Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

YouTube Views

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from monetizing the platform and uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that YouTube income is from advertising revenue, merchandise sales, or brand deals, or subscriptions, we keep you updated with best practices and ideas.

YouTube Monetization

How To Make Money on YouTube

Getting thousands or even millions of YouTube subscribers is a dream for most creators. In the articles below, we'll show you how to turn casual viewers into long-term fans. 

YouTube Subscribers

Want to see how your channel is performing? Read these YouTube analytics articles to discover what's working and what isn't. You'll learn how to identify which videos have the most Watch Time, clicks, audience retention, revenue, and more.

YouTube Analytics

Watch Time is arguably THE most important metric on YouTube right now, and creators won’t be able to monetize their content without 4000 hours of it. But what is it and how can creators increase the amount of Watch Time their videos attract? We keep you updated on the best practices around Watch Time, and how you can increase how much your video content generates.

YouTube Watch Time

YouTube Shorts content is set to explode! 

All the latest tips, tricks, and rock-solid advice you need for this new feature.

YouTube Shorts

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

Tips & Tricks

YouTube Tips & Tricks

Why do YouTube videos get demonetized? It’s a valid question, especially when someone takes the time to film, edit, and upload a video. Most creators try their best to make positive, original content for viewers around the world. What are they doing wrong in terms of making money and staying monetized on YouTube?

Google AdSense 101 - How to Benefit from Ad Revenue on YouTube

Most of the time, it's a lack of information. Creators know the basics of YouTube's rules, but they don't always know the fine details. And overall, people are just ready to record!

: A set of rules to ensure everyone’s safety on YouTube

 An explanation of which videos are suitable for advertisers

: A set of terms and conditions for placing ads on YouTube videos

: A set of terms and conditions for how viewers and creators operate on YouTube

Violating any of the four could lead to demonetization. Here's how to avoid that outcome.

What Does ‘Demonetized’ Mean on YouTube?

If YouTube demonetized a video, that means it restricted 

 ads from appearing. That includes every type of ad available to creators: display ads, overlay ads, sponsored cards, and skippable and non-skippable video ads. You won’t earn Google AdSense revenue for demonetized content.

Turning off ads is just one form of demonetization.

. This option bars you from all the money-making features: Google AdSense, Super Chats and Stickers, Super Thanks, merchandise shelves, Channel Memberships, and YouTube Premium revenue. It’s like being kicked out of the 

How to Tell If a YouTube Video Is Demonetized

After uploading a video, you can see its monetization status in less than an hour. It takes a while because YouTube is making sure the video is suitable for ads.

In the YouTube Studio, there are seven monetization icons

. Each one tells you the status of a video’s earning power.

 YouTube is checking your video for ad suitability.

 Monetization is on, and your video is eligible for most ads.

 Monetization is on for a song cover, but a music publisher claimed the revenue.

 Monetization is on, but YouTube is still determining who will get paid.

 Monetization is on, but ads are limited.

 You turned on monetization for the video, but YouTube won’t show ads.

 You turned off monetization for the video.

 means your video is demonetized, as shown below.

How to Check a Video’s Monetization Status:

Log into YouTube and click your profile icon in the top right corner. Select 

Find the video in question using the search bar at the top of the page.

. You’ll see one of the seven icons (shown above) indicating your video’s status.

Videos that aren't advertiser-friendly won’t earn much revenue. Here are 14 ways to avoid demonetization on YouTube.

? One of the requirements for monetizing your content is to avoid being repetitious. That means you shouldn't post videos with no recognizable differences on your channel. Your content needs a healthy dose of variety, from the audio tracks you use to the topics you cover.

That doesn’t mean you can’t explore one topic in depth. You can create similar videos as long as the bulk of each one is different. Take a look at the 

, for example. We share tips for gaining 1,000 subscribers all the time. But the advice changes as we discover new methods, which means we’re always talking about something new within the context of gaining subscribers.

