Summary
I've seen SEO become quite challenging recently; it might not be as effective for all types of content sites anymore due to Google updates and competition from sites with strong backlinks.
People are tempted by YouTube's growth as it continues to gain users and engagement; it’s expected to reach 1.1 billion users within 3 years.
My experience in SEO has been significant, helping develop multiple seven and eight-figure businesses, but YouTube is a promising alternative that I recently explored and benefited from.
On YouTube, I achieved 100,000 subscribers and generated over $1 million in affiliate commissions and leads, alongside $100,000 from AdSense within three years.
Google's updates, especially the September 2023 helpful content update, have negatively impacted small to medium-sized blogs, which bolstered larger sites such as Quora and Forbes.
Google's new search generative experience (sge) uses AI to address search queries, frequently drawing on existing website content, which might decrease traffic to original content creators.
The younger generation is increasingly choosing social media platforms like YouTube over Google for searching, indicating changing search behaviors.
YouTube offers excellent audience engagement and conversion rates because of the personal connection videos create, unlike written content.
YouTube's algorithm is straightforward and focuses on video quality in two steps: enticing viewers to click on titles and retaining their attention; this simpler criteria makes it easier to manage compared to SEO.
Although YouTube is promising, it's not without drawbacks. It has less search volume for some keywords compared to Google and is better for entertainment content.
Building YouTube channels can be complex and less scalable than websites due to the intensive process of scripting, filming, and editing videos.
Although YouTube's focus on quality can be advantageous, it also means there's less room to game the system, making high-quality content a must.
Remember that when you build a YouTube channel, Google owns it, and it can be at risk of being banned or less valued if content doesn't meet certain guidelines.
Despite YouTube's cons, it provides a growing platform that complements the established monetization capabilities of SEO.
My advice is to leverage both YouTube and SEO. Continue using SEO for immediate financial gains while developing a YouTube presence to capitalize on its potential future growth.
Use the growing industry trends to your advantage, ensuring your approach is informed and dynamic, so you adapt effectively to industry changes.
Remember, building a YouTube channel can be beneficial but requires patience, quality content, and an understanding of its limitations versus opportunities.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing a mix of SEO and YouTube strategies to balance immediate gains with future growth. Start with low-cost and high-value tasks to ease into this transition. First, continue leveraging SEO, which you are already familiar with. Focus on optimizing content that’s less dependent on algorithm changes, like product pages if you’re in e-commerce.
Next, jump into YouTube as the platform is growing rapidly. You can start with simple, engaging videos that address your audience's interests. Consider using existing content by converting your popular blog posts into video scripts. Keep the videos short and use clear, catchy titles and thumbnails to attract clicks. Remember, retention is key; ensure your content is engaging enough to keep viewers watching until the end.
A good way to minimize costs and time is by starting a faceless YouTube channel or using actors, which avoids the burnout of being the face of the channel. Also, try using AI tools for initial video editing, which can simplify the creation process.
You must keep in mind that high-quality content is necessary for success on YouTube, as the platform thrives on authenticity and trust. This may take some time to perfect. Plan on building an email list from your viewers to establish a more permanent connection with your audience, ensuring you aren’t solely dependent on YouTube.
In the end, stay flexible and continue learning about industry trends to adapt quickly, guaranteeing long-term success with both YouTube and SEO.
