YouTube SEO Lots of Conflicting Advice Around Keywords - Let's Discuss

[maniamsmart]

So I've been using TubeBuddy for years now, and I think it's an amazing little plugin and tool. I know there's another competitor tool out there, VidIQ, which is also fairly good. And one of the core features with both of these tools is keyword research, keywords, and how to metadata your videos correctly. Heck, even the latest live stream on the TubeBuddy channel was with Roberto Blake about how to do keyword research, how to title the video and how to write up the description with the right keywords. And there have been countless other hosts on the live streams talking about keywords, the keyword explorer, and the like. Brian Dean has a whole YouTube course that focuses a good majority on keywords, and other YouTube strategists have the same.

However, Video Creators, another respected team that I follow as well just did a live stream today too and one of the huge takeaways I took from that was that keywords don't matter. Take a look at this video here and go to the 34:30 time stamp and watch through to 38:55. I went ahead and challenged this by basically stating my first paragraph in this post via a comment in the live chat, and they did reply so take a listen to the second snippet here at 44:20 and watch through to 45:58.

What's everyone's take on this? I still believe keywords do matter, but it's just a bit frustrating when we have different sources stating different methodologies, and sometimes even opposing pieces of advice. Looking for a professional dialogue on this topic, as I too am a YouTube strategist, and I follow the field pretty closely working with clients every day.

 

[TubeBuddy]

What's everyone's take on this? I still believe keywords do matter, but it's just a bit frustrating when we have different sources stating different methodologies, and sometimes even opposing pieces of advice. Looking for a professional dialogue on this topic, as I too am a YouTube strategist, and I follow the field pretty closely working with clients every day.

Keywords still matter. The problem is people OBSESS Over them, and the truth is keywords can't save a bad video. You can have great SEO, but if the video isn't interesting, the title thumbnail don't convince people to click, it doesn't matter. Keywords matter still, they are the KEY focus on what your video is about. However, they also need to be relevant and linked between the title description and tags. I'm friends with everyone you mentioned, and what we want is to have people focus on STRONG content to match the strong keywords they focus on.

If you look at what we teach on the Tubebuddy channel, which is what we abide by, research and look where you can fit in, that BEST FITS Your ideal viewer

That's why we focus on it in our videos.

 

[PhatBeetz]

As a fellow nerd and noob tinkerer of SEO, I do think that keywords are of significance because they are the gateways that bring people to the video. As Andrew said, though, a bad video is a bad video. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink!

I do have another query along these lines. I've been using the SEO feature to experiment and tinker with my tags until I get at least one SEO suggestion for the video and both the tags and search results to green status. However, the SEO suggestion ebbs and flows. Sometimes I'll get up to 4 without too much effort and other times, it's a struggle just to get to 1!

Any input on this or is it really just tinkering and creative thinking without misleading your potential audience?

 

[TubeBuddy]

As a fellow nerd and noob tinkerer of SEO, I do think that keywords are of significance because they are the gateways that bring people to the video. As Andrew said, though, a bad video is a bad video. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink!

I do have another query along these lines. I've been using the SEO feature to experiment and tinker with my tags until I get at least one SEO suggestion for the video and both the tags and search results to green status. However, the SEO suggestion ebbs and flows. Sometimes I'll get up to 4 without too much effort and other times, it's a struggle just to get to 1!

Any input on this or is it really just tinkering and creative thinking without misleading your potential audience?

The SEO Studio? That's just checking you're doing 100% of everything YT suggests, that's not a score. It's giving you a check

Just want to say that.

 

[PhatBeetz]

Oh no, not the SEO studio (and I do get to all the stuff there for 100%). I'm talking about the side widget "Videolytics" when I pull up my videos in YouTube to see the scores. The SEO section is what I've been tinkering with to see how changing my tags affect the scores and trying to optimize them.

 

[AurigaDave]

IMHO getting the keywords right is important, but as others have said if it leads to a poor video it is counterproductive. I am sure other more experienced YT's on here can advise better then me, but IF I go to a certain channel a few times and the quality s poor, I don;t give a damn how many sus's they have I see the channel in a search and ignore it, or click on it, think "oh it's them" and go away.
Quality is IMHO the singular most important thing

 

[GardenGal]

IMHO getting the keywords right is important, but as others have said if it leads to a poor video it is counterproductive. I am sure other more experienced YT's on here can advise better then me, but IF I go to a certain channel a few times and the quality s poor, I don;t give a damn how many sus's they have I see the channel in a search and ignore it, or click on it, think "oh it's them" and go away.
Quality is IMHO the singular most important thing

Agree 100%! There are some high-ranked channels in some of the topics I watch, and if I see a video made by "x" person or "y" person when I search, I pass it by.

 

[Beanie Draws]

However, Video Creators, another respected team that I follow as well just did a live stream today too and one of the huge takeaways I took from that was that keywords don't matter.

I've heard Video Creators say this for years. I'm a fan of tim and I get where he's coming from to a degree, but he only started saying this when he already had several hundred thousand subscribers. Tags don't matter as much when you already have an established name. He and many other creators in the MILLIONS can put out videos with NO tags and they'll get views, because they already have established brands, so they can rely on title and thumbnail alone.

Someone starting off isn't going to go anywhere really if they don't use tags to some level. Why else would there be a search bar if tags weren't important to some level? Compelling titles are important, but honestly, how often have you ever searched "You'll never believe what happened?" vs how often have you searched for something like "how to find a job in 2020"

Derral Eves always says "until YouTube stop giving me the options to use keywords, I'll keep using keywords" and he's got the same amount of subscribers and a very similar niche to Tim.

Andrew is also right on the money (like always) people put too much focus JUST on tags. You can have the best tags in the world, but if your thumbnail looks like a 12 year old in MS paint made it, no one is going to take the video seriously enough to click.

They're all ingredients. Heck. I wonder how important closed captioning is sometimes. To many "Closed Captioning and subtitles don't matter" but to those who can't hear or don't have the ability to listen to a video, reading the subtitles is very important. It's just some creators are so massive that they indeed don't need the tags.

 

[Reviews By You]

Interesting, I watched the video (clips) and can see what they're saying but at the same time I agree with a lot of the comments here, especially regarding established channels getting a lot of views for any video they put out. What would be interesting would be if they put out their regular content and alternated keyword rich videos with no keyword videos so they could say "After 60 videos, 30 of which were keyword optimised and 30 of which weren't and the results were that the keyword ones were 20% more / less successful"....wouldn't that be useful

 

[Travel Interesante]

I pretty much agree with Beanie... the first two videos we had "take off" was because eventually it ranked in search for that specific niche (hotel reviews), because we optimized keywords AND made a decent enough video to keep people's attention for over half of it. A new creator does not have the luxury that a larger channel has to half *** it with SEO.