In many ways, it really is the wild west out there in SEO land.

Yesterday I posted a job on eLance requesting someone who specializes in Youtube SEO to help me improve the rankings of the videos on my channel,

Most of the offers I’ve had are clearly from bots, but one individual did take the time to write a personal offer and give his opinion,

seo offer

 

I replied….

youtube-seo-my-response

I should also add that my channel is ranked #1 for “rpg reviews” because of my Show page adding that keyword to so many of my videos.

It seems the going rate for SEO work is about $3.25 an hour, but I don’t understand if the individuals making the offers actually understand SEO or if they are just going from what they have read on SEO blogs. From my own experience working on my Youtube channel, there are additional factors in YouTube’s algorithm that make the high-volume keywords much tougher to rank for, such as number of total channel views and subscribers.

I’ve found it is better to rank for several search phrases that, by themselves, might only account for 1,000 monthly searches, but if a video ranks in the top position for 300 keywords like that, it’s possible to get 300K views a month to that video. The difficulty is in identifying those keyword combinations and getting your video to rank well for them all, which is why I expressed interest in hiring someone who throughly understands Youtube’s search algorithm. But this person would need to be more skilled than I am.

The ideal thing to do is to use a service like Tubular Labs. I haven’t used their system (they were trying to charge Enterprise rates when I first discovered them, and I personally don’t think their service is that valuable) but I imagine it works by using your Youtube Analytics data to see what keywords your videos currently rank for, and then recommends keywords related to your videos based on the YouTube keyword finder. Basically, something that can be done right now using free resources, but requires hours of work to achieve.

 

Author

Carey Martell is the President of Martell Broadcasting Systems, Inc. He is also the founder of the Power Up TV multi-channel network (acquired by Thunder Digital Media in January 2015). Carey formerly served as the Vice President of Thunder TV, the internet television division of Thunder Digital Media. In the past he has also been the Director of Alumni Membership for Tech Ranch Austin as well as the event organizer for the Austin YouTube Partner monthly meetups. Prior to his role at MBS, Inc. and his career as a video game developer and journalist, Carey served in the US Army for 5 years, including one tour of duty during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Carey is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Carey also moonlights as the host of The RPG Fanatic Show, an internet television show on YouTube which has accumulated over 3.7 million views.