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12 Proven Ways to Increase YouTube Views

Jun 29, 2021• Proven solutions

If you want to increase YouTube views on your channel, it's very important that you follow some of these tips which prove effective for other YouTubers on a daily basis (more interested in subscribers than views? Click here). There are plenty of simple and completely free ways that you can gain more YouTube views and consistently see more traffic on every video that you produce.

Here are the top 12 ways that you can increase YouTube views on your videos:

  1. Put Your Videos in YouTube Playlists
  2. Create Custom YouTube Thumbnails
  3. Be a Part of the Community
  4. Tackle the Latest YouTube Trends
  5. Optimizing Your Content for Keywords
  6. Use Keywords in Your Video File Names
  7. Write Titles That Are Click-Worthy
  8. Use Lots of Tags
  9. Write a Thorough Description for Every Piece of Content
  10. Learn from the Success of Your Best Performing Videos
  11. Embed Videos in Your Blog/Website
  12. Share Your Videos on Social Media



1. Put Your Videos in YouTube Playlists

YouTube playlists are an excellent way to chain together your video content and organize your channel, which will both translate into more views.

A quality playlist groups together several videos that are in some way similar. Think about the different ways you could sort your videos – by topic, by type, etc. – and make as many playlists as you can come up with. You can even reuse the same videos on multiple playlists where it makes sense. After you’re done, viewers who want to see all of you Call of Duty Let’s Plays or all of your makeup pallet reviews will be able to find them easily and will spend much more time watching your videos.

By creating a themed playlist of videos that will play one after another you increase the chances of your viewers sticking around to watch multiple videos. Making playlists helps you direct traffic from your more popular videos to the ones that haven’t gotten as many views, and it also helps drive up your watch time. Watch time is an important metric for YouTube’s search engine. When you increase your watch time, you can rank higher in search results and even get more views on YouTube.



2. Create Custom YouTube Thumbnails

High-quality video thumbnails play a major role in getting views for your YouTube videos. Spending a bit of time in Photoshop or a free online program like Canva on custom thumbnails for every video will help to boost YouTube views and earn you more clicks.

By having specialty thumbnails you will also have another type of content that is indexed by search engines. Every video you post will be searchable by not only text (your description) and video searches, but by image searches as well.

For a list of YouTube thumbnail makers


3. Be a Part of the Community

Regularly viewing videos from other channels within your genre, especially channels about the same size as yours, and taking the time to leave thoughtful comments can help to build your presence within the online community. Other creators will notice you as you become a regular viewer and this will lead to them going to your channel and watching your videos (without you having to ask!).

You might even be able to create opportunities to collaborate with other creators by first becoming a fan of theirs. Collaboration videos allow you to cross-promote your content and attract new viewers and subscribers.



4. Tackle the Latest YouTube Trends

New trends are important to jump on, especially when other YouTube creators are having success with videos on a particular set of trends. If there is a worldwide issue going on, a new and popular game, or a meme that everyone is making jokes about, you should consider making your own type of video related to that trend. Trending content almost always earns plenty of views because people search out content related to the trend they’re interested in. Covering a trend can bring in a whole new audience for your channel.

You can find trending topics to make videos on using Google Trends or by checking out the popular channels in your genre to see if there’s a trend they’re all jumping on. When you cover a trend, always try to bring in your own original spin to stand out from the multitude of other videos covering the same trend.



5. Optimizing your Content for Keywords

Every piece of content that you produce for YouTube needs to be appropriately optimized with keywords. This means writing a full description that includes your 3 most important keywords in your first 3 lines, including a large number of appropriate tags and using your most important keyword in your title.

Do some keyword research to figure out what viewers who might enjoy your video will be typing into the search bar. You can start by searching for the topic of your video (i.e. ‘iPhone X review) and seeing what kinds of words are used in the titles and descriptions of the highest-ranked videos (or check out these keyword tools). You can even see the tags of other people’s videos using a free Chrome extension called VidIQ.


6. Use Keywords in your Video File Names

A commonly overlooked area for optimization is the file names of YouTube videos. Many YouTube creators simply have generic filenames for all of the videos that they upload on the platform, such as ‘youtubevideo54.mp4’. Saving your files with names like this is actually a huge missed opportunity.

Consider renaming your video file to reflect your keyword-optimized video title. Including keywords within your file names will make sure that even the file itself will be indexed properly in a Google video search. This is a very quick, easy, way to increase your search ranking and get more views on YouTube.


