TubeBuddy DOES the SEO SCORE really matter?

[Damon]

Well, the value of the content is king. It's what people value that allows you to only have generic thumbnails, one line descriptions and zillions of views.

For someone niched down like me, targeting an unpopular topic like handline fishing, that content will never show up in the same feed that the guy who gets zillions of views gets. Don't forget everything I shoot is shot like a documentary film. I use cinema camera, and color grade my footage. Editing with proven docuemntary storytelling methods, but that doesn't mean people will watch it just because it's shot and edited well. You have figure out what people value, then produce content based on what they want.

Without SEO I never would have found out about handline fishing, nor would have developed a product, nor would have built an audience around what was lacking in the marketplace. We need to quit calling it search engine optimization and start calling it a portion of marketplace research.

Sure, a popular YouTuber targeting a young audience can come in and produce one video about handline fishing, get a million views, then move on to the next spectacle. However, none of those people would be serious about handline fishing. None of those people would have the money to buy a high quality custom made handline. I want people who are serious about handline fishing as both a sport and a way to feed the family.

Spectacle content will always get tons of views without much work in terms of SEO. But, if you have an educational channel, and information channel, a business channel, SEO is alive, well and best suited to help you find what people value.

 

[Damon]

Sorry for the double post, but SEO for an educational, business, informational channel is not going to make you grow quickly. It's a long-term strategy. Once you niche down to something like Growing African Wicker Beetles, you then proceed to answer every conceivable question regarding the subject. In two or three years, you would have literally covered every conceivable portion of that niche. Literally hundreds of videos all pointing to you. All SEOed, highly valued, strategically placed pieces of content that people find every where they go online.

That kind of SEO strategy can build a business, grow an audience, make you an authority figure in your niche. When you're old and ugly like me, I don't have youth, beauty and popularity on my side. What I have is wisdom, experience and know-how. The best way to leverage that is slow-growth, highly-niched SEO.

There's a reason you don't see 50 year old rock stars who come out of know where. They're all young, barely into their 20s if that. Likewise a professional in their 40s should not expect to grow a YouTube channel in the same way, in the time, or use the same methodology as a 19 year old college student who could go on to be a supermodel.

 

[Xavier De Buck]

Sorry for the double post, but SEO for an educational, business, informational channel is not going to make you grow quickly. It's a long-term strategy. Once you niche down to something like Growing African Wicker Beetles, you then proceed to answer every conceivable question regarding the subject. In two or three years, you would have literally covered every conceivable portion of that niche. Literally hundreds of videos all pointing to you. All SEO. All highly valued, strategically placed pieces of content that people find every where they go online.

That kind of SEO strategy can build a business, grow an audience, make you an authority figure in your niche. When you're old and ugly like me, I don't have youth, beauty and popularity on my side. What I have is wisdom, experience and know-how. The best way to leverage that is slow-growth highly-niched SEO.

There's a reason you don't see 50 year old rock stars who come out of know where. They're all young, barely into their 20s if that. Likewise a professional in their 40s should not expect to grow a YouTube channel in the same way, in the time, or use the same methodology as a 19 year old college student who could go on to be a supermodel.

I think you hit the nail on the head there - I ASSUME most of us here are in it for the long haul and are honestly struggling to make heads or tails on how to approach this whole video journey given what we are seeing happening around us with all these short 5-10-15 second videos getting 100,000's of views and blowing up accounts overnight.

IMHO in the short-term, SEO seems to help YT categorize our video content quicker, and over the medium-to-long term, solidifies those SEO search terms with the more and more content around those key words ie Wicker Beetles example. One can't NOT find that channel all over those keywords over time as there will be loads of videos from that creator.

 

[MediaMan]

Once you niche down to something like Growing African Wicker Beetles, you then proceed to answer every conceivable question regarding the subject. In two or three years, you would have literally covered every conceivable portion of that niche. Literally hundreds of videos all pointing to you. All SEO. All highly valued, strategically placed pieces of content that people find every where they go online.

sure.... but in 2023.. now we have a scantly dressed woman in a bikini doing the same thing, stealing all the eyeballs from those years of work. I'm joking...but unfortunately I think it's more true than we would like to believe.

given what we are seeing happening around us with all these short 5-10-15 second videos getting 100,000's of views and blowing up accounts overnight.

It's the world we live in right now, social media has become 99% visual. We CAN capitalize on some of those tactics, but at the expense of less targeted views. The big question.. 1 highly targeted view is worth X amount of less targeted views. But how many views does X stand for? If you could add something to your shorts to increase views 10x or more, would you do it knowing that a lot of those views would be less targeted? That's what I have been doing and probably the reason why my views/sub ratio is so poor. But I think there is some long term value there from the exposure. Hopefully... lol..