2. Add Something Valuable to Repurposed Content

Using another creator’s intellectual property, such as songs, video clips, and images, could lead to one or more 

 on your channel. You’ll get these alerts when your video contains media that doesn’t belong to you. Copyright claims aren’t the end of the world, but YouTube might demonetize the video(s) in question or only give you partial revenue.

Can I Still Monetize My YouTube Channel If I have a Copyright Claim?

 happens when you reuse someone’s content without adding something new or transformative. If you’re posting a reaction video, for example, add some commentary that brings a fresh perspective to the original event, opinion, or narrative.

YouTube says it's OK to monetize reused content when:

You’re using brief clips for a critical review.

You’re adding original commentary to an event (movies, sporting events, etc.).

You’re adding an original storyline to edited footage from other creators.

Your best bet, of course, is to use your own content. But at the same time, YouTube understands that there are thousands of reaction channels out there. And guess what? Lots of creators are making money with that format.

3. Don’t Be Spammy, Deceptive, or Participate In Scams

YouTube wants every viewer to have a positive experience. And no user can do that while being tricked or misled by deceptive videos and comments. If you’re on the platform for the wrong reasons – like running scams and leading people to shady websites – YouTube might demonetize your content.

To stay on YouTube’s good side, don’t:

Repeatedly post content about making fast cash.

Lead viewers to websites with harmful software (viruses, information theft, etc.)

Use misleading thumbnails, video descriptions, and titles to “trick” viewer into clicking.

Promote “get rich quick” content or pyramid schemes.

Sell engagement metrics, like views, comments, and subscribers. That includes Sub4Sub, a type of spam where creators ask people to subscribe to their channels.

Post comments to gather information from viewers or drive them off of YouTube.

Live stream content that doesn’t belong to you.

Check out the image below to see an example of comment spam. Notice how the circled comment is impersonating the owner of the video, finance creator Graham Stephan. If you look closely, you can tell that “Replied_by Graham Stephan” is a bogus account.

This user is trying to drive people away from YouTube. Practices like this will get you demonetized.

Read more about spam, deception, and scams on YouTube’s support page

YouTube doesn’t tolerate hate speech of any kind. If you want to successfully monetize your videos, don't say (or type) harmful, offensive things. YouTube will demonetize your content if you're inciting violence or hate against specific groups.

Avoiding hate speech is easy. Think of all the ways people discriminate against others, and simply avoid saying those things in your videos. 

The most egregious hate speech revolves around age, sexual orientation, gender, race, disabilities, religion, immigration status, and veteran status.

Are there certain “demonetized words” on YouTube? Is it possible to say the wrong thing and lose all your ad revenue?

YouTube won’t demonetize a video for containing words like “hell” or “damn.” That’s considered light profanity, and most people aren’t offended by those terms. It’s the vulgar words that will get you into trouble, like repeatedly dropping F-bombs or constantly saying “b*tch.”

Can You Swear on YouTube and Still Make Money?

Here is a list of words that lead to demonetization:

Even when misspelled, adding these words to any element of a video (titles, thumbnails, etc.) is against the rules.

Our advice? Minimize the profanity in your videos. It's an easy way to get full monetization.

6. Don’t Show Dangerous or Illegal Activities

Want to make sure YouTube doesn’t demonetize your video? Avoid showing clips or images of bodily harm, gruesome injuries, and death. These themes are disturbing to viewers and scare advertisers away.

Logan Paul’s 2017 “suicide forest” video

. This was a huge scandal. Paul uploaded a YouTube video showing a dead body, and people around the world were deeply disturbed. He later shared a video of himself tasering dead rats. Eventually, 

YouTube temporarily demonetized his channel

Posting illegal activities is a bad idea too. You’ll have a better chance of monetizing your videos if you don't show:

glorifying dangerous acts results in demonetization or worse.

 If you can expect certain injury or death from an activity, it’s not suitable for YouTube.