7. Write Titles that are Click-Worthy

A title on a YouTube video needs to work just as effectively as any other headline on the internet. You need to be able to capture the attention of your audience and generate excitement while still using important keywords and letting your viewers know exactly what your video is about. Mysterious clickbait titles only work for channels that are already big.

Having the ability to write excellent titles that also carry keyword information that is relevant to your niche will take practice. In order for a title to be click-worthy, it needs to demonstrate a clear benefit for the viewer. A ‘clear benefit’ might be a skill the viewer will learn or information they will gain. Creating a sense of urgency in the title will also help to attract more clicks, and that can be done by using words like ‘now’ or ‘today’.



8. Use Lots of Tags

Every YouTube user is limited to 426 characters for the total number of tags that they can include, and you should try to use as much of that space as you can. The more tags you use, the more potential searches YouTube might add your video to.

It's important to have high converting tags that will generate a fair amount of viewership. By trying out a wide variety of tags related to your videos in the early days of your YouTube channel you will start to see which perform the best for you. You can then start making videos that target those tags in a more focused manner. As you start to do research into keywords and the types of tags that work best for your channel, you can eventually zero in on some of the best tags that you can use with all of your content moving forward.


9. Write a Thorough Description for Every Piece of Content

The description that you post alongside your video is often one of the greatest ways that you can index your video in search engine results. Video content is starting to gain an extensive amount of traction especially when it comes to the way that it's indexed in Google’s video search engine results. In order for your YouTube video to rank well within the search engine results, you need to have a thorough description.

A thorough description means doing keyword research as well as using the maximum number of characters that you can for the description. The largest YouTube descriptions that you might see are around 900 words. That means plenty of opportunities to use keywords within the content and help index the page in search engine results. Google will index the entire description just as it would any other webpage content so including a full transcription of your video or a detailed description of the content that's in your video will help you to capture a huge audience and increase your YouTube views.



10. Learn From the Success of Your Best Performing Videos

Checking the analytics of your channel regularly is important for creators both big and small. The analytics in your Creator Studio can tell you who’s watching your videos, which videos have the best watch time, and even which videos attract the newest subscribers.

When you know which videos are the most successful at getting people to subscribe, you can figure out why (perhaps it was the way you asked?) and replicate that method in your future videos. This will earn you more views over time because subscribers will watch more of your content.

You should also try to replicate the methods you used to get higher watch times in the videos that perform well in that regard. Improving your watch time will get you higher search engine rankings and more views.


11. Embed Videos in your Blog/Website

Starting your own personal blog or website and embedding your videos within text posts is a great way to get more views. Views gathered outside of YouTube count too, and creating a web page means that there’s one more way for people to find your content in their search results.

If you do not have a blog and do not want to start one, consider whether you can get your videos embedded on someone else’s website or blog. It’s easiest to ask a friend, but you could also try to reach out to a blogger in your niche who doesn’t have their own YouTube channel. Explain that having a video embedded in their post might be useful for their readers, and can help to boost their session time which will be good for their search engine rankings.



12. Share your Videos on Social Media

The YouTube community is quite a large one on its own but it doesn't hurt to extend your social reach by starting social media pages for your YouTube channel as well. Having an official Twitter or Instagram that is connected to your YouTube account can really help you to share your videos with a wider audience and ensure that you can capture views from many different sources at once.

Social media accounts also help you hold your subscribers’ attention across multiple platforms. Make sure you’re providing some additional value on social media and not just posting links to your videos (i.e. behind the scenes photos).

Building up social media pages will give you plenty of new search engine results with indexed content as well.

Most successful YouTube creators also have links to their social media accounts all across their channel banner and they regularly share their videos as soon as they are posted over their social media accounts so that their followers share their video too.

You should sign up for every social media platform you can think of with your channel name, just so that nobody else can use it, but you only need to actively use the platforms that are relevant to your audience. For example, lifestyle YouTubers should be on Instagram but gamers don’t need to be.


These are all methods that anyone can use for free. Seeing improvements with your YouTube channel isn't necessarily something that happens overnight but with dedicated work and marketing, you can start to see your channel grow. Consider using some of these strategies to increase YouTube views.

Also want to create an attractive YouTube video? Stay tuned and try Wondershare Filmora9!

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Richard Bennett

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