4 Tips to Increase YouTube Subscribers

Here are four free tips to increase your YouTube subscribers:

Grow Your Audience

Make the most out of our metadata

• Include the title, description, tags, category, thumbnail, subtitles, and closed captions
• Upload subtitles and closed captions for your videos
  • These files are indexed and broaden your audience to non-native language speakers and viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing
• Add a translated description to your video for content that may appeal to viewers from multiple countries or who speak another language
• Avoid adding metadata that can be seen as misleading

Write searchable titles

• Add keywords to describe important elements of video
• Compare the popularity of potential keywords using Google Trends
• Search for popular keywords by typing something related to your video into YouTube’s search box to see what autocomplete suggests
• Ask yourself, “would I click on this title if someone shared it with me?”
• Try to write titles that build curiosity and set expectations for your video.
• Consider questions, top lists, exclamations, and other engaging techniques
• Keep the length of your title to about 60 characters so important information doesn’t get cut off
• Put the most important video information up front, like what your video is about
• Include any information that isn’t specific to this particular video, like show names or episode numbers toward the end of your title
• Select a specific video and look over its Audience retention report
  • Check the first 10-15 seconds of the graph for audience drop-off
  • A sudden drop in the first few seconds could indicate that the video didn’t meet the expectations created by your title/thumbnail combination
  • Use the YouTube search report under Traffic sources to check which keywords are driving traffic to your video. If an important keyword is missing, consider adding it to your title or description

Be sure thumbnails are eye-catching and high resolution

Descriptions

• Put the most important keywords toward the beginning of your description
• Identify 1-2 main words that describe your video and feature them prominently in both your description and title
• Use Google Trends and AdWords Keyword Planner to identify popular keywords and their synonyms. Including these terms can help you maximize traffic from search
• Describe video above the fold, include links and other metadata below the fold (“show more”)
• Hashtags (#) in video descriptions to help viewers find your video when they search for a specific hashtag