7. Avoid Posting Sexually Explicit Content

YouTube will demonetize any video that gratifies sex. This type of content focuses on nudity, sex scenes, and pornography. If that’s the creator’s intent – indulging in sexual scenes – the next step is a no-brainer for YouTube. There will be no ads on the video, zero AdSense revenue, and (possibly) a channel termination.

Clothed or unclothed, YouTube states that showing genitals, breasts, or buttocks in an indulgent way violates its monetization policies. Also, sexual fetishes of any kind and in various formats (video, text, images, audio) are not allowed.

Read more about nudity and sexual content on YouTube’s support page.

8. Use Royalty-Free Music From the YouTube Library

Music copyright is a deep subject on YouTube. But for the purpose of monetizing videos, you only need to know two things:

Never use someone’s music without their written permission.

Did YouTube demonetize your video? Here are 14 ways to make positive content that stays monetized no matter what.

14 Ways to Avoid YouTube Demonetization

I assume you're a Fortnite player if you’re reading this post so you’ll want to know how to rank for that content on YouTube, right? Here are 6 ways you can rank for Fortnite topics on YouTube right now:

Find a trending topic around the game i.e. 'fps boost on Fortnite' and double down on it

Create content ahead of a new season or feature

Jump on a live stream if a Fortnite topic is trending or about to!

Edit the livestream to create more content for your gaming channel

Optimize for keywords like ‘Nexus Orb’ or ‘Season 10’ (or both together)

Create evergreen content designed to inform and entertain over a period of time

I think it's fair to say that Fortnite has been going through a downswing in recent months, and we'll come back to that later. But it is still one of the most popular games on YouTube to make videos about. And it helps that new items, and secrets, and seasons are always being announced and released that keep the Fortnite topic fresh with new content on YouTube. And Fortnite season 10 is being released on the 1st of August, 2019.

How to Rank for Fortnite Topics on YouTube Now

Now we have already talked about small YouTube channels trying to find their niche in this huge Fortnite area. And, once again, I have a perfect example. There is something about Fortnite and boosting frames per second that YouTube viewers really get a kick out of. And this enterprising video creator with less than 500 subscribers stuck a video on YouTube a month ago, and now it ranks top of the list with 50,000 views (video has been removed from YouTube).

Now, it's probably a little bit of a creative license with the title there, I mean, how could you make this video when season 10 wasn't released a month ago? But it is getting positive engagement, so the content must be providing value. Also the second channel and video in the search rankings, we've come across this chap before. You might call him the YouTube authority on frames per second boost on Fortnite, because he pivoted his entire channel to the endeavor and has gained tens of thousands of subscribers and millions of views over the past 12 months from it. And how do we know all of this? Well it's because we did a case study on the channel last year. And you can 

Jump on the Demand for Trending Fortnite Content

Now that was an example of Evergreen content. It's designed to be relevant and valuable to viewers for awhile, say, two or three months. But what I want to show you now are the extreme gains you can potentially get from trending content that may only have a shelf life of a couple of days.

Now I will confess, I am not a Fortnite player, so I don't know all of the jargon and terminology in the game. But when I did a search on YouTube for Fortnite, this particular video and its title caught my interest.

First and foremost, it's a live stream and the title suggests something is happening right now in the Fortnite universe. Interesting, yes. But what is happening? And what are people likely to be searching for? Season 10 or season X I understand is a new release, but what's this Nexus Orb thing mean? That sounds like the most specific keyword phrase in the title, so I decided to find out what that was all about.

Now forgive me, I'm probably gonna get this explanation a little wrong because I don't play Fortnite. But, as far as I understand it, this orb is integral to the launch of season 10 of Fortnite. People have been seeing it on teaser videos in the last couple of days. It's exploding, it's giving you stuff, it's melting stuff, something along those lines. The bottom line is, for a very short window of time, probably around about 72 hours, everybody who's playing Fortnite wants to know what this orb is and what's gonna happen and they want as much information as possible and they want it now. And that's why that search term has gone through the roof.

