If you’re not using YouTube as part of your strategic marketing plan, stop reading this and go create a video right now. Ok, wait. This tip is quick, so read/watch this first to get more views.

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Like all search engines, there are certain SEO tactics you can use to help you rank higher. Here is one simple trick you should use every time you post a video:

For those of you that prefer to read rather than watch, read on wayward sons.

First step is to create your video on whatever topic you want. That’s the hardest step.

Next step is to go to YouTube and search for the topic of the video you just created. If your video is on dog training, search “dog training.” The more specific the topic the better. So instead of “dog training,” maybe you would search “dog agility training” if that’s related to the video you created.

Look for a video that has a lot of views in the shortest amount of time. Old videos might have a lot of views, but most of those might be from a long time ago.

When you find the video that you feel is closely related to yours and has a good amount of views in the shortest amount of time click through to that video’s page.

Now you’re going to identify the keyword tags that the publisher used when they posted the video. YouTube used to display these openly, but recently started hiding them, so now you need to view the source code of the page.

I use Google Chrome, so for me I go to View > Developer > View Source. Poke around your browser and I’m sure you can find the View Source or View Source Code option.

Once you find it, press control+f (cmd+f for Mac) and type “keywords” (no quotes). This will show you what keyword tags the person used. You’re going to straight up copy & paste those into the keyword tags section when you post your video on YouTube.

When you do this, it tells YouTube that your video is closely related to the video you found. Now when people view that video there is a good chance yours will appear in the recommended/related videos section either in the sidebar or after the video ends.

If you use this tactic with the right related video, you could find yourself getting thousands of referral views.

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