How To Do Research On YouTube
Before you ever upload a video to YouTube or even think about creating a video, it is helpful to do some thorough keyword research in your target market and find out what keywords are popular and what types of videos get tons of views.
The Search Process:
Practically the entire internet is now driven by search and searching processes…And YouTube is no different.
Like any search engine, visitors at http://www.YouTube.com are presented with a search box as the main mechanism for finding videos of interest. Using keywords, YouTube users find videos of interest and then are presented with related videos that they can add to their viewing list, or watch immediately.
With basic keyword research on YouTube, you can discover what types of videos are popular.
You simply type in the keyword and look at the thumbnail picture, title, keyword tags, and view count of the videos in the search results.
Researching Keywords With The YouTube Search Function:
The popularity of a video can be gauged by looking at the views count and it is important to see that there are two ways that videos results are returned: By the title of the video and the ‘tags’ used to describe the video.
By all appearances, the ‘tags’ are the most important keyword reference to optimize (though knowing that the company is owned by Google, and Google’s secretive ranking measures, we are not 100% sure that tags are the only ranking device)
In fact, these are probably the 2 most important optimization tools (other than making a great video) that you can use to get your video viewed many, many times. Fortunately, most YouTube users are not experts at keyword optimization and only tag their videos with a few related keywords.
With a little thought and brainstorming, you can make your videos ‘findable’.
Today on YouTube, there exists a situation roughly similar to the one mentioned above with how the search engines were in the 90’s…Amateur videos that are not even trying very hard to get top rankings for hot keywords are at the top of the results.
To get similar results, you simply need to pick the best keyword tags for your videos (and it may be prudent to also include your 1 or 2 most important keywords in the title of the video)
Online research tools may be useful to find great keywords such as WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) and it would be a great investment your time to get all of the very best keywords and put them in the tags list for each of your videos. If you start with a keyword list from WordTracker (or another comparable keyword tool) and then check your best keywords one by one using YouTube’s search feature, you will get a pretty good idea of how competitive your niche is.
Sort Your Search Results:
Search results can be sorted by date added, view count, rating, or relevance to keyword. As you are researching your keywords, it is important that you sort search engine results to get the best possible view of what keywords and what type of video will work best. The main sort feature you will want to use is view count because this will show you which videos are getting tons of eyeballs. It is easy to overlook these important search tools, and as of writing this, there is no way to set your own personal search settings. The chart below explains the various sorting tools available to you.
Search Tools:
Channels: Basically, channels allow you to search for videos uploaded by a specific user. You can create your own channel.
Groups: This feature allows you to search by groups using a keyword. This is important for advanced search because groups attract passionate people.
Playlists: This feature allows you to find playlists or groups of videos organized by a common theme.
Relevance: This is the default setting and means relevance to your search keyword(s)
View Count: Allows you to sort videos by which have been viewed the most.
Rating: Sort by how many stars rating.
Refine by Category: This is pretty self explanatory, you can search by what topic of video you are looking for.