 

[The Bargainhunter uk]

I was thinking the same thing do people use tags in their videos still in 2023 ?

 

[Lindam]

W

It matters, but not as much as you think. Is a very tricky thing, this whole SEO scoring game.

The first thing you have to understand is, as I have said many times on here, "Something is only special as long as it is rare." The thing about great SEO is, it is NOT rare. You and about ten million other Tubers have SEO scores of 100. I have videos with scores of 100 that have almost no views at all. You see, once something becomes commonplace, it loses the special appeal and scale becomes balanced and there is no advantage in it.

Let's pretend that SEO score is a runner that can run the 100 in 10 seconds and everyone else can only do it in 15. Well, that runner is special and will always win. But now, he has set a standard and everyone else trains until they can all run the 100 in 10 seconds. Now the race is even and he is no longer special. This is how it is with good SEO. Thanks to tools like TubeBuddy, now everyone has good SEO. The race is even again.

What I am saying is that good SEO is just the beginning of competing in a market where everyone has an SEO score of 100. It may not help you win, but without it, you are definitely losing.

 

[Lindam]

Well said, now I understand SEO much better. Thank you for explaining it.

 

[Damon]

sure.... but in 2023.. now we have a scantly dressed woman in a bikini doing the same thing, stealing all the eyeballs from those years of work. I'm joking...but unfortunately I think it's more true than we would like to believe.

This is true, but are those people looking to buy anything? No. They are there to be entertained by bikini babe. The serious people looking to buy something are in fact using SEO exactly as I have explained. I don't care about tons of views. I care about finding people who want to buy something. People who want to buy something have a totally different mindset. They even type in their keyword phrases completely differently. They literally type in questions into the search, not single keywords.

 

[MediaMan]

This is true, but are those people looking to buy anything? No. They are there to be entertained by bikini babe.

This is where I struggle to understand. I WANT to believe what you are saying but if 2 videos are targeting a similar subject, I'm guessing bikini babe thumbnail gets first dibs on the viewer and if she delivered "good enough" information about the subject in the video the odds of that viewer subliminally needing any more information about the subject is more than likely....gone.

That's what I'm seeing in so many channels now, especially in the competitive outdoor channels. For almost every subject... fishing, hunting, building, farming, biking, hiking, exploring, etc, etc, there's a bikini babe channel doing the same thing. Now I will give them props because it is business savvy to exploit any advantage you have, but at the same time it's frustrating to see those channels have soo many subs, and at that point they don't care if no one is buying anything because they're making enough from ad rev.

 

[Damon]

but at the same time it's frustrating to see those channels have soo many subs, and at that point they don't care if no one is buying anything because they're making enough from ad rev.

My point is I don't care what bikini babe does. Serving my customers and my audience is my top priority, and that has nothing to do with bikini babe. Her ad revenue does not pay my mortgage. Anyone who buys my products or services is paying my mortgage, thus gets my primary concern.

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

This is where I struggle to understand. I WANT to believe what you are saying but if 2 videos are targeting a similar subject, I'm guessing bikini babe thumbnail gets first dibs on the viewer and if she delivered "good enough" information about the subject in the video the odds of that viewer subliminally needing any more information about the subject is more than likely....gone.

That's what I'm seeing in so many channels now, especially in the competitive outdoor channels. For almost every subject... fishing, hunting, building, farming, biking, hiking, exploring, etc, etc, there's a bikini babe channel doing the same thing. Now I will give them props because it is business savvy to exploit any advantage you have, but at the same time it's frustrating to see those channels have soo many subs, and at that point they don't care if no one is buying anything because they're making enough from ad rev.

A lot of things have been written on this forum, but WHEN they were written is very important. Some things were true at the time they were written and NOW are no longer true. What was true just two years ago is completely irrelevant now, or not of much use. So it is important to pay attention to when things were written on here.

Today, Bikini Baby (ClickBait) thumbs are extremely important if you want clicks. But by itself, it does not guarantee success. I have written many times on here what the NEW YT algorithm looks for. There are only three things that matter today.

1 The Click
2. The Stay
3. The Return

The Click is obviously the most important because, without the click, you cannot get the Stay or the Return. 95% of the clicks you will get will be directly linked to the thumbnail. There is a term used in conjunction with thumbnails on YT, The term is "Click Worthy". Quite honestly, that term is just a term used to disguise or excuse the use of Click Bait thumbnails. The line separating what is a Click Worthy thumb and what is a Click Bait thumb is almost invisible.

YouTube's decision to move away from an SEO index to a Binge-Worthy index and engineer the algorithm to focus only on the Click, Stay, and Return, has basically forced creators to employ spammy clickbait-style tactics if they want the views. It has done nothing good for the platform.

