I know a lot of us have asked this question — one we tend to come back to often, and it’s not an easy one to answer, but it is easy to put into practice. Hold up! Before I explain the answer, I have to tell you that what I’m about to share applies whether you’re a company wanting to create content on this platform, or an everyday person wanting to start making content about juices, fashion, technology, etc — as long as it’s 100% based on a YouTube SEO strategy.
What Topic Should You Choose?
Before jumping straight into figuring out what new video or series of videos you’ll put out on your channel, it’s crucial to choose your niche first. Picture a tree: the trunk is your channel’s niche, and the different pieces of content or videos you create branch out from — and rely on — that trunk (your niche). See why it matters now? It’s important to pick one main topic so you can grow and become a go-to voice in that particular space down the road.
What Makes a Good Niche?
Generally speaking, any topic can work, but here are a few tips to help you pick the best one:
- Choose a topic you’re knowledgeable in or know you’ll be one of the best at.
- Make sure there isn’t too much competition — meaning there’s still room to grow even with established players already in the market.
- Pick a niche you know you can stick with long term. Don’t burn out a few months into the project!
- Take a look at what your competition looks like and choose your niche with that in mind.
My Personal Story
Let me tell you something that happened to me with my gaming YouTube channel. I originally started uploading videos about a war game called Warpath — a game that had been out for less than 2 months, and I knew there was potential to talk about it through tutorials and tips for potential viewers. What happened? Sure enough, my trunk was this Warpath game, and its branches turned into more than 80 videos dedicated to answering questions about it. I started growing quite a bit — to the point where if you searched Warpath on YouTube, you’d very likely find one of my videos ranking. What’s the bad part of this story? Basically that after uploading so many videos and playing the game so much, I burned out on it and got bored with it. I’d see it on my phone and would rather check Facebook or play something else. After thinking it over, I decided to change the channel’s niche to strategy and war games, and because of that my views dropped, a lot of subscribers left, and the channel basically went through some dark times. The good part of this story is that it didn’t bother me too much — I created this YouTube channel mainly to help other people, have fun, and maybe generate some income from it down the road, but it never really affected me much. I’m telling you this so you’re aware of a situation you might run into — and one you can avoid by thinking through a solid niche from the start.
I Picked a YouTube Niche — Now What?
If you’ve already chosen a niche, the next step is figuring out what the branches of your channel will be. To find them, we’ll use a handy tool built right into YouTube’s own search bar. Let me explain:
As you can see in the image, I used a search for “graphics cards” as an example. Once I typed that into the search bar, it automatically showed me suggested searches based on that keyword. In this case, it gave me suggestions like: good and cheap graphics cards, graphics cards in Colombia, graphics cards 2022. If you notice, these suggestions tell you what people commonly search for around that topic — so why not make a video about it? By using this trick to figure out what my videos should be about, we’re getting a read on what our target audience or potential viewers are actually looking for, which means a video on that topic would, in principle, have guaranteed searches behind it. Here’s another extra tip for finding more branches for your channel: if you use an asterisk (*) before or after that main keyword and add words like: when, why, which, where — you’ll get even more suggestions built around those words. And that’s it — you’ll end up with an endless list of new videos you could make, all with real potential to grow organically.
I hope this content was useful for you. Remember, if you want to become great at creating the best YouTube content with an SEO focus, keep an eye on this site.