How to Find the Best Fortnite Keywords to Use on YouTube

Using vidIQ's own keyword inspector tool, we can click on keywords video creators are using and see how a term is trending over time. As you can see, Nexus Orb didn't even register as a term until a week ago, and now interest is spiking because of what's happening on Fortnite right now. And remember, I'm not a Fortnite gamer. I do not understand how that world works. But with a little keyword research intuition, I've been able to identify at least one keyword phrase that looks particularly juicy and if I was a Fortnite gamer, I would be making a video on it right now.

And you know what? When I have a second look at this title, there is another keyword of interest: Dusty Depot. To be honest, I'm not sure what it means because I'm a complete Fortnite noob. But what I do know through vidIQ is that this is another trending keyword phrase - so let's have a look at the keywords individually first.

We've got Fortnite at the top as your topic. That's not going anywhere, it's been around for years. Now we've got something of relevancy today: Season 10. But a lot of other video creators are gonna be using that. Then we're gonna go really specific with those two keywords that started to trend in the last week because potentially, people didn't realize they were gonna be trending more than a week ago. That's Nexus Orb and Dusty Depot. And what happens when you start to put those keywords together? Well that's when channels of all shapes and sizes can have viral moments.

Take this search that combines Season 10 and Dusty Depot. It may be some way down the search results, but this channel with its 250 subscribers has had its own viral moment from a video with 3,000 views. Of course, in the grand scheme of the Fortnite universe, 3,000 views on a video is not a big deal. But it is for the channel itself. If you are a gaming channel that's trying to find its way on YouTube, and you create a video that does 100 times better than your previous video, that's a signal to create more content on the subject, which the video creator has done. And hey, it may only be 200 views. But for a channel with 250 subscribers, that's still pretty good.

Now if Dusty Depot, when, who thought I would ever say Dusty Depot in a YouTube video, if Dusty Depot is an interesting keyword, then Nexus Orb is a fascinating keyword. First of all, the average age of videos appearing at the top of the YouTube search results is just nine days. This is extremely rare, and it means two things. Not only is the search term very hot, but it also means that YouTube is recycling content frequently because there is a lot of fresh stuff coming onto the platform.

Fortnite Live Streams: The Key to YouTube Success

Now I have a question for you. What do a lot of these videos have in common as I scroll through these search results? Have you spot it yet? Yep! I notice that too. A significant number of these videos are actually live streams. And when I tweak the search term to Nexus Orb event, every single video in the search results was a live stream. Yeah, this isn't a trick, I'm not filtered by live stream only videos. And I'm not sure I've ever seen this before. What all of this tells me from a YouTube perspective is that this Nexus Orb event, was so important to Fortnite gamers that Fortnite video creators wanted to stream the event live to capture as many people as possible as they were searching for this new release. And, when you do a live stream, YouTube favors that in a search term.

So while you're currently live, you will find yourself higher up in the search terms. And we've actually discovered this with our own content. Every Tuesday at 11 A.M. PDT for around about an hour, we do a live stream channel audit. You're welcome to join us next time we're on. And every time we have that live stream running, for the hour, we rank much higher in the search term ‘How to Get More Views’. Because that's part of the title of our live streams. If you don't believe me, next Tuesday, 11 A.M., search for how to get more views and you should find us near the top of the search rankings.

Now in all fairness, there's never going to be a surge of interest for the search term How to Get More Views. But, when there is a trending event that has a very small window of opportunity, 24, 48 hours, perhaps even less, it might be more advisable to do a live stream to capture that event, and then you could take the best bits of that live stream and create a smaller, dedicated, specific video a couple of hours later.

Now, let's step back for a second. Why am I advising you to go after trending topics and potentially do that through live streams? Well remember, Fortnite is a huge gaming topic on YouTube with channels that have tens of millions of subscribers. And you've got to find your own little edge to compete against them.

