Your YouTube channel is yours, but it’s built on rented property – Nikola Roza

Nikola Roza grew up in a humble family in Serbia.

He borrowed some money from his friend and joined a program called Wealthy Affiliate. After learning the basics, he started his own blog which is currently a great source of Digital and video marketing knowledge

Read on to know more about him and his tips for Youtube Marketing

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1. Tell us about your life journey, Nikola?

I grew up in Serbia, a small and poor country in the Balkans, Europe.

During my childhood, several wars were happening but luckily, I and my family didn’t get involved. Except that the country and we as a family were dirt poor.

Now, I tell you this as a prelude to 2015, when I was 25 years old. Back then my mother got terminally ill with cancer and there was no helping her.

There was no help because we didn’t have the money we needed to try and save her.

So back then, I tried to start my online business to earn enough money to save her, and it was a fiasco. It was a fiasco because I knew next to nothing about internet marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, and YouTube SEO…

It’d be like if I decide tomorrow to start playing professional tennis when I never held a racquet in my hands.

So, I failed and my mother died. After that, I fell into extreme poverty. I was receiving state social help of around $50 per month and was really living with less than a dollar per day.

I remember my eating schedule was based on a system, “today I eat once, tomorrow two times”

Yeah, it was that bad.

But around that time, I also decided to retry internet marketing but this time at my own pace and with no time pressure.

So I borrowed money from a friend who at the time was working in Seattle and I joined a program called Wealthy Affiliate.

This program taught me the basics of online marketing and offered me the tools and basic hosting I needed to start my online business. That’s how my freelance writing business was born (it’s here: nikolaroza.com) and somehow, with lots of luck and a tonne of mass cold email outreach, I got a few paying clients and things picked up from there.

This is a heavily truncated version of events because I don’t want to bore anyone with my life’s story and the struggles I had to endure.

The point is that it was a hellish experience but I got out of it stronger than ever.

It didn’t kill me and it did make me stronger.

And in hindsight,  I’m grateful for the experience because it showed me I had no real friends and no real family and that I could only truly depend on me and my only.

So I’m glad how things turned out, and the only thing I regret is that my mother is not alive to see the success I now have and that she can’t enjoy the better life she deserved but never got.

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2. How can Businesses leverage Youtube marketing to fulfil business objectives?

Here are two simple ways:

First, it’s brand building.

Make your videos yet another touching point for your target audience.

Because when your future tribe and customers are exposed to your brand over and over, and in different ways too (text content, video content, audio…); then over time they will learn to recognize you and will develop an affinity for you over someone else’s brand.

Second– Funnel people to your own property.

Your YouTube channel is yours, but it’s built on rented property. 

It is smart to think long term and to try to get people on your own site and then onto your list. Because your list is your only property.

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3. What are some smart tactics to do Youtube Keyword Research?

I’ll give you two.

First, produce a dozen or so videos that target long-tail video keywords. 

Just like with Google SEO, those are the type of keywords new channels can rank for easily, and often really fast too, in a couple of weeks.

Because once you rank for these, you will start to get some traffic, and that traffic will be highly engaged (because long tail keywords bring people who’re very targeted and know exactly what they want)

You will start to accumulate watch time which is YouTube’s most important ranking factor.

Once you have that, and YouTube sees that your videos are getting traction like they’re the only ones that exist; then they’ll start to trust your channel and you will qualify for ranking for more important and higher volume keywords.

So start small and work your way up. Don’t make the mistake of targeting head keywords ‘head on’, as you will be very frustrated with your lack of results.

Second, find the tags popular videos use and use those for your videos. At the same time, use a competitor’s brand name as your video tag. This will help you get sidebar exposure because YouTube will see your video as relevant to your competitor’s videos.

And YouTube’s video sidebar is the most important real estate you can own. Much more important than a regular YouTube searches.

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4. Please share how Youtube SEO has evolved over the last few years and what according to you is its future. 

Earlier, the subscribers count was insanely important for Youtube SEO. 

Right now it’s watch time and it’s going to stay like that for the foreseeable future.

Why?

Because YouTube wants to keep people on for as long as possible on their property. So if your channel glues people to your videos,  then you will see a boost and it will only grow.

So the key to securing your channel’s future among the ever stronger competition is to maximize your total watch time. 

Because the more you have it, the more Youtube will want to promote your videos as a safe bet for them.

That’s how you will rise to the top among the endless video production that only increases by the day.

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5. How can one measure the success of Youtube SEO?

Here are the metrics to check, in the order of importance:

• Total watch time
• Video retention percentage
• Number of views
• Number of comments
• Number of likes
• Number of shares

The best way to ensure your channels’ organic growth on YouTube is to maximize watch time and video retention rate.

That will translate to tangible SEO gains because YouTube will promote you everywhere.

They like winning channels

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