This is grossly incorrect. Suggestion has nothing to do with SEO and never has. YouTube search is were SEO counts. You're confusing two different metrics as the same. If that's what you've been basing your lack of growth on then you 've been focusing on the wrong thing.
From the lifetime view of my channel, YouTube Search forms 32.7% of my views. Suggested only accounts for 25.8%. Everything I do focuses on SEO, and people are still finding my content. Your assertion that SEO is almost completely useless is completely incorrect.
SEO was never meant to be some trigger to get the algorythm to suggest your videos. That's a total misunderstanding of how SEO works. SEO is a passive approach that over time with hundreds if not thousands of SEO optimized videos people will find your content on a niche topic. SEO is about niche subjects where people will find your content via YouTube Search not suggested. If you've been banking on Suggested, then you've been banking at the wrong credit union, so to speak.
Nothing you said disagrees with what I said. I stated that SEO helps with Search, a little. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but things have recently changed. The SEO that creators input is becoming more and more irrelevant because YT does not care what viewers say they want to see. They are driving viewers like cattle to the content that YT wants them to see. What YouTube wants is for viewers to binge-watch several videos before leaving. That is YT's sole and primary goal now, not delivering the precise content the viewer is looking for. They have tweaked the whole platform to achieve this goal, both suggestions and search. They stated this in an interview with Video Creator Magazine.
Besides, YT does not need the SEO we input to know what your video is about anymore. They use Google's advanced AI to analyze every pixel of a video to determine what it is about. The Google AI knows everything about your video down to what you say, what you look like, your ethnicity, every object (table, chair, cup, etc), every word on every object, every leaf on a tree or bush and what kind of tree or bush it is, every animal, fish, or bird and what type they are, etc, etc, etc. That is the Real SEO of your video. The real SEO of a video is so much more vast than what the creator inputs about the video, it is mind-boggling.
Google developed this technology Advanced AI through Google Photos. For years they offered unlimited uploads to Google Photos to acquire trillions upon trillions of photos and videos from all over the world. Little did anyone know that Google was using all of these photos and videos to train the Google AI in
Object Recognition. You see, for the longest time, Google Search was a TEXT-based search engine. Google's servers had no way of telling what was IN photos and videos, so they did not know what they were about. So you had to input text descriptors about the images and videos so that the search engine could properly list them in the databases. As a webmaster who has designed many websites, I know this, because when you add a photo to a web page, you have to enter the hidden Metadata about the image for the search engine to know what it is. But Google is no longer a Texted based database when it comes to images and videos. Google knows exactly what is in the images and videos without you telling them. They do not need you to tell them one single word about it anymore. The AI scans the image or video and creates a complete profile about it, that is massive and detailed down to the pixel level. This profile is what Google believes about the object and uses to index it, not what you say about it. This is the Real SEO that Google and YT cares about, since YT uses Google's AI to index videos.
This is why there is almost zero room for creator input SEO on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook Reels. They simply don'y need it anymore, and honestly, they don't care what you input. The only thing that matters to them is
User Interaction with content. That is the only SEO they care about. Since YouTube is now chasing these platforms, they are following suit and running things the way those other platforms are. Oh, one more thing. If you are using a smartphone to watch videos, even what you click on is not of great importance. These apps are tracking your EYE movements using the forward-facing camera so they can see what ADS catches your attention. Wonder why certain ads you would rather not see keep popping up even though you have told them you don't want to see them? Well, they know you are looking at them. Kind of spooky, but it is 100% true. I have had long conversations with AD engineers about this eye-tracking technology. That forward-facing camera on your phone is a most vital tool for advertisers and content platforms. It is kind of like, "
Don't listen to what the viewer say they want, watch what their eyes are doing and use that as a guide to know what they really want to see." The deep psychological profiles that have been built by these systems about us is frightening. They claim to know about you than you know about yourself.
I could go on and on and on about this, but you get the point. Real SEO is a very deep subject and goes way beyond what most people even realize. The best SEO you can do for your videos is a Click-worthy Title and Thumbnail. That is about all that you have control of anymore. And as we have agreed on before, they line between Click-Worthy and Click-Bait, is almost invisible. And as I have said many times before, doing YouTube SEO is a "
Minimum Standard". I am not saying NOT to do it. I am saying it is quickly becoming irrelevant on YT.