competitive. 

Besides, most people use long-tail keywords to find videos relevant to their information needs. Someone who uses “Instagram content marketing” clearly only wants videos that discuss how to do content marketing on Instagram.

3. Create Compelling Video Titles

A good video title will only do much for your videos. You need to be creative when creating titles.

Keep in mind that the target audience gets hundreds of videos with content that matches their search intent. How do you inspire them to select yours? Simple, by creating compelling titles. 

A compelling title piques the user’s interest and inspires them to click and watch the video. It should also go the extra mile to motivate them to subscribe to watch more videos as soon as you upload them.

Use catchy words that evoke positive emotions and relate well with your audience. Be sure also to include the primary keyword to enable the YouTube algorithm index and rank your video accordingly.

Ideally, the keyword should be strategically placed at the start of the title. Use it naturally to avoid confusing the audience.

A recent study conducted by Briggsby about YouTube algorithm video ranking signals found that videos with long titles perform poorly compared to those with short titles. Videos at the top of search results have an average length of 47-48 characters and rarely exceed 100 characters.

Therefore, make sure that your titles are concise and have the keyword at the start to get the video ranked highly.

Also, the title is the first thing the user reads when they come across your video, and so it should match the contents. In other words, the title is a promise of what the video will deliver.

4. Add the Right Tag to the Videos

A few years ago, you would succeed in getting your video to the top of SERPs by including multiple keywords in the meta description and meta tags field.

That strategy is now obsolete, and you risk getting penalised by Google for using it. It’s considered a black hat as it tries to manipulate the algorithm to rank a video at a higher position than it deserves.

YouTube algorithm pays close attention to the tags used in the video meta tags. Currently, the platform allows creators to write tags up to 120 characters long. It’s recommendable to limit yourself to 6-8 words to avoid confusing the algorithm. 

Properly optimising the meta description will also increase the chances of your videos being displayed to the users as “related videos.” Like the main video title, the meta description should match the video content.

5. Optimise the Video Descriptions and File Name

The video description is another essential field that you should optimise when preparing your video for posting on YouTube. Like the tags, this section informs the audience what the video is all about and helps the search engine bot interpret the content efficiently.

At the time of writing, the description can be up to 5,000 characters, so you have the freedom to make it as detailed or short as you like. It’s the piece of information that will persuade the users to click and watch your video. 

We recommend inserting the main information or “the hook” at the beginning of the text to get more clicks.

The algorithm relies on keywords to know what the video discusses, so make sure that you include the target phrases in the description.

Go further to include CTAs to inform the viewer of the next action after watching your video. For instance, you can include a link they can click to subscribe to your mailing list or visit your website. Use link shorteners for this purpose to avoid making the description cluttered. 

Include hashtags to increase the visibility of the videos. You can use hashtags that have gone viral or are used by other users in the recent past.

There is also no harm in creating your hashtag, but it may take time to gain the desired traction due to competition on the platform.

More importantly, edit the file name to make it easy for the algorithm to interpret it.

The bot cannot comprehend a file name such as VID_89867978.MP4. Like the video title, make the file name descriptive and include the primary keyword. The name should be something like “how-to-launch-content-marketing-campaign.mp4.”

6. Longer Videos Get More Engagement and Rank Better

The same study by Briggsby found that short videos (less than two minutes) are ranked poorly compared to long videos. The average length of videos on the first five spots in SERPs is 11 minutes and 44 seconds.

Photo Credit: Backlinko

It seems YouTube is following Google algorithm’s new norm of ranking long-form content higher than short-form content.

The decision to rank longer videos at the top is more detailed and complete than the short ones. Users get all the information they need from one video, thereby saving them time that would have been spent searching for alternative or additional videos.

That said, even as you focus on creating longer videos, you shouldn’t forget about maintaining high relevance. The content should be relevant to your target audience and accurate. Take time to find the most recent research data and use it to enhance the quality and relevance of your videos.

7. Create Captions and Transcriptions for the Videos

Reports online show that the YouTube algorithm can’t interpret videos and images. It relies on text and code to rank the videos. It’s, therefore, recommendable to create captions and transcriptions for your videos to assist the bots in decoding and ranking your videos accordingly.

Simply put, transcription is the process of providing the text of the topic discussed in the video. You can do this manually or take advantage of the free YouTube tool. 

We also recommend including timestamps in your transcript for purposes of creating captions. They help enhance the video-watching experience by allowing users to benefit from the video even if the audio is muted. It also works well for YouTube users with hearing impairment.

Consider placing the transcript text in the video description to help the viewers get a deeper understanding of your video content. 

8. Work on Improving Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Like on normal Google SERPs, CTR is one of the factors that the search engine uses to determine the relevance of videos to users. A high CTR means that the video matches the searcher’s intent, and the opposite is also true.

In a nutshell, CTR is an important ranking signal that can make or break your YouTube video campaign.

There is absolutely no way of influencing this rate, but you can increase the chances of the target audience clicking on your videos.

Applying the tips discussed earlier on how to optimise the title, description, and tags will significantly include CTR and consequently boost your video ranking. 

However, you need to also create an intriguing and compelling thumbnail for every video to encourage the viewers to click. Use your creativity to make the thumbnail as interesting and captivating as possible, but remember to match it with the main topic of the video.

9. YouTube Link Building

You could say that the above tips are for on-page SEO because you can do them before uploading the videos on YouTube. Like Google SEO, link building is important when working to enhance the performance of your videos on YouTube.

Even though this is not one of YouTube’s ranking factors, it will help increase views. You can get more websites to link to your video by sharing its URL on social media platforms and email. You can also reach out to publishers and bloggers, informing them of a new video that could help them write blog posts.

In addition, encourage the viewers to like, comment, and subscribe to your channel to increase engagement. 

To summarise this YouTube SEO tip:

• • Comments
  • Likes
  • Shares
  • Subscribers

All four factors have a huge impact on YouTube video ranking. They help the algorithm know whether a particular video meets the expectations of the user or not. 

One of the best ways of accruing and encouraging more comments is by responding to them. Users will be notified when you respond, and you can kickstart a great conversation that will attract more people. 

Photo Credit: Backlinko

Devise ways of creating content that hooks the viewer and lures them to watch the whole video. Otherwise, your video ranking will drop if the viewers abandon them and go back to the search results page to look for alternative videos.