Keyword research in YouTube

Before I delve into this section, let me preface keyword research as not being a guarantee of anything: traffic, earnings, exposure, or otherwise. Personally, I think of keyword research as being great for not only figuring out excellent terms to use in relation to videos I plan on posting, but also for researching video ideas to do in the first place. Accordingly, I'll take things one step farther for you and show you how to better validate some of the data you come up with during your research.

There are two primary ways for searching for keywords with this tool: by words that you're interested in, and by video. In the first method, you search for a term that you're interested in finding popular, related keywords for. Simple enough, let's say you type "baking cookies" into the search box, then the tool will return keywords related to "baking cookies," as well as how many searches that term draws in monthly (it's not an accurate number). The second method allows you to enter a URL for a YouTube video that you'd like to use to get keyword suggestions from. That's pretty awesome, and a great way to see what suggestions YouTube has for keywords related to videos you may be interested in doing.

Leveraging the first method, when I performed a keyword search for "baking cookies," the results showed "Not Enough Data," instead of showing an estimated number of monthly searches. Check it out:

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that no one is searching for "baking cookies!" This is actually the perfect example to lead into the next keyword research section with, but before I do, I'd like to point out where it says "Match Type" in the upper right-hand corner of the image above. When you do your searches as per the intentions listed in this article, it's best to view your results either by "phrase" or "exact." If you view results by "broad," then you're looking at numbers that aren't truly representative of what you might realistically be able to expect in terms of traffic.

So, with that, I'm going to continue keyword research on the next page. Afterward, we'll get away from the technical stuff and I'll give you some ideas, best practices, and steps to hit the ground running with your new YouTube adventure!