This video currently ranks on the first page of YouTube and has gotten over 114,000 views since it was published two years ago. It also ranks on the first page of Google out of 178 million results.
In the video below, I show you how to rank on the 1st page of YouTube and Google so you can receive evergreen traffic and revenue year after year, even while you’re sleeping.
Discover my top strategies to get your first 1000 subscribers FAST, so you can join the YouTube Partner Program and start generating a passive income from your YouTube Channel
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What are the benefits of ranking your video on the 1st page?
The greatest benefit is that your content is exposed to new people every single day as long as your video remains on page #1. As a result, you’ll receive evergreen traffic and revenue. If you offer a free report in exchange for contact information, you can build a profitable email list on autopilot.
When I had a web design business several years ago, I generated leads on autopilot with my videos ranking on the Ist page of YouTube.
If your video constantly ranks on the first page, YouTube will recommend it to a larger audience. This means it’ll appear in suggestive videos, which are the videos that appear on the right side of the watch page of the video that a viewer jut watched.
Initially, a video may not get many views in the first 24 to 48 hours of uploading it, but over time, it may generate thousands and millions of views.
For example, this video has only received 81 views in the first 24 hours, but now it has gotten over 114,000 views since it was uploaded. It also currently generates 269 views every 48 hours.
As long as your video continually ranks on the first page, it’ll generate traffic and revenue forever. That’s the beauty of YouTube over all other social media sites, you do the work once and read the benefits forever. Another great benefit is that it’s the fastest way to grow a new or small channel.
Here are the steps to rank a video on the 1st page of YouTube.
Identify your ideal viewer
YouTube shows the right videos to the right viewer at the right time across the whole planet, and tailors videos to each viewer’s different interests. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it’ll be to create the right content for them.
Think about the demographics of your audience, their age, gender, income range, education, relationships, et cetera. Think also about their psychographics, what are the burning questions that keep them up at night, what are their beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors, and fears.
Demographics are the boring facts, whereas psychographics identifies who your audience really is. Keep in mind the YouTube algorithm follows the audience, what they watch, what they don’t watch, how much time they spend watching viewer satisfaction, and what videos they are typically watching together.
Watch this video Why Is It Important To Know Your Target Audience (IDEAL VIEWER)
YouTube keyword research
One of the easiest ways to find out what your ideal viewer is interested in is to type your main keyword into the YouTube search bar. YouTube will suggest a bunch of keywords related to the keyword you typed in.
For example, recently I purchased a gravel bike to ride the local gravel trails. If I enter the main keyword phrase, gravel bike and YouTube search bar, it gives me a bunch of related suggestions, gravel bike versus mountain bike, gravel, bike trail riding, gravel bike race, gravel, bike riding, et cetera.
I can also use the alphabet to get even more suggestions. For example, if I place the letter a before gravel bike, I get a gravel bike build, what is a gravel bike, How to choose a gravel bike. Let’s try B budget gravel bike, best gravel bike. If I add the letter H, it says How to ride a gravel bike, how to clean a gravel bike, how to choose a gravel bike, how to go tubeless gravel bike, how to convert MTB to gravel bike, how to convert a road bike to gravel bike.
So I can just go through the alphabet to get more suggestions. I can also do the same by entering letters after gravel bike, so if I enter the letter a after gravel bike, I get gravel bike accessories, gravel bike adventure, gravel bike assembly, et cetera.
If you have the browser extension keywords everywhere installed, you’ll get the search volume as well as the cost per click.
For example, gravel bike accessories gets a 1000 searches per month at a cost per click of 15 cents. How to clean a gravel bike gets 40 searches per month at a cost per click of 4 cents, how to choose a gravel bike gets 70 searches per month.
Use TubeBuddy to uncover what people are searching for on YouTube. The Keyword Explorer tool from TubeBuddy helps you to quickly find the best keyword phrases to rank for.
For example, if I enter gravel bike into TubeBuddy then it gives me a bunch of suggestions. If I click explore, I get a poor score, which means that phrase is too competitive. If I place the word “how” in front of gravel bike, I get a bunch of different suggestions like, what gravel bike should I buy If I enter “difference between road bike and gravel bike” and click explore,I get a excellent score, which means that this keyword phrase has a high probability of getting the first page rankings.
As you can see, it’s got a search volume of 170 searches per month and a cost per click of 4 cents. Even though that keyword phrase doesn’t have a high search, volume there is a high probability, I can rank for it on the first page of YouTube. It also includes my main keyword phrase, gravel bike, in the title.
Create a list of keyword phrases you want rank for.
Based on your keyword research, you want to come up with a list of 10 to 20 titles of videos you can rank for on the first page of YouTube Specifically, you want to target low competition keywords, especially if you’re just starting out or have a small channel.
If you go after very competitive keywords, it’s going to be very hard to rank on the first page of YouTube and Google. So instead of targeting a very competitive keyword phrase such as gravel bike, I go for a longer keyword phrase, such as “difference between the gravel bike and a road bike.” These are called long tail keyword phrases, which are much easier to rank for on the search engines.
Research your competition.
If you enter a keyword phrase in the YouTube search bar, you can quickly see the videos that are currently ranking on the first page of YouTube. You want to do this using incognito mode so you don’t get personalized results based upon your own browsing behavior.
If I enter the keyword phrase “difference between road bike and gravel bike” in the YouTube search engine using Incognito mode, I can see all the competing videos. I can see the titles, thumbnails, how old the video is, how many views they got.
To outrank the videos, I can come up with a better title thumbnail, and also get a higher audience retention on the video. Try to aim for at least 40% audience retention on your video.
