Transcription
If you're on YouTube and your channel is not growing, I have something very uncomfortable to talk to you guys about today. I see you posting your videos. You're wondering why they're not taking off. You're doing every step and hack and trick that the gurus are telling you to do. You're posting shorts. You're following the trends. You're using AI tools, all the hacks, and yet no views. Crickets.
Meanwhile, you and I see these creators who seem to effortlessly get their videos in front of the right people. Not millions of random views, the right views from people who actually care about what they're saying. And if you guys want to know the difference, it's not what you think.
Look, I've been doing this YouTube thing for over 14 years now. And I'm going to be straight with you. For the first eight years, I sucked. I made every mistake that you can imagine. I was the guy chasing the shiny objects, the views, the attention, trying every new strategy that popped up on my feed. But then something clicked. I stopped trying to game the system and I started to work with it.
My first channel is now up to over 314,000 subscribers, 21 plus million views organically. And here's the cool thing. That channel made over $3.5 million in revenue that came directly from my YouTube content. I got some awards here to prove it. No ads. It's all organic. Just people finding the videos and then buying whatever I was selling at the time. This is the importance of it, guys. I built two seven-figure businesses using YouTube as my main business engine.
And earlier this year, I decided to prove that it wasn't just luck. So, I started this channel that you're watching right now, Absolute Zero. Right? This is where I started. Just me in the middle of one of the craziest, busiest periods of my life. We have a 8-week old baby as I'm shooting this. And I'm building this from scratch with you. And why am I telling you this? Because I want to show you that this stuff actually works. I don't want to be the guy at the top of the mountain screaming down. It's so easy to climb all the way up here. I want to climb with you guys through the highs, through the lows, and show you every step of the way that this works.
Now, I've been talking about this for a long time. And here's what most creators get wrong about SEO on YouTube. They think it's outdated. They think it's just like a technical thing that doesn't really matter anymore. They say it's all about the shorts now. They say trending sounds. You got to go viral, right? And you know what? I actually get where they're coming from because if you look at the biggest YouTubers, it seems like all they do is post. And whatever they post, they automatically get the views. They're not optimizing for search, Adam. I don't see any keywords in their search. They just post, right? And it's so frustrating when you go in and you're trying to like you have these tools open to see how did they get to where they are.
But here's what they're not telling you. They don't need SEO anymore. Their channels are already trained. YouTube knows exactly who their audience is. When Mr. Beast, when Ryan Tran posts a video, YouTube doesn't need to guess who might want to watch it. The algorithm already knows. But you and I don't have that luxury yet. My other channel at this point has that luxury. And that's why I'm saying this from experience.
When you upload a video without proper SEO, you're basically throwing it into the void and hoping that YouTube figures it out. And when YouTube has to guess, guess what happens? Things go wrong. You don't get any impressions. You don't get any clicks. Your views are coming from people that bounce 10 seconds later because they're being shown to the wrong people. Your video gets buried. And that's the worst feeling in the world because you're left wondering what happened. It's kind of like walking up to somebody on the street and asking for directions, but refusing to tell them where you're trying to go. How are they supposed to help you? That's exactly how the algorithm works.
Real SEO, and I'm talking about modern SEO, not just the keyword stuffing garbage from 2015. It did work back then, but not anymore. It's just to clarify your message. You're giving YouTube a clear signal. This is what this video is about. These are the people I want it to be shown to, and here's why they should care. The clearer you are on this stuff, guys, the faster YouTube can connect with you and show your stuff to the right audience.
I'll say this till I'm blue in the face because you guys think that it's just about a thumbnail. You think that it's just about being energetic and charismatic or luck, right? If you guys have fallen into the trap of thinking that, let me know in the comments because we can rewire the way your brain works into optimization. And once that starts happening consistently, your channel gets trained. Your older videos even start showing up on people's feeds. Your newer ones show up on people's feeds. It's not the end of the world if your other stuff wasn't performing then because if we optimize it now, it can get into momentum.
So, let's break down the seven SEO signals that actually move the needle in 2025. Some of these might surprise you because they surprised me when I was making this list, right?
So, number one, channel keywords. Not video keywords, channel keywords. This is your channel's DNA. This is what most people completely miss out on. You get 500 characters to tell YouTube what your channel is about. So, don't be generic. Don't say business tips, lifestyle content. I'm sure somebody with a big business channel has one of those in there, but we want to be specific. Instead of just marketing advice, you say something like um email and sales funnels for online coaches. Instead of saying fitness tips, just say like strength training or nutrition for busy professionals over 30. Right? The more specific you are, the better YouTube can match you with the people that actually want what you're offering.
