The key(words) to unlock more YouTube podcast views

Recommendation > search. So optimise for it. Here's how.

Podcasting on YouTube can be a big opportunity, but many podcasters I speak to are disappointed with their audience growth. They find it doesn’t live up to the hype.

Often, that’s because we’re publishing good content, but it’s not getting in front of the right people.

The good news is: there is something we can do about this.

I’ve grown two successful YouTube channels for major publishers - the Evening Standard (now London Standard) and the New Statesman. Both now reach millions of viewers every month.

In doing so I’ve spent what amounts to probably weeks of my life researching and learning about the YouTube algorithm, experimenting and testing to see what works and what doesn’t to grow an audience.

In this email I’ll save you that time by sharing one of the most useful tools I’ve found to help you reach more viewers and scale your YouTube podcast audience.

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How YouTube finds videos for viewers

YouTube serves videos to users in two ways:

1. By recommending videos on a user’s YouTube homepage and alongside videos they watch

2. By ranking results in YouTube search

It does this by first understanding either the search term entered or the user’s viewing preferences, then matching those with videos that other users have signalled are high value videos.

We can help our videos be discovered by optimising our content and metadata to give YouTube the best information on what our video is about.

Search or recommendations?

To some extent, the type of content you produce will determine whether you’d be better off targeting search or recommendations.

Content focused on answering specific queries may benefit from a search-first strategy.

At the Evening Standard we published news clips. Most of our traffic came from search, as people sought out video related to trending news stories.

But content focused on driving ongoing engagement - like podcasts! - is likely to benefit more from focusing on recommendations.

At the New Statesman we built a recurring audience for our podcast on YouTube, with most traffic coming through recommendations.

Bear in mind: over 70% of traffic on YouTube comes through recommendations. So while search might be a good place to start, recommendations are where the real benefit comes.

Most people are familiar with the idea of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But for your YouTube podcast it can be more powerful to think in terms of Recommendations Engine Optimisation (REO).

Luckily, whichever you choose, we can start from the same principles.

That’s the basics of how YouTube finds videos for viewers. But how do you optimise to make sure your videos appear in recommendations and reach as many users as possible? That’s where things get interesting. Paid subscribers, keep reading for a step-by-step guide to building authority in YouTube by building your YouTube podcast strategy around effective keywords.

Upgrade now to get full access and start implementing this strategy today. 👇

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Before we go to the paid section, a word of thanks to our founding members:

Founding members

Podcast Strategy Weekly is supported by our wonderful paid subscribers. And the most wonderful of this already-wonderful group are our founding members. They are:

School of Podcasting: a podcast that helps you discover the power of podcasting. Listen.

Crowdfindervideo: Publishers, you can afford a video podcast. Ask us how?

PodSchool: an online course providing a comprehensive guide to best-practice podcasting. Book a course.

Suze Cooper: freelance audio journalist supporting publishers, news rooms and media outlets. Find out more.

Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy: unreasonably detailed podcast marketing strategy to attract & convert buyers. Read more.

Thank you to you all!

If you would like to be featured in Podcast Strategy Weekly, become a founding member yourself.

Now, on with the issue…