All of which brings me back to the video that first caught my attention. At nearly 200,000 subscribers, by no means is 

 a small channel. But it's not a huge one either in the Fortnite grand scheme of things. But by creating a super keyword-rich video, and making it into a live stream, this channel finds itself at the top of the search rankings. And because it's at the top of trending search rankings, there are thousands of people watching it which is pretty incredible for a channel of this size.

BUT, here’s where you have to be careful both as a viewer and a video creator. On closer inspection Ayvak’s livestream was a 15 minute looped video created a couple of days before the event, which YouTube decided was the best livestream to share amongst viewers searching for that topic.

It is unfortunate that there are many video creators who game the YouTube search system in this way. It is your job as a video creator to give you audience something of real worth and value. After further research into the topic we did find genuine livestreamers who were giving their audience great content. Creators such as 

 and his 10 hour livestream that ranked highly for the topic and earned his 20k subscriber channel 65k views:

Livestreams & Trending Topics on YouTube: Capture the Viewer Interest Now!

If you are going to go after a trending topic, and do it as a live stream, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons and you're giving your audience something of value. Now we have used Fortnite as the example here, but you could apply this to any topic on YouTube. For example, the announcement of a new piece of technology such as the next iPhone. A reaction to the latest movie trailer release, or indeed, a wrestling event.

We always get reactions to the latest pay-per-views such as Summer Slam. Can you tell I'm a wrestling addict? Yeah, you can smell what I'm cooking. I think ultimately, the question you need to ask yourself is this: do I need to know this information as soon as it's available? Do I crave it? Do I need to find out before anyone else? If the answer is yes, then there's probably thousands if not millions of people who feel exactly the same way, and that's where a live stream might be advantageous to your content.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Season 10 of Fortnite is here, and viewers are all over YouTube looking for the latest news and features. We show you how to rank for Fortnite to capture that interest!

How to Rank for Fortnite on YouTube to Get More Views

Keyword research. It's one of those things every video creator on YouTube should have in their skill set. While you may know what your content is about, you need to be able to understand how to tell YouTube what your content is about. So in turn, YouTube can share that content with exactly the people who want to watch what your content is all about. We're going to tell you everything you need to know to get proven results, to help grow your channel. In this post you’ll learn:

Keyword Research Basics: Using the YouTube Search Bar

How to Play the YouTube Search Bar Alphabet Game

How to Drill Down on Niche YouTube Keywords

How to Target a Specific Audience with the Right Keywords

How to Determine Keyword Interest Over Time

How to Analyze the Success of Your Keywords

A keyword is a word or concept of great significance. Or to put it into a YouTube context, an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content of a video. When it comes to keyword, try and imagine it as the first word, or phrase, or conscious thought, that instinctively comes into your head, when you think of that particular topic.

That’s a very simple introduction to keywords, but it obviously gets a lot more complicated. I'm sure you already know, that if you put in a single word into a YouTube search, you're not going to get exactly what you're looking for. Often, when people search on YouTube, or on Google, they're looking for keyword phrases AKA long-tail keywords. And again, you have to have an instinctive mindset.

If I have a flat tire on my car, my instinct is to search for something along the lines of “how to replace a flat tire.” If I have a sudden urge to play the piano, my instincts might be to search for “beginners guide to playing the piano.” If my toilet is blocked, well, you get the picture. And of course, if you want to grow your YouTube channel, your instinct might be to search for “how to get more YouTube views.”

So before we dive into the details, there are three fundamentals of keywords:

A keyword represents the first thing that usually comes into a person's head.

A keyword is often part of a key phrase - a sentence of three or four words.

And most crucially, think like a human, not a robot, when it comes to researching keywords, and then using them in your titles and descriptions.

