YouTube Rant!

Hi all

I wanted to let off some steam but wasn't sure where else to do it. I wanted your opinions on this.

I've worked in SEO for 5 years (white hat) and heard Google preach over and over about white hat, good quality content being the way forward. Sometimes I feel like Google make a rod for their own back though trying to tackle black hat, because as a last resort I've had to rely on black hat trying everything else.

Google preach over and over in SEO about relevance, yet you go on YouTube and there are channels dominating niches that they don't even specialise in. I mean, we have Trisha Paytas (who isn't a professional dancer) ranking first for dance routines. We have beauty guru Tanya Burr ranking top for How to make a pizza... We have beauty and lifestyle guru Zoella telling us what to take on a plane travelling with us... Where is the opportunity for the small businesses or smaller channels that can give genuine advice on these topics?

This just contradicts everything I've learnt over the past 5 years (on Google search) about white hat. I guess it's just the obvious, authoritative channels (like authoritative websites) and rank for any term they want.

This made me lose heart and leave the industry (currently travelling around the world), but I basically gave up trying to help the smaller businesses get visible.

It's no wonder that people turn to black hat, I never thought I would consider it 4-5 years ago.

Interestingly enough, I have a viral video that got 4 million views - it was basically a cover of a song (I don't want to post it up here). It was a parody video. And basically it was a one off video that I did (aside from my real covers of songs), and as amazing as it is, it created a community of parody fans so the channel had to take a different direction - whenever I post a real cover of real music there's not much interest.

Basically, this post is just a pointless rant about how Google completely contradict their "relevance" argument.
It also is a real example of how you need to go the extreme of picking niche content to be seen but then end up with an audience that you cant truly dedicate yourself to. I am so grateful though to have a video that got that amount of exposure but I found it strange that a niche could forever tie you to something you're not so passionate about.

When my video when viral, it was basically a public link that I posted on Facebook, social sharing made it viral and it was links from radio stations and forum links, comments on reddit etc to get that video viral. I wanted to share that in case it could help any one else. The video was pretty unique, but with those it is difficult to recreate.

I now have a new channel (plus my other one), but my new channel is travel / beauty / lifestyle (a very saturated choice of videos) but I feel passionate about it - I just wanted to rant and find out if anyone else agrees with this and if they had any advice for actually ranking competitive content - do we need to rely on black hat (buying views) to get seen?

Thanks guys - I got that off my chest!

Honestly if you just quit because something does not immediately work out for you, you will get nowhere. Sure, black hat may get you there in no time or it may get you in debt in no time. When it gets you there, depending on used methods, you may drop down again immediately since you have a possibility to get banned. White hatting may take some time but with hard work, knowledge and a big drive you WILL make it on a long term scale.

One of the example questions I asked myself when I started my youtube channel on audience:
What is my idea? -> Who is my target audience? -> How big is my target audience? -> Are there enough people that would want to see a video on this topic (and purchase/click ads/whatever money making method)? -> (If yes) do other channels already have a large audience that is relevant to mine prospected audience? -> etc.

Remember, if you want change to happen you don't have to follow, you need to lead.

Yeah to be honest, YouTube is really stupid and confusing when it comes to ranking and also staying ranked. We're always taught and told to have good SEO- even from YouTube sponsored creators that are paid by YouTube to teach people about SEO and YouTube tips, etc. but yet there's channels who title their videos "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT" that get millions of views and are constantly promoted BY YOUTUBE. In order to actually get anywhere now, you literally have to use BlackHat methods. How can you get anywhere on a site that literally promotes channels with the worst SEO on the whole site. Also, I think it needs to be noted that A LOT of the big and popular channels did use BlackHat methods. For example, maybe they didn't buy views, but you can bet they did something like buy Reddit upvotes. BlackHat until you get steady and natural growth, then go WhiteHat and let YouTube promote you.

Since you're in the beauty niche. I hope you did a kylie jenner lip kit video.

DanielOnYouTube said:

Yeah to be honest, YouTube is really stupid and confusing when it comes to ranking and also staying ranked. We're always taught and told to have good SEO- even from YouTube sponsored creators that are paid by YouTube to teach people about SEO and YouTube tips, etc. but yet there's channels who title their videos "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT" that get millions of views and are constantly promoted BY YOUTUBE. In order to actually get anywhere now, you literally have to use BlackHat methods. How can you get anywhere on a site that literally promotes channels with the worst SEO on the whole site. Also, I think it needs to be noted that A LOT of the big and popular channels did use BlackHat methods. For example, maybe they didn't buy views, but you can bet they did something like buy Reddit upvotes. BlackHat until you get steady and natural growth, then go WhiteHat and let YouTube promote you.

Click to expand...

This is what I'm talking about! It's looking at other videos with ridiculous SEO that gets me so mad! But i think its easy to give up and get demotivated, so i'm going to try mostly white hat and a little bit of black hat just to try to get things moving. I'm glad you share my frustrations and see the same flaws as i do

I feel you completely. I've been doing YouTube for 6 years, study the platform like a scientist, and have more knowledge on YouTube's algorithm than probably 99% of YouTubers. I'm friends with many of the largest YouTubers and most of them know very little about SEO and don't understand why they are successful despite there being other YouTubers who make better content than them.

Currently, some of the keys to success on YouTuber are:
-go very niche
-post longer content (8+ minutes)
-post daily
-get a lot of 'total minutes watched' during the first 48-72 hours of the video going public.

AudioMacOSX said:

I feel you completely. I've been doing YouTube for 6 years, study the platform like a scientist, and have more knowledge on YouTube's algorithm than probably 99% of YouTubers. I'm friends with many of the largest YouTubers and most of them know very little about SEO and don't understand why they are successful despite there being other YouTubers who make better content than them.

Currently, some of the keys to success on YouTuber are:
-go very niche
-post longer content (8+ minutes)
-post daily
-get a lot of 'total minutes watched' during the first 48-72 hours of the video going public.

Click to expand...

tell me about it. Ive seen some other big youtuber who post similar but less quality content. Almost no tags, description etc but 100k to 1million views for them . . .

this is the 1st time ive heard of the 'total min watched' though

This is what puzzles me, no SEO at all for most YouTubers yet they get 500K+ hits.

BMWM3 said:

This is what puzzles me, no SEO at all for most YouTubers yet they get 500K+ hits.

Click to expand...

I was wondering about this to. Perhaps they're aware of how SEO does work on youtube with regards to tags, titles and description.
They're already big so youtube will rank them anyway but by not having any extra of these things other channels, whether competitors or just smaller channels, cannot copy practically anything to appear in the recommend search for that person.

good tool, PM me

foxkoneko said:

I was wondering about this to. Perhaps they're aware of how SEO does work on youtube with regards to tags, titles and description.
They're already big so youtube will rank them anyway but by not having any extra of these things other channels, whether competitors or just smaller channels, cannot copy practically anything to appear in the recommend search for that person.

Click to expand...

Exactly, and to be quite honest it is more natural and truthful how they do it. The only issue is YouTube favours them, so any new comer simply cannot compete. Very unfair.