Video Research A Search-King Video's Origin Story

[Stanley | Team TB]

The other day we did a livestream on Discord where we were discussing the metadata and SEO for a video that I have been working on. Every single aspect of this video has been optimized specifically to be a high-producing video ranked in the top of the search results for people looking for info on waterproof phone cases. We even did a very deep look into the current videos that rank and what was necessary to create a thumbnail which was going to stand out against them, after which I crafted what I believe to be the best thumbnail I have ever made. I don't know if I have ever put more work than this into perfecting a single video. Yesterday I published that video...

Absolutely not the results I was expecting or hoping for. And yet, this is also not entirely unexpected. The entire purpose of this video is to target people who are searching for information on waterproof phone cases. This has absolutely nothing to do with my channel... so why would my subscribers want to watch this video? They didn't and judging by the CTR a good portion of them might not have even realized it was a Stanley Orchard video as they scrolled though their feed.

Am I hurting my channel or screwing up my viewers?!

Nope. You are allowed to put out a one-off video, it won't affect anything. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that this video is going to do exceptionally well. In a few months. It needs to get through the gauntlet of my subscribers, and then it will need to go through the various cycles of audience impressions that YouTube gives it before they have the data to put it in front of the correct crowd. Also, it's early March. people aren't really searching for info on waterproof phone cases. But wait until their Summer vacation roles around. We'll revisit this thread in a few months with an update on how well this video has performed to see if I am right.

The point of this is that so many people get caught up in the video performance details analytics and tag rankings of a video several hours after it has been published. That's the wrong mentality. Of course we all do that but you need to go into this understanding that when you make a video you are not always going to see success immediately. Sometimes it takes patience and a little time to get things going, especially when you are targeting Search traffic like this.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

So it has been six months since we optimized and published this video. This is what I am seeing today:

Not too shabby for a video that was a one-off with a .5% CTR and ranked 10th of my last 10 videos. Now at 4.8% overall CTR the past 90-days have actually come up to a 6.1% presumably as vacationers are looking up waterproof cases over the end of summer... you'll notice that there was actually a little bit of a dip in CTR the past 30 days.

So... not exactly the gangbusters video I was hoping for. That of course is the exact reason why we do keyword research and why there is value in SEO. This video was simply not going to perform right out of the gate. My audience was not into it, it had almost nothing to do with my niche and though performing decent 40% average view duration was never going to sky-rocket this video to the top of the trending page. But the SEO saved it. Rather than this being a complete dud I was able to focus the intent of this video on what people were searching for and now it is living a second life as it tops the search ranks for terms like 'waterproof phone case 2022' and 'best waterproof cases for a mobile phone.' This brings in a modest-but-continuous 5 views per day. Now extrapolate that:
So long as this video continues to perform we can expect to earn about $12 per year off of about 1,300 views and for some strange reason we will add about 12 subscribers. Not too shabby for a video that took about two hours to script, film and edit. As a new creator you need to focus on doing this now... because the real value is in your ability to reproduce these results with a library of 500 videos.
That is the real value of Keyword Research and optimizing your videos for search.

 

[MattCommand1]

Stanley, I thought it was a fabulous video project for so many reasons. You probably already know this but the fact that you did that one video opened up another content bucket and you are able to piggy-back off of that video by doing future updates and other "water-related" reviews organically.

It is clear that you become a water creature by virtue of your fishing. The fact that you use different gear and techniques to travel, fish, etc. makes you imminently qualified to "diversify" future content to water products and experiences. Water, rivers, beaches, lakes, oceans, etc are settings you are tied into as part of your fishing.

I am confident that if you do a couple of related follow-ups to that original video, you could see some interesting results. I have seen that when you do at least 3 videos surrounding a topic which allows for mini-library in a playlist. There is something magical and elegant about the number 3. In books and movies, there are trilogies. The number 3 comes up everywhere and a trio of videos on a topic seems to fit nicely.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Stanley, I thought it was a fabulous video project for so many reasons. You probably already know this but the fact that you did that one video opened up another content bucket and you are able to piggy-back off of that video by doing future updates and other "water-related" reviews organically.

It is clear that you become a water creature by virtue of your fishing. The fact that you use different gear and techniques to travel, fish, etc. makes you imminently qualified to "diversify" future content to water products and experiences. Water, rivers, beaches, lakes, oceans, etc are settings you are tied into as part of your fishing.

I am confident that if you do a couple of related follow-ups to that original video, you could see some interesting results. I have seen that when you do at least 3 videos surrounding a topic which allows for mini-library in a playlist. There is something magical and elegant about the number 3. In books and movies, there are trilogies. The number 3 comes up everywhere and a trio of videos on a topic seems to fit nicely.

You are exactly right about this... it is prime-time fishing season so that task is on the back burner but I already have several videos planned for this later this fall.

 

[MattCommand1]

You are exactly right about this... it is prime-time fishing season so that task is on the back burner but I already have several videos planned for this later this fall.

I am looking forward to seeing them and your editing style.