Channel Review How to do SEO on a gaming channel and achieve consistent views?

[Dr Pixel Plays]

User name: Dr Pixel Plays
Title of thread: How to do SEO on a gaming channel and achieve consistent views?
Self review: I think I've been doing okay with my channel, but I'm having a hard time getting views. Well, at least consistent views over time. I think my SEO really needs some work. I found some success sharing my videos on Discord and Steam, which helped my videos up to 50+ views. But once the initial boost fades away, I'm getting hardly any views at all. And the views I get then come mostly from my channel page. So I think feedback regarding my SEO would be the most helpful. I've tried to optimize my last video the most(Terraria storytime), and I think my problem was not targeting a niche enough search term. Any other feedback is also greatly appreciated. Some thumbnails and titles could probably use some work. But I haven't bothered with optimizing my old videos yet. I guess that's what I'm going to do with all your feedback. One thing to keep in mind when looking at my channel is that I started making let's play like videos but then shifted towards my bad idea approach. So I'm not too bothered about my old videos.
Channel review or Video review? Channel review
Link to channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH3hO838NbfQ_KgKiSFLKfw/
Link to other review post: https://community.tubebuddy.com/index.php?threads/31318/post-92555

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

i'm curious... i assume you are streaming crom a Playstation or an XBOX to Twitch or YouTube. Is that correct? And then i suppose you go in after the stream to edit your metadata? Do you edit the video content also?

 

[Dr Pixel Plays]

i'm curious... i assume you are streaming crom a Playstation or an XBOX to Twitch or YouTube. Is that correct? And then i suppose you go in after the stream to edit your metadata? Do you edit the video content also?

No, I don't stream anything. I record my gameplay on my PC and then I edit the gameplay quite a lot. I cut a lot of unnecessary stuff and add lots of effects to keep the video entertaining.
I also create the metadata for each video. My videos have all the metadata one should add. I'm still not ranking, except for really niche stuff, because I think I'm either doing something wrong or I'm targeting the wrong keywords.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

no, its likely not you doing anything wrong. That's just highly competitive stuff. Those super-select niche options are the best start to get your foot in the door on more competitive keyword phrases.

 

[Dr Pixel Plays]

no, its likely not you doing anything wrong. That's just highly competitive stuff. Those super-select niche options are the best start to get your foot in the door on more competitive keyword phrases.

Well, I guess you're right about that. Although I'm playing indie games, there's still a lot of competition. My channel is growing slowly but steadily, so my odds at ranking are only going to increase.

When I find the time to, I'm probably going to optimize my videos for niche terms. That should help to get me started on SEO. Then I can always try to target a little less niche term and go from there.

Thanks for your advice!

 

[Ater]

This will be a long post but hopefully you can get some good out of it. This is what I have learned from my own gaming channel:
Gaming is an extremely competitive niche and as a new/smaller channel no matter how good SEO you do you will in most cases not be able to compete with much larger popular channels. As an example, your latest video is about Terraria, according to TubeBuddy there are almost 5 million Terarria videos on YouTube and some channels that create videos for Terraria have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, there are even channels with millions of subscribers doing Terraria videos. I did not check on the SEO but with millions of videos IΓÇÖm sure there are some with great SEO. As you can tell it will most likely be hard if not impossible for a small/new channel to get a Terraria video ranking in one of the top spots, it would probably be very hard getting into the top 100 videos and to be honest how often do you even look at number 63 in the search results?

What most new/smaller gaming channels need to do to be able to compete with the search rankings is to niche down to a smaller niche to be able to compete. A channel I was following years ago told me that his journey was something like:
He used to do videos for this popular game, but as a small new channel nobody found his videos. So he did some research and found a smaller sub niche withing that game. Not a single other gaming channel was making videos about the different weapons and units in the game (this game had a lot of different weapons and units). So he started doing videos for every single weapon and unit in the game.

Did many people search for the weapons/units? No not at all while popular videos from the big channels where getting tens of thousands of views his niche videos where getting 20-200 views each but people where finding the videos, people that where really interested in the game he was playing and creating content for. And since they liked his videos and found them helpful some of them checked out his channel and found more content for the game, subscribed and started watching more of his videos which some was does videos where he couldnΓÇÖt compete for the search results.

This made his channel steadily grow until he didnΓÇÖt need to make does smaller niche videos anymore and nowadays he can live of his channel havenΓÇÖt had to produce that type of sub niche content for years. I have gone through a similar journey for my own channel, IΓÇÖm still small but finding a less crowded niche has really helped with the growth.

I liked your Terraria video and your style, itΓÇÖs different compare to a lot of videos out there and I believe you have a great chance on succeeding if you just work hard, keep on improving and stay patient. I would say that your type of video is harder to marked through SEO, since they are more about telling a story than the game so hard to find good words that people actually search for. So if you stick with your current format I believe the in the beginning the best way for you to find viewers and subs are not SEO but manually marketing your videos manually on other places, like you said you had on Discord and Steam.

It might be smart focusing on doing videos for just 1-3 games in the beginning will building a core audience. If I found your Terraria video, likes it and then decided to check out the channel I donΓÇÖt find any more Terraria videos? If I like Terraria and found you that way chancer a much larger for me to subscribe and come back if you have more Terraria content for me to check out. If you initially decides to focus on just one or a few games there you could become that channel that makes does great Terraria stories that a lot of Terraria people starts following waiting to the next story. Then as your channel grows it will be easier for you to branch out to more games since you are a larger channel and you videos will have a bigger chance to compete when it comes to SEO.

Also remember to most channels YouTube will be a marathon, not a sprint. A lot of channels have to make hundreds if not thousands of videos for years before the channel takes off.

 

[Dr Pixel Plays]

I really appreciate your thorough feedback. That's really going to help me a lot.

Yeah, I thought if I optimize my video for my search term, I would have a chance, because there were no other videos quite like mine, and the other videos weren't well optimized, but against all the other videos I had no chance.

If I think about it, all the other gaming channels that I know who are playing many different games, all started focusing on one game, or well did long lets plays.
I also know that you need to find your niche within the bigger niche of the game. I've read an article from a Minecraft YouTuber and he was able to get views because he focused on niches.

I, of course, didn't try to rank for 'Terraria', but, as you said, without having made any videos of the game before, I simply lack the authority to get into a niche. That Minecraft YouTuber, of course, built channel authority.

So, I'll think I'm going to semi focus on a game. Just uploading a video of it every 2nd week and then do a different game every other week for variety.
Probably gonna focus on Scrap Mechanic. My two videos of it got about 100 views each. I know how to share them in the community, and since it's a Sandbox game, I'll never run out of things to do.

I also find that the people that actually watch my videos, really like them, literally. My dislike/like ratio is something like 1/50.

Well, my Terraria video is the extreme of my style. I usually do edit a lot, and add some effects, but I don't do scripted commentary. Otherwise, I could only upload like once a month.

I know it's a marathon. I just usually have a quite intense approach to things that I really care about.

And again, thanks for your feedback! This was just the advice that I needed! I wish you the best of luck with your channel!