Now, number two is video titles. Here's a formula that works for you guys. Write this down. Curiosity plus clarity. You want people to click your video, obviously, but you also want YouTube to understand what it's about. Titles like this changes everything. It's like super popular back in the vlogging era where everybody was just like click baiting the hell out of all their videos. It might get clicks, especially if you're a bigger creator. Again, those rules don't apply to us, but it doesn't help YouTube understand who to show it to. A title like email marketing mistakes that are costing you sales and how to fix it gives YouTube clear signals while still creating, I'd say, curiosity, right? And please, for the love of God, stop keyword stuffing. YouTube's AI is way too sophisticated for that garbage. Now, write for humans first.
Now, number three is thumbnail text. This one's newer, but it's still very important. It's huge, actually. YouTube is now scanning and reading all of the text in your thumbnails. Now, I'm always saying to use minimal amount of words, but regardless of what you're using, they are scanning that. If your main keywords fit naturally into the thumbnail text, use it. But this is super important. Clickability always wins. A thumbnail that gets clicked is better than the one that is perfectly optimized but is ugly. The packaging matters more than you guys realize.
Now, number four is a bit controversial because it is the file name. And I've talked about this before. It is so simple, it's almost embarrassing, but most people ignore it. A lot of the gurus say, "It's so stupid. Why would people tell you to do that?" Here's the thing. Before you upload, rename your video file. Instead of 001.mp4, use something like email-marketing-mistakes-2025.mp4 or .mp4. Takes 5 seconds, cost you nothing. YouTube sees it, so why would you ignore it?
All right, with that out of the way, number five is your description. The first two sentences here need to be pure gold. Start with your keywords in the first sentence, but make it natural, guys. Write like you're actually talking to a friend and not feeding data to a robot. After that, expand on the topic. The description box doesn't need to be super long, and you can use a tool like taha.ai to write these for you. I want you guys to mention related concepts, but always write for the human first, algorithm second.
Now, number six is what you actually say in your video. You guys know this, but a lot of people don't realize that YouTube transcribes everything you say and uses it for SEO. That's why when you upload something and says processing, it's going through every word of the audio file that is your video and it knows exactly what you said the entire time. It actually scans the entire video and knows environment and things shown and stuff, but that's a different conversation for a different day. So, mention your main keywords naturally in the first 30 seconds. If you're really crafting those scripts, really crafting those outlines, then sprinkle it throughout the video. Doesn't sound like a robot reading a script, by the way. I I don't I'm not saying that. You got to be natural with it. But if you incorporate that language into what you're saying, YouTube sees it, and it only helps.
Number seven, tags. Right? Tags aren't as powerful as they used to be, and I've mentioned that before, but they're still worth doing. Your main keywords, then variations of those keywords. Again, there's great tools out there that can help you with these things. Even ChatGPT. If you run your transcript through and say, "Hey, I need some uh YouTube tags for this video." Think about topic clusters, right? Not just isolated words. If you say marketing, like it's way too uh generic, right? If your video is about email marketing, like I keep bringing up, your tags might include things like email marketing, email campaigns, email automation, digital marketing, I don't online business. Right? Now, if we stopped there, we'd be better than 80% of the creators.
But if you really want to separate yourself from the pack, there's also four advanced strategies that the pros use that I want to jump into now.
Now, I want to start off with multi-language subtitles. I know that YouTube just rolled out a brand new feature that some of us have. My big channel has it, not this one yet, but it's multi-language dubbing. Now, multi-language dubbing is something. I'm talking about subtitles right here. This is one of the big game changers that most people don't talk about. Every language that you add to your video as a subtitle. Multiplies your SEO signals, right? Same video, but now it can be discovered in Spanish and French and German and Portuguese, whatever. And here's the really cool thing, guys. YouTube makes it super easy to do. Now, you can upload subtitle files or even use their auto-translation feature. One video becomes discoverable in multiple languages.
Right now, the second thing I wanted to talk about is strategic chapters. Most people add chapters as an afterthought or they don't do it at all. Or they click the little button that says generate auto chapters. Please don't do that. Like never do that. Uncheck that from when you're uploading. If you want to know why, let me know in the comments below and maybe I'll do a video on like the things definitely not to do when you're uploading a video. Each chapter is another opportunity to be discovered within Google search. If you've ever looked something up on YouTube and you searched like how to change a flat tire and a video result popped up and you clicked on it and you realized that the video started at like three minutes in, that means that the chapter of that video was indexed by Google. So Google knew exactly what you were looking for and it took that and it sent you right there. Didn't make you watch the whole video. It took you to right what you were asking for. That's why chapters are so important. So instead of the chapter being introduction, which would be like the naturally, you know, automatically generated one from YouTube, write something like why most email marketing fails. Instead of tip one, tip two, maybe write the subject line formula that doubles open rates. These things need to be like mini headlines that could work as a video title by themselves. And if you optimize them for search, it will not only, you know, make your uh video more evergreen, but it'll feed YouTube with even more information on what the hell your video is about.