Optimize your video
YouTube knows if you mention your target keyword in the video, so remember to say it in your video. Create a clickable title for your target audience. Instead of using a keyword phrase, “difference between gravel bike and road bike“, I can ask the question, “what is the difference between a gravel bike and a road bike?” This would make my audience more curious to click and watch the video.
If nobody clicks and watches your video, you’ll have wasted all that time making the video. A great tool for coming up with different titles is ChaGPT. Just ask ChatGPT to write 10 super engaging titles for a video about how to ride a gravel bike.
These are the titles it suggested within a few seconds.
If you have TubeBuddy installed, you can use the AI title generator to come up with a bunch of different titles. Also include your main keyword phrase in the description and tags of your video. Your video description helps YouTube understand the context of your video. The better they understand the content of your video, the higher you’ll rank and you’ll also appear in YouTube suggested videos.
Keep in mind the first 3 lines of your video description is what people see while they’re watching your video.
Upload a transcript of your video so people that can’t hear well or have the sound turned off can read the subtitles on your video. You can even translate your video into different languages, to expose your content to a wider audience.
Add video chapters in the description below your video. include keywords in your video chapter titles to make it easier for YouTube to identify your content. It also helps your audience to skip to that most interesting part of your video.
As I mentioned previously, place all your related videos in a playlist and link them to each other in a end screen. This will motivate viewers to binge watch multiple videos in a row. At the end of your video, give a strong call to action to watch the next best video in the series,
Create a high retention video
If you wan to get your videos to rank on the first page of YouTube, youv’e got to keep people watching as long as possible. The amount of time you keep people watching is called audience retention, which is a huge factor in the ranking of your videos.
YouTube says, “your goal is to keep audience retention as close to 100% as you can, because this means viewers are watching all the way through your videos and videos with consistently high audience retention and watch time, have the potential to show up more frequently in search and suggested locations on YouTube”
In other words, if your video keeps people on YouTube, your video will rank higher in the search results. You can also encourage them to stay longer on the YouTube platform by getting them to watch multiple videos in a playlist. So at the end of your video, encourage them to watch the next best video in the playlist.
Tips on how to create a high retention video.
- Make sure you include high quality content that keeps viewers watching.
- Hook your viewers in the first 30 seconds of a video by asking a question or making a bold statement. You can also tease them about what’s coming up next.
- Maintain the attention of your viewers by using text, transitions, graphics, et cetera.
- You can also ask them a question to keep them engaged. For example, in this video, I could ask, “what keyword phrase would you like to rank on the first page of YouTube?“
Create a video series around one topic.
So if my theme is gravel bike, my topics may include how to build a cheap gravel bike, what is a gravel bike, how to choose a gravel bike, how to clean a gravel bike, riding a gravel bike, how to fit a gravel bike, et cetera.
The more keyword phrases you can rank on the first page of YouTube, the greater authority your channel will have.
For example, you can create 10 videos and put them all in a playlist, then link them to each other in the end screens. When someone watches one video on the playlist, they’ll automatically see all the other videos in the playlist, so they’ll binge watch multiple videos in a row. This sends a signal to the YouTube algorithm that people are very interested in this topic and will push your video out to a wider audience.
Create a clickable thumbnail
Your thumbnail is the first thing viewers see when they’re searching for information in the YouTube search engine. If your thumbnail doesn’t stand out from your competitor’s thumbnails, nobody’s going to watch your video and you’ll have wasted all that time making your video.
Therefore, before you create your thumbnail, look at your competitor’s thumbnails in the YouTube search engine, then make a thumbnail that stands out from your competitors.
Use contrasting colors, bold text, and just a few words or even no words. Avoid repeating the title in your thumbnail, and your thumbnail and title should work together to win the click.
Make sure your content is what was promised in your title and thumbnail. Typically, I’ll create my thumbnail before I create the video. This gives me time to adjust the design as I create the content. I also recommend split testing 2 different thumbnails. I use TubeBuddy’s’ thumbnail split testing tool to split test 2 different thumbnails to see which one gets the most traffic.
Often times, the thumbnail that I thought was the best design is very different to the ones that my audience chose.
Promote your video.
If you promote your video on other social media platforms and somebody watches your video on YouTube based upon seeing it on those platforms, it sends a signal to YouTube that that video is very important. The more signals YouTube receives from people watching your video, the higher the probability your video will rank in the top of the search engines.
Click the share button under your video to post a YouTube video to the community tab. You can also share it on other social media sites such as Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogger, et cetera. If you have an email list, notify your list. You can also place a link to that video in your email signature.
I also embed my video in a blog post together with a transcript of the content. This helps my video to rank in Google search, which generates more traffic because Google is the number #1 search engine.
Pin a related video or playlist to the top of your comments. When viewers comment on your video, rheyll see a link to the next best video to watch or a playlist to watch. This will motivate them to watch more than one video.
If you want to get even more views, make that video your channel trailer because it appears at the top of your YouTube channel homepage. When non-subscribers visit your channel homepage, they’ll see your video prominently displayed at the top of the page.
Keep in mind, the more videos you rank on the 1st page of YouTube and Google, the more authority your channel will have. If you’re just getting started, this is a great way to build authority for a small channel.
If you want to generate a passive income on YouTube, you need to know the most effective ways to make money from your channel. Watch this video right now on “How I make money on YouTube, even while sleeping”.
Discover my top strategies to get your first 1000 subscribers FAST, so you can join the YouTube Partner Program and start generating a passive income from your YouTube Channel
Click here for more info
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