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Language: en
In March 2018, we decided to revive Ahrefs'
YouTube channel and grew it from around
14,000 subscribers to over 170,000.
And the strategy we used is similar to what
popular YouTube channels like MKBHD and
Tasty did before having huge audiences.
So whether you're just starting out or feeling
stuck, then keep watching because I'm going
to show you how to get more subscribers
on YouTube with a simple 4-step framework.
Stay tuned.
[music]
A lot of videos on getting YouTube subscribers
will recommend things like adding subscribe
buttons to the end screen, asking people to
smash that Subscribe button, or to email
your existing audience to tell them
about your YouTube channel.
This is all well and good, but none of this
will make the slightest difference if nobody
is watching your videos in the first place.
Views are a prerequisite to getting subscribers.
So you need to focus on creating a "subscribe-worthy"
YouTube channel that will lead to an engaged and
loyal audience for the long haul.
Now, getting subscribers that actually care
about what you do takes time and adaptability.
For example, Mr. Beast, who now has over
44 million subscribers started his channel
with videos of him playing Minecraft.
And while those videos have racked up millions of
views today, that's likely due to his current success.
He published his first video on February 20, 2012.
And more than two years later, he published
a video announcing he had reached 1,000 subscribers.
So it wasn't exactly straight to the top for him.
Now, the framework I'm about to share with you
is all about consistently getting more subscribers
who are actually excited to watch
new videos you release.
And as you continue to implement this framework,
subscriber growth begins to snowball.
So let's get this tutorial started with a couple
of fundamentals that will be critical to growth
in subscribers, views, and for some
of you, revenue.
Fundamental 1 is understanding why people
subscribe.
Plain and simple, people subscribe because
they enjoyed what they watched or because
they know your brand.
And the more positive interactions they have with
your content, the more likely they'll subscribe.
Let me back this up with some data.
Looking in YouTube analytics, you'll see we've
had around 89,000 subscribers in 2020 so far.
And over 87% of those people joined our
YouTube community from video pages
and from our channel page.
So that means, a) you need to get consistent
views to get consistent subscribers;
and b) your content needs to impress them
enough that they'll want more content from you.
And the second fundamental is to know
how YouTube works at a basic level.
So when you publish a new video on
YouTube, the first people that'll get
notified are your subscribers.
And that can be through emails and mobile
alerts, subscription feeds, and impressions
on YouTube's homepage.
But these people are already subscribed so that
won't help you get more subscribers, right?
Well, not exactly.
When your video performs well, YouTube will
promote that new video to other people who
watched similar videos as your viewers.
And this can often lead to a huge
spike in new subscribers.
But these notifications and homepage impressions
are usually short-lived and can fade within a week.
As a result, the views and new
subscribers fade with it too.
For example, our video on SEO for beginners
got around 100 new subscribers within a couple
of days from publishing the video, which
was pretty good for us back then.
But you'll notice that new subscribers
dropped off almost immediately.
And while this might seem discouraging,
all hope is not lost.
The way people interact and engage with
your video sends signals to YouTube.
And these signals include things like click-
through rates, likes, dislikes, shares, comments,
watch times, and audience retention.
And when YouTube pairs those things with your
video's metadata, it helps them to understand
if and where it fits in YouTube search
and suggested.
And those two traffic sources tend to
send consistent views, which again,
leads to consistent subscribers.
And that's exactly what happened
with our SEO for beginners video.
We started to get a significant number of views
from YouTube search and Suggested, which
also led to that video generating over 1,000
subscribers per month from this video alone.
Translation: the trick to getting more subscribers
consistently is to get consistent views from
a relevant audience.
Meaning, you need to publish content that
a) interests your existing audience so
that they'll click to watch it;
b) engages your audience so that YouTube
will promote that video to similar audiences;
and c) do some basic optimizations so you
can rank in YouTube search and Suggested.
Now, the way you can accomplish this
is by following this 4-step framework.
Let's start with the first part, which is
to laser in on your channel's theme.
A theme or niche is what connects
you with your audience.
It's a common interest between
you and your subscribers.
And to continue nurturing that relationship,
you need to publish relevant content within
your theme to engage that audience and have
YouTube promote it to similar audiences.
With that said, it is my strong opinion that you
should start with a somewhat narrow theme.
And as you grow, you can start expanding out
to broader topics within the parent theme.
For example, MKBHD has well over 12 million
subscribers and has had consistent growth in
subscribers and views over the past
two and a half years.