As a very simple example, let's take the title, “how to get more YouTube views.” It's keyword rich, but does it have enough of a draw to really entice a viewer to click on it? What if we added a year to the title, to give it more currency? And maybe an adjective to give it more umph, such as how to get more YouTube views fast in 2019. Simple changes like this, can have a really powerful impact on the way a title is perceived by a potential viewer.

1. Keyword Research Basics: Using the YouTube Search Bar

All right, let's go on an epic keyword journey using your best friend, the YouTube search bar. Even if you type in a very simple keyword, such as “how to,” almost an auxiliary keyword for many phrases, YouTube will start to make suggestions.

But of course “how to” is a very broad keyword. So how could we narrow this down? Let's add a verb, such as install. Now we are getting into a more technical landscape, which is all to do with construction, or building something. We're very much in the instructional, or tutorial area of YouTube. But of course, your channel and topic of interest, is going to be very specific to one of these keywords. So let's look at how to install Windows 10.

Now we have a pretty good, broad keyword, for computer tutorials. But again, look at how YouTube is encouraging you to dive even deeper into this topic. Remember, these are the topics people are searching for on YouTube, and that's why YouTube is showing them to you. It thinks, you want to know how to install Windows on a new PC, or on SSD, or with a USB.

So to dip your feet into the YouTube keyword bathtub, so to speak, you should always start with the search bar, and see what auto-complete suggestions is pushing your way, for your topic of interest.

2. Play the YouTube Search Bar Alphabet Game

Another thing you can try is the YouTube search keyword alphabet game. Once you have a keyword you're comfortable with, simply add one character to it, and go through the alphabet. So “how to make slime A”, or “how to make slime B.” And you'll get all sorts of interesting suggestions from YouTube, that people are searching for.

It's amazing how many long-tail keywords you can find doing this process, to really help you niche down, and find a very specific topic that you're passionate about.

Now on to my favorite part of any video, and that's introducing you to some vidIQ tools. Remember, if you want to see any of this on your YouTube pages, download the 

. We're going to take a fairly general keyword here, which is “how to make slime.” And once you press enter, and it shows you the YouTube search page, you're going to start to see some of the YouTube tools that we have. The first one we're going to look at is the subscriber count. Something I'm always interested in, is whether a small channel is having an impact on a search term.

At the time of making the above video, we found two channels with less than 10K subscribers who were ranking on the front page of YouTube for “how to make slime.” WProving that small channels can make an impact with very broad, and popular, search terms. If a channel with 1,000 subscribers, is getting a video with 100,000 views, that tells me at some point in the past, this keyword was right for making content about.

Now, interestingly, the title of one video includes the word cheap. So maybe we can include that in our keyword search term - “How to make cheap slime.” Now at this point, we can riff on the keyword a little bit. Instead of searching for “how to make cheap slime”, how about searching for “how to make slime on a budget?” It means the same thing, it's just worded slightly differently.

But who's searching for that search term? At the time of writing, the number one result on YouTube for that keyphrase is a channel with only 1,137 subscribers. Scroll down and there are other small channels appearing on the first page for the term.

So we can confirm that there are relatively small channels making a huge impact in the world of how to make slime. And all I did was focus on a particular niche in the area, which was making slime on the cheap, or on a budget.

Funnily enough, you're not the only one doing keyword research on YouTube. There are thousands of video creators, just like you, trying to find those super-rich keywords to help serve the billions of people who watch YouTube every single month. YouTube's been around for 13 years, so many a keyword, such as “how to unblock a toilet”, “how to replace a spare tire”, and “how to get more YouTube views” have had the life sucked out of them, over that period of time.

So what becomes super important, especially for smaller channels, are trending keywords. For example, Fortnite is one of the most popular video games on the planet right now, and is heavily searched for. So how might a video gamer refine the search? Maybe if they looked at how to improve gaming performance on Fortnite in season six and beyond? Essentially raising their phrase per second, or FPS boost.

