How are you doing? Our family of nine is enjoying getting some use out of our new pool now that the hot summer days are here.

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We’ve had a family staying with us for a few months before they head off to move to Thailand as missionaries. You could definitely say we’ve had a FULL house!

It’s been the best time for both of our families to make memories together, but as you can imagine, there’s no way there’s this many kids in our house without there being a little conflict.

Sometimes, as the parents, we have to step in to tell our kids things they don’t want to hear to resolve conflict and make them into better tiny humans. We do this because we love them and want them to be better.

So, I hope you’ll accept my advice today as if it were coming from your “YouTube Dad” because I know it’s going to make my SEO fanatics roll their eyes.

But just listen. I want you to be better.

Recently, I did a livestream where I didn’t have anything planned and I just showed up to answer as many questions as I could about YouTube for an HOUR.

It was awesome – you guys REALLY came through with the questions.

The most common one I got was something like this:

“How do you rank your videos in a competitive niche?”

And it’s a great question. The underlying question here is:

“How do I get my videos that I know are good seen?”

Without knowing you and all of the details, story, and nuances of your channel, I’ll just say this.

Optimize for people. Not robots.

Most of you have heard of the ‘Dad, how do I?’ channel. This guy started a channel because his Dad left him when he was a kid, so he created a channel with general dad advice and teachings to help other kids who are going through the same thing.

He doesn’t have fancy thumbnails, titles, sets, or editing.

He’s just a guy with a really good story that connects emotionally to a viewer and makes them care about him and his content.

So many creators (and a lot of you with a background in SEO) are so focused on keywords, ranking, and the metadata. I’m not telling you not to include those things in your video, but look at the bigger picture here.

YouTube is smart. It’s advanced software already knows what your video about without you having to tell it what it’s about. This isn’t Google.com. It doesn’t need your keywords.

When your videos can create a connection with a human, that’s when you win on YouTube and your video will “rank” higher.

*I am using quotation marks because ranking doesn’t really exist anymore. Searches are now extremely customized to what you watch on your account and YouTube will surface things higher that it believes you’d like based on your watch history.

Thanks for reading!

Keep changing lives,

Tim

P.S. Remember, to “rank” higher in search, optimize for people. NOT robots. When you get people to connect with your videos, that’s how you win on YouTube.