Outside of the fact that his content is top-notch,
his channel is built around a single theme.
"Quality Tech Videos," which are mostly
in the "review" format.
Now, if we look at his oldest videos, you'll
see that he didn't start off as one of the top
tech reviewers on YouTube.
He started by posting short videos of his
golf swing, which I don't think took off until
he had an audience.
In fact, this review on the HP Pavilion media
center remote seemed to get the most traction.
He continued with tutorials and
reviews on software for years.
And now today, he's able to review top tech, cars,
and land interviews with people like Mark Zuckerberg.
And the fact that he gets millions of views
on every video he publishes, this tells us
that his audience is engaging with his videos,
YouTube is promoting it to similar audiences,
and he's consistently getting views from
YouTube search and Suggested.
Now, with Ahrefs' YouTube channel, we started
by focusing on topics just related to SEO.
So people that watched our videos and subscribed
to our channel had some sort of interest in
search engine optimization,
making it easier for us to get our subscribers
to watch videos on the topic, earn their engagement,
and have YouTube promote those
videos to new audiences.
While this all seems simple, I can't stress
enough how important it is to stay focused
on your channel's main theme, especially
if you're just starting out.
It'll allow you to create content that resonates
with your audience because it's relevant to
the reason why they subscribed in the first place.
Speaking of content, that's the second
part of this framework.
And I want to talk about this in two parts.
The first is content quality.
It goes without saying that your content
needs to be good.
But "good" has nothing to do with your
camera gear or production value.
A good video is simply content that
serves the viewer's wants or needs.
For example, if the title of your video is
"Tesla Model 3 vs. Tesla Model Y," but
the first 3 minutes are dedicated to BMWs,
then your viewers are going to drop off and
obviously won't subscribe.
And more importantly, you won't get
the benefits of YouTube promoting
your content to similar audiences.
So 2 quick tips:
#1. It's worth storyboarding or scripting your
content so you stay on topic and deliver value
to your audience.
And value leads to subscriptions.
And #2. Your title and thumbnail should
accurately match your content.
Clickbait leads to low engagement and that's
a surefire way to lose subscribers.
The second part is content format.
While our channel has had consistent growth over
time, we still made mistakes along the way.
In 2018, I had the opportunity to travel to
Singapore where Ahrefs is headquartered.
And seeing as we had around 30,000
subscribers at the time, I thought our
audience would enjoy that.
But I was completely wrong.
In fact, I think my vlog was the only video
on our entire channel that resulted in net
zero subscribers.
Basically, we hit the publish button, and after
a few weeks of the video being live, it became
apparent that our audience doesn't
care about Sam Oh or his travels.
And even years after the video was live,
there was no good that came from it.
So we unlisted it.
Our subscribers care about SEO and digital
marketing tutorials that are going to help
them get results for their websites, YouTube
channels, and businesses, so that's basically
all we publish now.
Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't try new
formats, but after you've found one that
works for you, stick with it.
Alright, the third part of the framework is discovery.
Going back to our schema, your subscribers
get notified of your new videos.
As they watch and engage, YouTube may
promote it to other similar audiences.
After that, YouTube may rank your video or
suggest them on other video watch pages,
assuming you've set yourself up properly.
And that's what this discovery stage is all about.
Now, there are two things to note here.
#1. If you don't have subscribers or a big
audience, then YouTube probably isn't going
to show your video to that many people.
And #2. If no one's looking for videos about
your topic, then you're not going to get views
from search or Suggested.
Now, with #1, you just have to accept that
it'll be a slow and steady grind before you
see traction the second you hit publish.
But with #2, anyone and everyone has the opportunity
to rank in YouTube search and Suggested.
You just need to know what your target
audience wants to see.
And there are 3 ways you can find topics
worth pursuing.
The first way is to use YouTube autosuggest.
Autosuggest populates search queries from real
searches on YouTube right within the search bar.
Just start typing in a query, and you'll see
some suggestions based on your input.
Now, just because the suggestion is there,
it doesn't mean there are a lot of people
searching for that specific topic.
So you'd have to actually search for the query,
and then take a look at the top-ranking videos
to assess both traffic potential
and ranking difficulty.
And there are 3 things you should look for.
#1. Check and see if the top-ranking videos
are all getting a good number of views.
If the answer is yes, then there's likely
search demand around the topic.