So now we have a very popular keyword, combined with a trending topic, combined with a sub-genre of the core keyword. Instead of finding just channels of eight-million subscribers, we're finding channels of all shapes and sizes competing for this very specific trending keyword.

A telltale sign of a juicy keyword is when small channels are wrangling for this keyword, and they have far more views than subscribers, on their channel. That means the video's been shared out to a much wider audience.

5. Target a Specific Audience with the Right Keywords

Now for something that is super important to remember. Most of us probably aren't interested in Fortnite, don't have a clue what season six means, and definitely don't understand the concept of frames-per-second boost. But you have to remember that you're not trying to appeal to the entirety of YouTube. You're looking to target a very specific audience, wanting very specific answers, to very specific things. And this is where keyword research is so important.

When you are passionate about a topic you build-up an intimate relationship, knowledge, and interest in the topic. Just like your potential audience. And that's who you want to appeal to. Whether it's for educational purposes, to tell a story, or to draw an emotional response from your audience, that innate passion you have for the topic, will be seen in your videos. And you just need to transfer that into your knowledge of the keywords that surround that content, in your tags, titles, and descriptions.

Because, what you're trying to find here are keywords of opportunity. Those are keywords, or key phrases, with the most search volume as possible, versus keywords with as little video competition as possible, on YouTube.

You can do this with the vidIQ keyword score tool. It tries to simplify this task, as much as possible - the higher the score, the juicier the keyword. But as you might expect, these things do not grow on trees. Which is why it's so important to spend some time doing some keyword research. Anytime you see a number next to a video tag on YouTube (once you have vidIQ installed) that's your keyword score. As you might expect, the potential of keywords can change very rapidly. But as a general rule of thumb, you want to be looking at keywords of a score of 50, or above. For a lot more detail to look into our keyword score, check out this video:

Now let's return to this keyword ‘ “fortnite season 6 fps boost”. At first the keyword score shows that there is still relatively low search volume, but very low competition. So it was a very juicy keyword. We looked again at the keyword two or three weeks later. Search volume increased significantly, while the competition score has remained relatively flat. And this is quite a rare occurrence in YouTube.

Now the landscape of the search results has changed as well. We've got a much larger channel now, dominating the top of the search terms, but look at our second channel. This one has managed to maintain its presence in the search terms , and the view count has more than doubled, and subscriber count has increased significantly. So this channel has really benefited from this keyword. As for the other channel that appears in these search rankings here, we'll come back to him later.

What else can vidIQ tell you? Well, if you enable inline keywords, you can see all of the keyword phrases they're using in their video tags. If we click on one of these tags, it launches the vidIQ keyword inspector. This will give you a mountain of information about the keyword selected, including the keyword score, and interest over time.

All right, one more super powerful vidIQ tool to tell you about. And a lot of people miss this one, because it's found in the vidIQ Chrome extension button. So click on there. You'll see a range of options, and you want to select SEO tags. This brings you into the vidIQ web app, and you will need keyword research tab. Now when you do a keyword search here, not only does it bring up all of the information that we saw on the YouTube search page, such as the search score, competition score, overall keyword score, but all of the related keywords, as well. So, for a combination of all our tools, you can not only find single keyword phrases, all that are significant, but a whole bundle.

The idea with keyword research, is not to spend five minutes finding that golden keyword that you can create maybe one or two videos from. It's to spend a considerable amount of time getting a collection of keywords, that all work together for a video series. That's why we recommend maybe spending a morning, or an afternoon, using the vidIQ tools that we've shown you, to get maybe 10, 15, 20 keywords, that you can create 20, 50, maybe 100 videos from.

When you have a focus, a particular niche, that's where you can hammer the YouTube algorithm, time and time again, with content that YouTube will start to see you as an authority, in. And that's when you can start to climb up the search rankings. Especially for search intent. Because when you find your niche, spectacular things can start to happen.

