Driving traffic to your YouTube Channel is probably one of the most common questions among aspiring YouTube artists. Of course, producing engaging content is always helpful. However, since there is no set formula for success in this industry, due to today’s highly saturated market, I wanted to share three tips that I have used in the past for my clients that has helped increase traffic to their YouTube channel.

Coming up with the right keywords typically takes about 30 minutes to an hour. You will need to do some research to find which keywords have a high search rate, while still maintaining a low competitive rating. So, the question is, how do you get this data?*DISCLAIMER* – Keep in mind that data produced by these two sources are not entirely accurate, so please use these numbers as a small aid in finalizing your keyword list for your video.

YouTube Keyword Tool:This is a pretty good tool in figuring out the searches a specific keyword gets monthly. If you’re using a keyword as a tag and find out that this keyword gets no monthly searches, then whats the point of wasting space and keeping it? This tool can save you time and increase your exposure rate in the YouTube organic search, since you know which keywords you come up with gets higher monthly searches.

Google Keyword Tool – As some of you may know, Google now displays YouTube videos in their organic search results. This tool gives you monthly search data for specific keywords AND it shows how competitive they are. Use this tool and choose the keywords with high search rates AND low competitive scores (this measures competitive keywords in Pay-Per-Click campaigns). Targeting these types of keywords will help propel your video quicker in the Google organic search rankings.

You have your nice list of keywords, now you need to integrate them into the three hot spots. The beginning of the TITLE of your video should include your TOP keyword for the whole thing. The rest of the keywords should be integrated into your description space and the rest on to your tags. Doing so will help increase your video ranking both the YouTube and Google search results, which translate into more targeted traffic to your channel.

2. Create custom social media share buttons to your video:

Here are two custom share buttons for your video and tips on where to place them:

Twitter: Use ClicktoTweet to generate a link to the message you want your audience to post on Twitter when they share your video. Be sure to remember to include your YouTube link into your message because a lot of people forget that part. Then use bit.ly to shorten the link.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<INSERT URL YOU WANT TO SHARE>. Take that and shorten with bit.ly.

Now that you have your two share links, here is the crucial part: You need to make sure to put BOTH buttons on the FIRST line of the description box, that way the viewer will see it without having to click the “Show More” button. I would use CAPS or asterisks between the words to drive more attention to the buttons. Doing this should increase the click-through-rate of your share buttons. Refer to the image below for reference:

3. Submit to Crowd Sourcing Sites:

My top two crowd sourcing sites would be StumbleUpon and Reddit. I have gotten thousands of hits alone through submitting content through these sites. Make sure that you have catchy titles for each our your submissions to help increase CRT% (Click-Through-Rate). Research ways to get more exposure on StumbleUpon and Reddit so you know how to utilize these tools in the most optimal way.