Complete Guide to Skyrocket your Growth on YouTube in 2023

Statistically people are more likely to engage with videos compared to normal photos as we know from Instagram. This is one of the reasons why YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms today with more than 2 billion active users per month, and still growing. YouTube is a great platform for all content creators, brands, businesses and even influencers.

If you are interested in learning how you can skyrocket your growth on YouTube, then don't miss out on this! I will be helping you understand how the YouTube algorithm works, how to optimize your videos, channel and a lot more!

Find your niche and stay consistent

Some niches are more difficult than others to get into, but the same goes for all YouTubers. You need to find your niche and stay consistent. You should always try to stay within your niche category, and not make content about a whole different topic, unless it makes sense to do so, otherwise your subscribers might lose interest.

Your goal should be to solve a problem that a specific group has. It could be "How do I lose weight", or a million other things. Only your imagination sets the limits when it comes to finding your niche.

Even though the "How do I lose weight" niche is quite saturated, meaning difficult to get your feet into if you are just starting out, then there are ways to work around that. If you look up the keyword on YouTube you will see that it is already dominated by big channels. Instead, you should focus on long tail keywords if you are just starting out and have a small budget to compete on the more popular keywords. Long tail keywords are keywords with a deeper meaning behind them, it could be "how to lose weight fast without exercise at home for woman".

Keyword research

Keywords are still important to use when you are uploading new videos, this ensures that your videos are more likely to appear under the keywords that you choose. One easy trick to find more relevant keywords for your video, is to enter the first part of your keyword into the search field.

As you can see, this is a great little trick to find similar searches, to see what other keywords people are searching for as well.

12 Ways to Optimize Your Videos

Unlike Instagram where your profile is at the center of getting people to following you, things work differently on YouTube. People mainly discover your channel through your videos on YouTube, and can subscribe to your channel directly from your videos - your videos are in fact where you will convert most of your viewers into subscribers, not your channel.

So now that you know that your videos are the most important content to optimize, we can talk about how you can optimize your videos to improve their ranking and chances of success. There are two important ranking factors, which decides how far up your videos gets ranked. These are the engagement your video receives, and the average watch time that a viewer spends watching your video. The longer you are able to keep your viewers watching, and if they afterwards like your video, or click the subscribe button, this will increase your chances of appearing higher. The real struggle for many, is understanding how you can capitalize from all this that I just mentioned, and implement it to your videos, but once you do, you will be able to see the effects.

1. High quality resolution and audio

Don't embarrass yourself or your audience by uploading videos in 480p resolution. You should at least upload in 720p HD or above. Also remember to have proper audio which keeps the same level throughout the video, so viewers do not have to keep adjusting their audio levels.

2. Make it interesting

Your video should be interesting to watch, start off by telling your viewers what your video is about within the first 15-20 seconds, so they know what they can expect to see. This is also called an intro-hook. As I also just mentioned, the longer you are able to keep your viewers watching your video, the more likely your video is to appear higher in the search results, recommended section and more. This does take some practice to learn, but it's important to figure it out.

3. The title

Your primary keyword should be in the title whenever you are able to.

4. The description

Do not leave the description empty, you should also make sure that your primary, and secondary keywords appear in the beginning of the description in a natural context. You can also add links to your other social media channels and much more.

5. Keywords

Make sure that you find keywords that has enough volume and viewers. You should also look at your competitors who are doing well, to see which keywords they are using.

6. Thumbnail

The thumbnail and the title of your video is the first thing that potential viewers see, so make it eye-catching and interesting for people to click on.

7. Hashtags

Hashtags were introduced on YouTube not too long ago, even though most people are still searching on YouTube using "How-to" phrases, hashtags are still something that's worth using.

8. Captions

If you are making explainer videos, or other videos where you talk about something, I strongly recommend adding custom captions/subtitles to your video as well. You will need to write them yourself, instead of the computer-generated captions, but it will be worth the time, as your video will get the CC symbol in searches, and improve your chances of ranking higher.

9. Use annotations "End cards"

When you have multiple videos, you should make sure to use the Annotations feature at the end of your videos to suggest your other videos, or add a subscribe call-to-action.

10. Mention your primary keyword

The YouTube algorithms can detect the words and sentences in your videos, so make sure to include your keywords in voice as well whenever possible as long as it appears natural. Even though this one is not proven to increase your ranking, it is good practice and does not hurt.

11. Ask your viewers to like and subscribe

There is nothing wrong with asking your viewers to like your video and subscribe to your channel if they found the video helpful. In fact, this is something you should be doing!

12. Do not forget about mobile

More than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices, this is important to know when designing your thumbnails, to make them look great on mobile devices as well.

Optimizing your profile

Even though we just went through that videos are where you will get the majority of your new subscribers, it is still important to make sure that your channel looks interesting to subscribe to as well. Here are a few ways to improve your channel.

1. Add a cover and profile picture

Your profile picture or avatar, is what appears whenever you comment on videos, so make sure that it stands out. Your channel cover is also an important aspect to look into, to improve the quality of your channel.

2. Add links to social media or website

You have the opportunity to link to your other social media profiles, or website, so why not use it?

3. Tell about yourself

Write a short description about yourself, or what your channel is about.

4. Add your e-mail address and country

Make sure to give your viewers, or potential companies looking to reach out to you a way to contact you. You can add an e-mail address to your channel.

Increase your CTR "Click through rate"

Click-through-rate (CTR) is the amount of people who click on your video from search, recommended videos and from other places on YouTube. It's important to make your videos stand out, to improve your chances of getting noticed.

There are two ways that you can do this, the title of your video and the thumbnail. Make sure that the title is short and provides an incentive for the viewer to click on your video. The same goes for your thumbnail, make sure that you enable the feature on YouTube, so that you can upload custom thumbnails for your videos. You will need to learn some basic photo editing skills, but there's a good chance you already got those if you're on YouTube, right?

How does SocialPlus help?

Now that we have covered all the different things that you can do yourself to increase your chances of making your videos appear higher in the keywords you are targeting, all we are missing is the final ingredient. When you are starting out as a new YouTuber, you will most likely not have the subscriber base needed to get all the views, likes and comments needed to make your videos appear in the top.

This is where services such as SocialPlus can help you. They can provide you with high retention views and everything else that you will need to skyrocket your growth in record time.

When you upload new videos, and have analyzed the keywords you want to rank for and what it takes to rank, I suggest buying high retention views, likes and comments. This gives your videos a quick boost to help increase its organic reach and rankings.

Why being in the top matters

If you are already familiar with the marketing industry, you will know the importance of being in the Top 3 results for a given keyword. Being in the top search results will highly increase your chances of growing your channel faster, as it will get more clicks and therefore more attention. When you have found your niche, and begin creating awesome content, you need to focus on ranking your videos on the keywords you choose. This is where it comes in handy to use a social media growth service such as SocialPlus.

So how do we know what it takes to rank in the Top 3 for a given keyword? Simply look up the keyword on YouTube, and start analyzing the top videos, and their channels. How many views, likes, comments do they have? This is normally a good indication of what it takes to rank under a keyword. Buying high retention views and likes can help boost the ranking of your video.

YouTube Videos in Google Search

As you probably already know, Google owns YouTube, and that means that YouTube videos also appears in Google search results if they find it relevant. This is another good reason on why you should focus on creating YouTube content, as it also has the chance of appearing in search results on Google. Currently Google prefers to show YouTube videos for "How-to" search results in the top.

Also read: 10 Youtube Stats Every Marketer Should Know