I'm not a Youtube expert, but I do have some experience with it. I'll also be talking with some guys who have a ton of experience with this topic soon.

In my experience there are a couple of approaches you can take.

First, there are bots. There are a number of applications out there that go and auto subscribe to people's accounts which in turn gets you a fair number of subscribers back. There are also services and scripts out there you can use that will get your views up. Personally, I don't really like this approach.

I prefer to use SEO factors, along with the Youtube algorithm to get my videos more visibility. Remember, Google owns Youtube. Make it search engine friendly and Google will often reward you with a good ranking. Thus you will get consistent views as a result, and they will be targeted.

A lot can go into this but here is the quick version.

1. Rather than just making your video title just the name of the song, or you as an artist, include a keyword in it that gets some decent search volume.

2. To find keywords use Google's free keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/sel.....olExternal - You simply enter a root keyword related to your video and it will give you ideas.

3. Try to find words that get at least 1000 searches a month and have less than 100,000 competing websites on the internet when you search the keyword in Google using quotes. That is not an absolute rule. It's just ideal.

4. Use your keyword and several secondary keywords in your description of the video,a s well as your keyword tags. Try to make your description at least 100 - 200 words.

5. Once your video goes live, link back to it from as many sites as you can. Facebook, Twitter, your own website, free blogs, feeder sites like squidoo, blogger, etc. Don't build these links too fast, just a couple each day is ideal, and try to keep doing this for a few weeks. If you see the video climbing in the search engines for that keyword, keep doing it (literally forever). If you don't see any movement you might just move on to another site.

6. Email your list and post the video link to your social media accounts and really press people to rate it and leave a comment. Youtube's algorithm rewards this. And try to get the blast out very shortly after you post the video so there is a lot of action quickly. The ideal scenario is that you make a most viewed list and it snowballs from there.

7. make sure you have a visible link at the beginning and end of your video, as well as the first item in your description so that people can see the link above the fold. You need this if you want any traffic.

8. Make sure the thumbnail is eye catching. To do this you want the image to appear at the half way mark in the video. But you might just get lucky as youtube gives you some options.

9. Take versions of the same video and use a submission service like tube mogule to also submit them to other video sites.

Those are the basics and you should see results. Volume is also important. If you could get a video out there every day it would really add up in time.

Hope that helps.

One strategy I've used to get high rankings on youtube (which does not necessarily mean traffic) is to:

1) Post an original article to my website's blog

2)Post the same article on Ezine Articles.com

3)Link the Ezine Article back to my original article (via the author's box)

4)Create a video of myself basically reading the article - post to youtube

5)Put the entire article in the video's description and tag the video using keywords I am targeting <---- seems to work

6)Link back to my original blog article as the first part of my video's description.

The reason I'm including the ezine articles part of this is because my goal is to get my website's ranking higher by leveraging the 'juice' that google gives to Ezine and Youtube.

In other words, it's not just a high youtube ranking I'm going for, it's also search engine ranking approach.

7)Use social bookmarking for the original blog article and the youtube video (tag appropriately)

8)Submit to Digg

9)Ping the URL(s) to pingler.com

I'll also place the video above the blog article (for those who prefer to not read)

I should also note that I don't embed the youtube video on my blog, instead I have an unbranded version of the video that is hosted on my site.

Give it try.  If you want proof that it works search: 'musicians classified ads' on youtube

-Steve

Charley Langer said:

John Oszajca said: 

First, there are bots. There are a number of applications out there that go and auto subscribe to people's accounts which in turn gets you a fair number of subscribers back. There are also services and scripts out there you can use that will get your views up. Personally, I don't really like this approach.

John, I'm curious why you don't like that approach. It's actually worked extremely well for me. I get about 300 views a day. I'm the third highest ranked on Google and the second highest on YouTube under "smooth jazz sax". YouTube policies are very lenient (unlike Twitter and Facebook); i.e., you're not likely to get banned unless you're doing something illegal or posting porn. I get great comments on my channel because I target my friend requests to those I know are smooth jazz lovers. Finally, it's a great traffic driver to my squeeze page.

That said, and as you always say, when you start using automation on a social network, there is a risk of losing your account. It's a risk I'm willing to take. And, as I mentioned before, YouTube policies are very lenient: They essentially say that you can use automation as long as the tasks are not done faster than humanly possible. I use Tube Toolbox.

 Hey Charley,

That's awesome if you're getting results and I have no problem with it for you if it's working. I used to do a lot of that kind of stuff when I first started online but I've come to look at it as a short cut of sorts. I personally like search engine traffic or paid advertising the best, because it's so much more targeted. But like I said, if you're getting conversions then great.

When I messed with it years ago I saw poor results, but maybe I'll need to re-examine it. Keep doing what ever is working, as long as it's legal 🙂