Now, number three is weaponized playlists, right? Treat these playlists like they're their own traffic engines. Don't just dump videos into a playlist and call it my videos. Create keyword-rich titles and descriptions for the playlists. Yes, playlists have a box where you add a description. Email marketing masterclass complete step-by-step system would be a fantastic playlist for that niche. It's going to perform a lot better than marketing stuff. I think you guys would agree with that.
Now, the next thing is strategically pinned comments. I've been doing this for a very long time. I think one of my old school mentors, Tim Schmoover, told me to do this like 10 years ago on my other channel and it worked wonderful. Shout out to Tim Schmoover. If you've pinned a comment, it's going to get crawled by YouTube as well. Use it to reinforce your keywords. Use it to bring up engaging questions, provide additional value, something that's going to get people inspired, motivated to respond or to leave a comment. Let me know right now in the comments below if you've ever looked at a pinned comment and have responded. Look at my pinned comment on this video and if you don't mind, respond to it. I'd love to, you know, get your answer on that. Thanks for watching is not something that you want to type there. It's a complete waste of time. Something like, "What's your biggest email marketing challenge on that video? Let me know and I'll make a video about it." Right? I do that on a lot of my videos. What's your biggest questions? What's your biggest takeaway? What did you get most confused about with this one confusing thing? And it gets people engaged. And the more comments, the more engagement on a video, the more it's going to be shown to other people because that's part of the retention uh dynamics, right?
So, here's what I want you guys to understand. Most creators are playing the short game. They're chasing the next viral moment. They just they think that if their video doesn't do crazy views that it's a failure, the next trend, the next hack, the next thing that they're following. They're chasing all these shiny objects and never focusing on one system to actually get into momentum. But I've been doing this a long time. And the creators who build real businesses, they're playing the long game. They're creating assets, not just content. They're not content creators, they're cash creators. When you optimize a video properly, it doesn't just perform well for a few days and then die. It can keep bringing you views and leads and sales for months or even years.
And if you're watching this and you're like, "Well, Adam, I don't have a business." YouTube channels can be a business by themselves. And if you guys want me to do a video on all the different monetization structures and different things you can do to make money with a YouTube channel directly or indirectly, let me know in the comments. I would love to vibe out about that for probably like an hour and do a master class on it. Let me know if you want that though before I do. I have videos from three years ago that still bring me clients or at least emails for people asking if they can work for me every or work with me every single month for my my other channel in the music marketing space. I get so many people like, "Where can I buy your course? The link isn't working." I stepped away from that. I retired from that space, but it's still generating sponsorship opportunities in my email every single week. I'm talking like $5,000 to do one video for a company. Once you get into momentum, once you build your influence, once you build a channel, the sky's is the limit. Not because you went viral, but because you're optimizing for the right keywords. You're providing real value for real people. That's the difference between chasing attention and building assets.
Look, I know that this stuff might be overwhelming at first. To me, it was. Again, it took eight years of screwing up and slamming my head up against the wall over and over over again to realize I wasn't doing it for the right reasons. I was doing YouTube for attention and not doing it with intention. There's a lot of moving pieces. I get it. But here's the thing. You don't have to implement everything at once. This video is easy to track. It's easy to take notes. Start with the basics. Fix your channel keywords. Write better titles. Optimize your descriptions. Then gradually layer in these advanced strategies.
I put together actually a complete step-by-step guide that walks you through exactly how to implement everything that I just shared. And it's completely free. I'll have a link for it in the description box below. I highly recommend going and getting it because here's what I believe, guys. YouTube isn't about chasing the algorithm. It's not the new features and all that stuff is cool and it's sexy, but it's about serving your audience so freaking well that the algorithm has no choice but to reward you by showing your content to people by connecting you with the right people.
Now, if this video was helpful at all, if it gave you perspective or something to think about or go and attack tactically, click that little subscribe button to join the channel family here. I got a lot more strategies that I'm going to be rolling out to help you turn your YouTube channel into an actual real business asset. And hey, let me know what you think. What's your biggest YouTube challenge right now? I read every single comment and usually respond to almost all of them, right? So, with that being said, watch this video next. Thank you for for joining me and I'll see you in the next.