There’s actually a lot more to creating a video than most people realize. Here’s a list of everything that’s involved:
- Choose a non-competitive keyword or keyword phrase.
- Create (or find or outsource) the content for the video.
- Create the video.
- Choose the audio (or outsource it).
- Upload the video.
- Optimize the video.
- Ping the video.
And, that’s actually the shortlist. Each of those tasks requires a few individual tasks of its own. Let’s get started.
Choose a Non-Competitive Keyword
Here’s the thing with free Youtube traffic (and all free traffic for that matter)…
It takes time.
It takes time to create it and it takes time for it to actually start generating leads/traffic.
There is a workaround that will help speed up the process a little and that’s to choose a non-competitive keyword phrase.
You see, in every niche, there are keywords that people are typing in that us marketers don’t even know about. In some cases, these keywords and keyword phrases can get quite a few searches per month.
Before I explain how to find these “keyword gems”, let me explain what we’re actually going after and why we’re doing it.
I’ll do so by using my Keto Diet Insider niche as an example. Take a look at the screenshot below from SEMrush:
The keyword phrase “keto ground beef recipes” gets a total of 4,400 searches per month. Not earth-shaking, but still quite a bit and worthy enough of creating a video for it.
But the ‘searches per month’ metric is just one metric you need to know before you determine whether or not it’s worth doing a video about it. The other metric is its Youtube competition.
Meaning, how many other videos are already out there trying to rank for that keyword phrase? There’s really no easy way to do this on a large number of keywords at one time. Well, there is but… more on that in a second.
Really the only way to find out if there are any other videos with that keyword phrase anywhere in the title or description is to do this:
Go to Google and use the ‘site’ search operator like you see above. Search all of Youtube for that exact phrase by including it in quotes.
As you can see, my video is the only one using that exact keyword phrase. The second result is my actual Youtube channel.
Now, that’s a lot of work if you had to do that with a couple of hundred keyword phrases. Ask me how I know. It’s what I’ve done for years.
I used to use the WordTracker keyword tool because they did similar analyzing, by looking for the keyword phrase in the title, description, and on the page.
But I never found anything that would check Youtube competition the same way.
Well, just the other day I found an automated piece of software that does exactly that. They released the “1.0 version” back in 2014 and I completely missed it back then.
I decided to do some digging to see if something else had been created specifically for Youtube and that’s when I came across this tool.
If you have a PC, this tool works perfectly on Windows. If you have a Mac (like me) you have to do a little workaround by installing a virtual machine app.
They have step-by-step instructions on how to do it after you purchase the software. It’s pretty easy.
I’m telling you though if Youtube is your main focus and free traffic is what you’re after… this tool is worth its weight in gold. Just look at this list below.
All I did was enter “keto” into the tool and it spits out a list of around 1,200 keyword phrases.
From that list of 1,200 keyword phrases, I filtered it down to show only the phrases with more than 100 monthly searches and less than 4 competing videos. I was left with a list of 340 keyword phrases.
Many of which are worthy of creating a video around. The image above just shows the top searched keyword phrases.
This tool just made your job of finding a non-competitive keyword VERY easy. Now, just because the sales page for that software says “1st page of Google and Youtube in minutes”, that doesn’t mean that’s true for every keyword.
In fact, the examples used in the video on that sales page are from 2014.
But I will tell you this, I put my video up yesterday, pinged it (like they show how to do in the instructions) and it was indexed in Google and ranking on the third page of videos in just minutes.
You can see it’s #2 on Page 3 for my keyword phrase. Keep in mind, this is my very first video on a brand new Youtube channel.
What I’m trying to say is, don’t expect page 1 results today, tomorrow, or even next week. For local terms, that’s more believable. There are fewer competing videos.
Even though there are no videos using my exact keyword phrase, there are still videos that are closely related that Youtube and Google will display above mine. It still takes time to get natural rankings.
So, it’s up to you if you want to use that tool or not. I showed you how to go about it both ways.
Create the Content for Your Video
You have a number of options here and it really comes down to what keyword phrase you’re going after. In my case, I’m just giving people recipes I gathered from the web.
I put together a list of 101 Keto Ground Beef Recipes by just finding them online and copying and pasting the URLs into a PDF.
For my video, I just gave them a preview of some of the recipes that are inside the free book.
So, that’s one option for you… do a “round-up” video of things you’ve found online.
The other option is to just take a “how to” article and turn it into a video. Just use stock images (I used images from Envato Elements) and put text over top of them.
The article can be a PLR article, an article you write yourself, or an article you pay someone else to write. Doesn’t really matter as long as it’s good.
Remember, each video should solve one specific problem. My video is all about Keto Ground Beef Recipes. I didn’t try to include a hundred other recipes that they might not be interested in. I just focused on that one specific topic.