#2. See if the top 3 videos are intentionally
targeting the topic you've searched for.
And just by looking at the titles, you can see
that all of the videos are makeup tutorials
specifically made for beginners.
So yes they are.
The third thing to look at is the overall
"authority" of the channel.
And so-called authority is two-fold.
First, I'll look at the number of subscribers
the top ranking channels have as well as
the average number of views to
their last 5 or 10 videos.
This should give you a very general idea
whether their audience is interacting with
the creator's content.
And the second part to authority is
the channel's coverage of the topic.
From what I've seen, channels that are
very focused on a specific theme tend
to rank more easily for similar topics.
And if they're ranking more easily,
it'll be harder for you to outrank them.
So a quick tip is to search for your topic
using the search box inside their channel
and seeing how those videos performed.
And based on all of these factors, I'll
decide whether the topic is worth pursuing.
Now, the process that I just went
through is pretty subjective.
But you can gauge search demand more
accurately using a keyword research tool.
And there are two keyword research
tools that I've used extensively.
First is VidIQ.
VidIQ has a keyword research tool built into
their toolset, which shows you related keywords
to your topic, search volumes,
and various scores.
And you'll see that they provide well
over 100 keyword suggestions.
And second is Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.
Here, you can see search volume trends, in
this case, for the United States, the number
of clicks that happen when people search
for your keyword, and global volumes
broken down by country.
And below that are snippets of keyword
ideas from our various reports.
So, if we go to the phrase match report,
you'll see over 211,000 keyword suggestions!
On top of the same metrics that we just
talked about, you can use these handy
filters to narrow in on specific keywords
you want to see.
For example, if I want to create beginner-
level tutorials, I'll click on the include box,
and type in "beginners."
And if I see any topics that I'd like to cover,
then I'll go back to YouTube and do a quick
manual analysis to gauge our chances
of ranking for that query.
YouTube SEO has been one of our primary
sources to consistently get views and
subscribers to our channel.
And we have a full tutorial on how to rank
your videos on YouTube so I'll link that up
in the description.
As for suggested views, you'll need to have
an inventory of videos before you start to
get significant traction.
And from what I've seen, channels that are
focused around a tight topic that drives all
the right engagement metrics will
naturally lead to suggested views.
Why? Because if your videos are centered
around a theme, most of them should be
relevant to one another.
Now, there are obviously more technical things
to consider when it comes to earning suggested
views, so if you want to see a tutorial
on that, let me know in the comments.
Alright, the final part of this framework
is the CTA, or "call to action."
As I showed you from our stats, the majority
of subscribers are earned from our content.
There are a few additional tips you can
use to get more subscribers, regardless
of your current subscriber count.
First is the easiest.
And that's to ask for it.
And the general format I use is to include
the "ask" and the "why."
For example, "make sure to subscribe for more
actionable SEO and marketing tutorials."
Or if I've released a new series that'll be
dripped out each week, then I'll say, "make
sure to subscribe so you don't miss
the next video in the series."
Simple.
The second way is to use playlists.
Now, while playlists won't directly earn a
subscription, they increase the likelihood
of a viewer watching more than one video.
And the more exposure they have to your content,
the more likely they'll hit that subscribe button.
Playlists are a win in every way.
They improve user experience, user engagement,
and lead to more subscribers.
The third way is to send traffic to your
YouTube channel from external sources.
Seeing as our channel homepage is the second
biggest driver of subscribers, we include links
to our YouTube channel from other marketing
mediums like our website, blog, and social
media accounts.
But we don't just limit it to our website.
For example, when one of us is interviewed
on a podcast and the host asks "where can
people learn more about you," we often tell
them to search for Ahrefs on YouTube and
they'll find us there.
And naturally, podcast hosts will often link to
our channel from the episode we did together.
And the fourth way is to use interactive features.
These are clickable links that appear in your
videos like endscreen subscription buttons
and watermarks.
For our channel, interactive features have
only been responsible for around 1.4% of
our subscribers in 2020.
So I wouldn't expect much from this
subscription source, but it's still something.
Now, while I could go on for hours with other
tips and tactics to grow your YouTube channel,
I recommend watching our YouTube SEO and
video marketing playlist, which I'll leave a link
to in the description.
Now, if you enjoyed this tutorial, make sure to
like, share and subscribe for more actionable
SEO and marketing tutorials.
And if you have any questions, leave
one in the comments below.
I'll see you in the next tutorial.