Keyword Research: The Positive Impact on a YouTube Channel

 we briefly saw in the Fortnite search rankings before. In the summer of 2018 this channel didn't have any focus. They were doing random videos on pranks and whatnot. But then, they had one breakthrough video, on the topic of boosting frames-per-second, on Fortnite, on season five. And this is what the channel did next.

They threw all of their content into that one keyword phrase, boosting frames-per-second on Fortnite, whatever season it was. And these went from a few hundred a video, to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of views per video. In just a few short months, this channel has become one of the authorities on the subject, so that now, whenever they post a video on Fortnite, and boosting frames-per-second, they rank at the top of the search terms, instantly. If you want to know more about this particular keyword research story, then check out this video:

I know we've used Fortnite for many examples, and it's because we have a lot of data on the subject. But believe me this strategy can be applied to any video topic. I did exactly the same thing a couple of years ago. It was all on a topic of how to record your iPhone screen, or your iPad screen, or iOS screen. And I was able to successfully leverage YouTube into sharing these videos with hundreds of thousands of people. And it grew my channel from tens of thousands of subscribers to over a 100,000 subscribers.

Use Keywords to Show YouTube What Your Content is About

All you've got to do is take these tips, tricks, and strategies, and apply it to your video topic, by doing the keyword research. But don't leave those keywords in your notebook or in your computer, because those are going to form the basics of your metadata to help your content be more discoverable on YouTube.

The more keyword research work you do for your titles and descriptions, the increased likelihood of YouTube surfacing those videos in search results. To put it simply, front-load your video titles with keywords, include those same keywords in the first two lines of your description, and include them in your video tags and playlist, as well. Give YouTube every opportunity to understand specifically, what your content is about. And stick to it over a series of videos.

Another important reason for having keywords at the very beginning of your video descriptions, is because people can read this when they search for content. So try to think of the beginning of your description, as if it were a classic tweet of 140 characters. Reinforce your keywords, while still making it a readable sentence. Give an enticing reason for the viewer to click on your video, and don't waste space with links and calls-to-actions, that will take the viewer away from your video.

Just before we analyze the success of your keywords in your YouTube videos, I want to step outside of YouTube for a second, and go into Google search, to look at something called LSI keywords. What on earth are they? It stands for latent semantic indexing. And if you still don't understand what that means, it's a system search engines use to analyze other words people use surrounding a given topic. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, I'll show you in Google.

When you do a search on Google, if you scroll to the very bottom of the first search page, you'll see lots of related keywords to what you were searching for. And these are your LSI keywords. So this is another golden opportunity to beef up your keyword collection.

If you scroll to the top of the Google search page, you'll find something else of interest, as well. If you produce good quality content, and have a strong keyword metadata in your YouTube videos, they'll start to be suggested in Google search. Imagine all of that extra free external traffic, being driven to not only your videos, but to YouTube, as well!

Now let's look at how you can analyze the success of your keywords. We're back into some vidIQ tools here, so once you have the Chrome extension installed, you can take a look at our SEO scorecard. This can be found either on the video upload/editor page, or on video watch pages.

You want to pay close attention to the actionable aspects of this SEO scorecard. When you use strong keywords in your tags, titles, and descriptions, and reinforce them throughout your metadata, your score will continue to increase. And you want to try and get to as close as 50 as possible. This gives your videos the best possible chance of fruition on YouTube, and that's reflected by the performance score.

If you want to learn more specifically, about the vidIQ SEO score, we've got the 

When your keywords in your video tags, start to rank highly and consistently, you will definitely see the rewards in your video views.

And for all vidIQ Boost users, don't forget to scroll to the bottom of the video editor page, and take advantage of our recommended tags tour. As you input keywords into your tags, titles, and descriptions, we will advise on further tags you might want to use. But be selective. Choose the ones that really define your video content.

Everyone knows that keyword research is hard work - but it's a skill that every video creator should have in their toolbox. Here are 7 ways to rank on YouTube using the best keyword research hacks.