Let me try to simplify it for you and everyone else. On YouTube the only thing that matters is this; your channel's Rank. How does YT rank your channel? It used to be that your channel's rank was determined by views, subs, likes, comments, and the quality of your SEO. All of these now have ZERO value anymore in the eyes of YT in determining your channel's rank. The three things listed above are the only factors used by YT to determine your channel's rank.

In order to win on YouTube and have your channel rank highly. If your channel ranks highly, it will get suggested more e=often and it will show up higher in the Search results. To get ranked higher by YT, you need people to click on your thumbnail at least 30% of the time they see it. They need need to watch at minimum 50% of your video on average, and they need to consistently click on at least one more of your videos after watching the first one. Tick all three of these boxes on a single video, and you might see that video get millions of views overnight. But one video will not improve your channel's ranking. You need to be able to tick all the boxes on most of your videos for it to affect your channels rank in the YT index.

To consitently tick all of these boxes, you will need to employ every tricky, low-down, spammy, clickbaity, tactic out there. That is the new YT and the people that do this are the ones who are winning.

 

[RayFieldTech]

Having a high SEO score for your videos is a positive sign, but it doesn't guarantee immediate visible results. Other factors like keyword competitiveness and content quality also influence video visibility. While SEO optimization is important, it's just one part of a larger strategy. Evaluating metrics beyond the SEO score, such as views and engagement, is crucial for assessing overall video performance. Additionally, Adobe's Express blog offers valuable insights on increasing YouTube subscribers (https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/how-to-get-youtube-subscribers), providing further guidance on expanding your subscriber base and maximizing the impact of your videos.

 

[pitaji445]

You can have the best seo, title and a thumbnail but if your content sucks youll get a bad retention which is more related to you getting low views Focus on making your content better first, make something people would watch, anyone who tells you that your views are down because your "SEO" isnt good they dont know **** about youtube ive been working with really succesfull channels and maybe the last thing on their mind would be seo or even in most of the cases they dont care about seo Youtube wants to keep their users on their platform for as long as they can so theyre only going to pushout content that has a good track record of keeping people watching So stop worrying about seo first, focus on making good content experiment with different lenghts, style of edits, take a new approach and when one video performs better than other videos just double down on it, research your video what made it do good and then just rinse and repeat Also not worrying about seo doesnt mean you dont need to put effort into your titles and thumbnails Instead of making "optimized titles" make titles that are intriguing and experiment with thumbnails and dont copy paste others "if something worked for them doesnt mean it will work for you" for example making thumbnails similar to mr beast on a finance video will probably not get a good ctr one the reason being average age of your audience "what 16 year old kids may want to click on may not work on 40 year old" so keep your audience in mind and just experiment

 

[DreadNarratives]

I've made changes to a bunch of my videos and gotten the SEO SCORE to 100% but there's no visible difference in performance.

So is it a waste of time getting your videos to 100% SEO SCORE?

Cheers,

Miff

While a high SEO score is valuable, it's just one part of the broader equation for video success on YouTube. Continue to refine your content, engage with your audience, and adapt to changes in the platform's algorithm to maximize your video's performance. Success on YouTube is often a combination of various factors working together.

 

[Alex Crowdlinks]

You can have the best seo, title and a thumbnail but if your content sucks youll get a bad retention which is more related to you getting low views Focus on making your content better first, make something people would watch, anyone who tells you that your views are down because your "SEO" isnt good they dont know **** about youtube ive been working with really succesfull channels and maybe the last thing on their mind would be seo or even in most of the cases they dont care about seo Youtube wants to keep their users on their platform for as long as they can so theyre only going to pushout content that has a good track record of keeping people watching So stop worrying about seo first, focus on making good content experiment with different lenghts, style of edits, take a new approach and when one video performs better than other videos just double down on it, research your video what made it do good and then just rinse and repeat Also not worrying about seo doesnt mean you dont need to put effort into your titles and thumbnails Instead of making "optimized titles" make titles that are intriguing and experiment with thumbnails and dont copy paste others "if something worked for them doesnt mean it will work for you" for example making thumbnails similar to mr beast on a finance video will probably not get a good ctr one the reason being average age of your audience "what 16 year old kids may want to click here on may not work on 40 year old" so keep your audience in mind and just experiment

You've made a great point about the importance of content quality over SEO. Focusing on creating engaging content that resonates with your audience is key. Successful channels often prioritize viewer retention, and you're right; SEO isn't always the primary concern. Experimentation with video length, editing style, and audience preferences can lead to better results. It's essential to be authentic and not blindly copy others. Tailoring titles and thumbnails to your target audience is crucial, as different age groups have varied interests. So, focus on creating content that captivates your viewers and keeps them engaged.