Don’t overthink the content. Do your keyword and competition research, pick a keyword phrase, and get to work.
Create Your Video and Choose the Audio
This may seem like the hardest part and for some people, it might be. But there are countless tools online to make this quick and painless. I use Animoto. It’s about as “point and click” as you can get for video creation.
I used to use PowerPoint and Camtasia for slideshow-type videos but Animoto is much easier and there are fewer steps involved. It’s not cheap though… I think it’s $40 a month.
If you’re on a budget, you can probably find someone on Fiverr who can do it for five bucks. Just make sure the quality is good enough for people to continue watching it.
For your audio, you have two options… stock music tracks or a voiceover. For videos that have a lot of text, I prefer to have a voiceover done.
You can do this yourself or get someone on Fiverr to do it. Nothing too complicated for your audio. Animoto has stock audio tracks that you can add.
Lastly, all of your videos should have a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of them. Whether it’s to join your email list, to download a free report, or to promote an affiliate product. Never end a video without a call-to-action.
Upload and Optimize Your Video
This is the MOST important part of the entire process. If you do this wrong, all your efforts are wasted. Take a look at the image below:
#1: The title — Include your keyword phrase exactly how it’s listed in your keyword research tool and include it first before anything else. In my example, I thought about naming my video “101 Keto Ground Beef Recipes” but I didn’t. I wanted my keyword phrase first. I could’ve added text to the end but I chose not to.
#2: First line of the description — make sure your keyword phrase is in the first line of your description. If you go back up to the top of this page and look at the image of my video ranked in Google, you’ll see my keyword is bolded in the description. This helps it rank higher, plus it helps increase the CTR of my listing in Google and Youtube (because it’s bolded and relevant to the user’s search).
#3: Include your CTA — You need to include your CTA in the first line or two as well. By default Youtube doesn’t show the entire description unless the user clicks the “Show More” link. You want the user to be able to see your link without having to click “Show More”.
#4: The body of the description — You should include a decent amount of text here that explains what’s inside the video. It just helps you to rank for different terms and phrases and it helps Youtube know what your video is about. You also should include your CTA at the bottom again. Don’t write it word for word though, change it up a bit.
#5: Tags — The tags aren’t visible to viewers but they’re absolutely necessary when you upload your video. Here are my tags for this video:
I try to add at least 10 tags. I take my main keyword phrase and I come up with as many variations as I can from it. Then, I add in a few other related keyword phrases. Related keyword phrases will help you get found when someone is watching a similar video using those exact same tags.
#6: Thumbnail — New Youtube channels don’t get the option to have custom thumbnails until they have a certain number of views. Until then, just choose the thumbnail that you think would get the most click throughs from a listings page. Youtube will give you three thumbnail options to choose from when you upload your video.
If you follow these steps for uploading and optimizing your videos, you’ll be in for a decent amount of traffic over time. Remember, this is a long-term traffic strategy. Create them once, benefit from them for years to come.
Ping Your Video
“Pinging” is a way to notify the search engines that they need to go see something new that’s online. This is how you can quickly get indexed in the search engines as I did above.
There are tons of free pinging sites. It doesn’t really matter which one you use. I use Pingler. Just make sure you enter the correct URL for your video. Sometimes Youtube adds stuff to the end of the URL, so be careful.
The best way to get the correct URL is to go to your Video Manager inside Youtube, right-click the image of your video, and copy the URL as you see below:
The URL should look mine below:
If you see something like “&feature” or “&video” at the end… it’s the wrong URL. All you need is the “/watch?v=XXXX” part.
My Youtube Funnel
Squeeze Page
Redirect Page
Clickbank Offer
Download Page
I want to briefly talk about the email autoresponder sequence for this niche.
In a niche like this where I might have 5 or 10 or maybe even 20 different lead magnets… I would suggest creating ONE autoresponder sequence that everyone gets added to no matter which lead-magnet they subscribe to.
You would just need to have a new list for each lead magnet if you’re using Aweber.
You’ll also be charged twice for the same subscriber because you’re putting them on a list to receive the email for the lead magnet and then another list for the autoresponder sequence.
If you using something like Drip, you can create campaigns that connect together and you’re only charged once per subscriber.
I know Aweber has campaign options too but I tried them out when they were first released and they didn’t work the way I wanted them to. Maybe now they’re different, I don’t know.
Conclusion
That’s all there is to creating your first Youtube video. It might seem like a lot at first but after you get your first few videos created and uploaded, it’ll start getting quicker and easier every time.
Now, all that’s left to do is to keep pumping out videos. Each one will continue to drive traffic for you for years to come.
If you have questions, please leave them as a comment below… I’m happy to help.