What I have learned about increasing traffic on YouTube
A few months ago, I started a Sociology YouTube Channel, where I share some of my research findings and also tips and insights regarding academic career for PhD students. What is interesting to notice is that ever since creating the channel, I have been asked by friends and peers how to increase the traffic on the channel.
Well, I am not that tech-savvy with a solid knowledge of SEO techniques, in the sense of employing many (and correct) tags and keywords that help YouTube’s algorithms to find my channel and suggesting it to users during their searches for similar topics.
Therefore, I decided to read and watch other more experienced YouTubers and IT professionals’ reviews and suggestions on how to increase YouTube traffic, especially for free or on a reduced budget. After all, those who have deep pockets, can easily invest in advertisements and boost their channels visibility and discoverability quickly. However, as far as I could learn, this picture does not reflect the reality of many new YouTubers.
Thus, as I said, I have read and watched literally dozens and dozens of articles and videos to better understand how it works. In case you want to check yourself and also expand your knowledge in this area, a sample among the best sources I found include the following: EntreResource, H-Educate, Nick Nimmin, Search Engine Land, The e-Commerce Entrepreneur, and YouTube Blast Off. So, what did I learn after consulting this massive amount of information, suggestions, tips, reviews, etc.?
First, building traffic to your YouTube channel is not that easy. It does require a lot of work and sweating. Beware of promises telling you how to get thousands of views, subscribers and comments in a matter of a couple of hours or just a few days.
It is very unlikely that you will really achieve such results that fast and, more importantly, that they will be qualified and sustainable in the long run. What I mean is that, even if you manage to get thousands of views and subscribers in a short period of time, do you believe that they will come from people really interested and engaged with your content? Most probably not.
Moreover, I have also learned that there is a plethora of online businesses where you can buy traffic to your channel, which is a legal venture. However, although all of these businesses claim that they provide real people visiting and interacting in your channel, unfortunately, it is not exactly like that.
Most of such traffic is automated generated (i.e. what is called bots), which obviously will give you just fancy numbers to show up and nothing else. No real interaction, no genuine comments, no engagement of any sort, absolutely nothing substantially useful.
The very few of these businesses who actually provide views and subscriptions originated from real people rather than bots, will also disappoint you at some point because none of these people will watch your videos for longer than a few seconds. Moreover, these people are not interested at all in your content and they are encouraged to click just to receive some type of benefit offered by the company.
The most critical loss for you resulting from this practice is that it will increase tremendously the bounce rate of your videos. In other words, you are inadvertently and unbeknownst to you ‘telling’ YouTube that whoever finds your videos does not appreciate them, given the fact that users drop watching them soon after they started being played. Indeed, regarding the use of bots to artificially inflate your numbers on YouTube, I suggest reading the interesting article ‘The flourishing business of fake YouTube views’ published in the New York Times in 2018.
Furthermore, what is the practical benefit of getting a sudden and huge spike of views in your channel that does not sustain itself for long? Not much to be honest. Indeed, the rationale behind this strategy is to give a temporary boost to your channel, in such a way that within a short period of time it can rank higher on YouTube organic searches and then growing naturally further from there.
However, this organic growth will not happen. YouTube is equipped with powerful algorithms, which are easily capable of detecting artificially inflated growths and will not increase your channel’s ranking and discoverability. On the contrary, I have learned that there is even the risk that, in certain circumstances, your channel can be flagged or suspended, which is naturally very unfortunate and disappointing.
Another relevant aspect that I have learned is that and an effective way of increasing traffic to your channel is to produce videos about topics that people are actually looking for on the internet. To this end, several experienced YouTubers suggest that you can explore, for example, trending topics on the platform to understand which subject matters are being sought after and then, you can craft a video to cover that particular topic.
To a certain extent, the law of supply and demand behind this strategy makes sense. However, it does not mean that I fully agree with it because I consider that one should not take for granted that they hold the necessary knowledge or authority to talk about any given topic just because there is a high demand for it.
Certainly, it would be very interesting if you are knowledgeable about, let us say, ‘gaming’ or ‘how to earn money working from home in times of COVID’, in case they are positioned among the trending topics. But if you do not have this expertise, what can you talk about? How credible would you look like to your audience? Would you simply replicate what other people are saying (the famous copy and paste) or you would rather prefer to have your own voice about a given topic? Moreover, if there is a high demand for a given topic on YouTube, chances are that the competition might also be considerably high and not necessarily your video will rank amongst the top ten either.
Therefore, what I consider more relevant is to talk about topics that you really know, you are passionate about and feels comfortable with, even if it is not among the most trending. This way, you will be able to produce videos regularly, provide viewers with added value content and establish your reputation in the area as a reliable source of information.
However, if your ultimate goal is to become an affluent YouTuber, monetizing from your videos and making a living out of them, then your approach might indeed be driven by the supply and demand strategy. I say that not as a criticism or to undermine this choice because it is also a genuine and legitimate goal but just to illustrate the differences regarding the goals that can drive your strategies across diverse roads.
Finally, what I have also learned is that if you really want to genuinely increase traffic to your channel, there are no magic tricks or instantaneous solutions. It does require a lot of hard work, sweating, energy and dedication to understand and master the mechanics and explore them for your benefit. I do not mean that you should become a sort of tech guru but rather learning a minimum set of best practices to improve your channel’s performance little by little.
The aim of this article is not to explain to you all the how-to’s regarding increasing YouTube traffic. However, briefly speaking, what successful YouTubers usually suggest is to promote your channel on several other social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mix.com, Pinterest, Reddit, etc.) to increase the discoverability of your channel; exploring free browser extensions to help you better manage the keywords and tags associated with your video (e.g. TubeBuddy, Keyword Tool, or VidIq); and word-of-mouth with friends, relatives, co-workers, etc.
I also consider that, unless you want to make a living out of producing YouTube videos, as previously mentioned, you might not need to boost your number of views and subscribers overnight. Oftentimes, when you see other channels displaying content similar to yours ranking in the first positions on YouTube search results, you might wish that yours could also be there. It is a genuine and legitimate aspiration, after all, you believe in the quality of your content.
However, what we do not know is how long it took for that person to reach that position in the search results. How much time, energy, effort and resources are behind that and, equally important, how challenging it might be to remain there.
Consequently, although it can be very tempting following the easy promises of getting thousands of views and subscribers in a short period of time, I learned that in most cases, it can be more damaging than beneficial. At first sight, it can seem a bit frustrating and disappointing to have just a few dozen views, comments and subscribers in your channel. Nonetheless, what you must ask yourself is, do I want to spend my precious time and energy to produce relevant content for real people or for bots? Do I want to have just pretty high figures to display in my channel to show up to friends or do I prefer to interact with people that are really engaged with my content? Do I prefer to have one or a few huge spikes in the number of views and subscribers, which will fall sharply in a matter of a few days, or a constant and sustainable growth? I am sure that if you reflect carefully on these questions you will be able to make the best and well-informed decision to improve your channel’s performance over time.
