It’s easy for your video to get lost in the gigantic YouTube universe, but fortunately enough, there are some simple and effective ways to create unique, organic traffic for your videos.
Choose your thumbnail carefully
The thumbnails you select for each video are more important than you think. It’s the first thing people will see when they search for your videos, so it needs to have the “click-worthy” value.
In other words, make it appealing. YouTube automatically gives you three thumbnail options to choose from when you upload a video, but customize and upload your own if you feel you need something catchier. It goes a long way.
Here’s a great article entirely devoted to strong examples of successful YouTube thumbnails.
Think over your title and video description
Your title is clearly important for intriguing viewers, but it can also improve your search results and should definitively drive more traffic to your channel.
The first term should be relevant, such as a keyword, and you should follow that with what is featured in the video, building a keyword phrase. While your title should be clear and concise, the video description is where you can go a little more in-depth.
The description can include a keyword phrase, your URL, and a mini-post that briefly describes the content of your video.
Create a custom background image
Compliment your content with a clean channel design. Your background image can also invite viewers, so apart from the theme and color options YouTube offers, you can also upload your own background image, helping you to stand out from the crowd.
Make your best video "featured"
YouTube automatically shows your most recent video in the main “Featured” window on your channel page. This is ideal for users who post regularly, but for those who post less, sometimes a better option is selecting another video to occupy that slot.
Here’s how: Go to your “Creator Studio” settings and select “Featured Content” from the left menu under “Channel”. Then click the “Feature Content” button and choose if you want to use the most recent uploaded video or choose a new video or playlist.
Add channel tags
Tag away! This is as fundamental as tagging your videos with keywords. You’ll bring the viewers to you and can find this on your settings option on the My Channel menu.
Pay attention to comments and clean them regularly
Engage with your audience. Take the time to read your channel comments and those posted on your videos, and be sure to respond.
Remember; clean up if you have to. Delete or report spam comments. If not, it comes off as if you may be ignoring your channel.
Recent activity is a win-win situation
Show what you’ve been up to on YouTube lately. If you like or favorite a video on YouTube, this action will show up in your “Recent Activity” and the “Recent Activity” box of the content creator.
It’s a simple way to make YouTube contacts, and it may bring viewers to your page.
Video owners who’ve been liked or favorited are more likely to click through to look at your content in return.
Be aware that users like playlists
Create playlists of your videos instead of having a series of different videos. Start with your most popular or recent videos to get your fans interested, and then let them sift through new and old material.
Leverage cross-channel promotion
Cross-channel promotion can be a highly effective way to drive traffic to the target destination – your YouTube Channel. You could create blogs posts about the themes related to your YouTube Channel and embed and link your videos to them.
The blog posts (and your new and old videos) can also be shared with your opted-in subscribers of the blog or YouTube channel or some other email list as a fortnightly or monthly newsletter. The blog posts (and, of course, your videos, too) can even be promoted on your social media. This cyclical sharing will help you find and lock in followers from several channels.
If you are short on time, you can consider outsourcing blog writing and social media content management to specialized writing agencies like Lyfe Marketing, iWriter or Upwork.
Please remember that a little goes a long way. And these tips work. Just try them out and check how you drive more traffic to your YouTube channel.
The most important thing you can do to consistently build your YouTube traffic and subscriber base is to be consistent with your posting, interactions, and engagement. A several week hiatus will kill your channel before it even takes off. Building traffic and an audience takes time, a lot of time actually, be committed to the process and accept the fact that these things don’t happen overnight.
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