Quotes by Author
"In the last year, SEO's become more difficult than it's ever been before"
"Billionaires have been made on this platform"
"The number of YouTube users is expected to reach 1.1 billion users in the next 3 years"
"Young whipper snappers are choosing social media over Google for internet searching"
"YouTube indeed has its cons which you need to know about"
Full Transcript
in the last year seo's become more difficult than it's ever been before to the point that it's the first time I've had to ask myself in my 15-year-old career is SEO is still worth it algorithm updates competition from websites with Giga backlink profiles and AI overviews are making it seem silly to depend on Google for traffic sure you can still make tons of money with SEO especially if you're in e-commerce or SAS or any other business type that Google's been making out with but is there something else you could be doing with less effort to make more money welcome to only fans no but seriously everyone talking about YouTube being the Messiah that's going to lead us to the promised land the number of YouTube users is expected to reach 1.1 billion users in the next 3 years Americans are addicted to YouTube more than fentanyl billionaires have been made on this platform and even I've swallowed the blue pill and have taken a video format my SEO history includes founding seven and eight figure businesses including digity marketing lead spring Authority Builders digity links the affiliate lab the search initiative and the Chang maio conference on the YouTube side of things yes there's this channel which has earned me 100,000 subscribers silver play button but I also have six other channels in various niches from Health to Legal some are faceless channels and in others I use actors and in just 3 years of doing YouTube I've generated over $1 million in affiliate commissions and leads through YouTube not to mention a cool $100,000 from AdSense in this video I'll answer the question should you get into YouTube now or is it too late but before we do that I want to let you know that my video agency epic video has a sale going on right now until the end of the month use coupon code digity 20 to get 20% off any of our products including blogto video conversions explainer videos review videos and video ad creatives now back to the video I want to first start out explaining why Google SEO might be finally dead for certain types of websites namely pure content websites that don't have an actual business behind them Google algorithm updates have made it impossible to trust that you'll even have a website after you wake up in the morning look all business models are unstable but you tell me if this doesn't make you want to punch your monitor you start a website Google thinks it's the best site it's ever seen starts asking you out for seafood dinners and then gives you a near vertical traffic growth then they're like actually I'm not so sure can we just be friends and then your traffic starts to go up down up down and then sideways and then they're like actually I was wrong you're the worst website on the internet I hate you how you supposed to make sense of that let alone build a business in September 2023 Google released a helpful content update that devastated the internet most specifically small to mediumsized blogs the type that you and I have the capability to build who did they give this traffic to instead sites with ridiculous backlink Authority like quora and Forbes here's a search report for the keyword best crypto exchange dr94 dr90 and your friend dr95 Reddit how can you compete most of these websites that dominate Google are actually owned by the same 16 brands with a combined monthly traffic of over 3 billion per month according to this report from detail in addition Google has been and will continue to steal more of your traffic over time Google search generative experience or sge is their version of answering search queries with AI at the top of the search results where does it get this information from from your website the AI has learned which are the best protein powders by scraping your website and then regurgitating it as their own content this isn't new they've been doing this for years with Ser features like featur Snippets but the situation is getting even worse my friend Nathan caught Google completely ripping his article on things to do in Denver on a branded search where people are actually searching for his website and to make matters worse Google's continued to add more and more paid results to the search result pushing down our websites well below the fold the icing on the cake is that the search behavior of the younger generation is changing young whipper snappers are choosing social media over Google for internet searching platforms like Tik Tok Instagram and our own friend YouTube YouTube has been growing at 10% per year consistently when you're building a business you ideally want to operate in an industry that is growing your business grows you're getting more customers and more revenue on top of that the industry in this case YouTube's adoption rate is growing as well creating a 1pl one equals 3 scenario you could even suck at business and not grow but the growth of the industry would carry you ultimately resulting in growth but if the industry is not growing even if your company is doing all the right things you remain stagnant this is the power of being in the right place at the right time another benefit of YouTube and I can't stress this one enough is unmatched engagement with your audience and thus unmatched conversion rates when you read my blog post on my website you're like okay cool this is great content thanks Matt whatever but when you're watching my videos there's a connection established a measure of trust is built plus you know that I'm delivering the content not some outsourced writer let me illustrate this with numbers this is a case study from my agency the search initiative that I posted on my blog according to analytics about 1,100 users have put their eyeballs on it with the typical conversion rate of 1.0% on my blog this resulted in about 110 leads for my agency here's a YouTube video version of that exact same case study 71,000 views with I sh you not 2.1% conversion rate resulting in 1,491 leads for my agency this is what I'm talking about and when you publish content on a website there's no immediate traffic and if you don't optimize that content for SEO you know keywords and all it will never get traffic unless you have an email list and you force people to see it YouTube on the other hand finds that traffic for you right away plus it builds you a permanent audience that will watch your next videos and it will freaking pay you while it does that that part is insane another upside for YouTube is just how straightforward its algorithm is Step One is getting people to click your videos when they see them this boils down to having good titles and thumbnails step two is retention how long can you keep people watching your video before they decide to drop off that's it if you can produce good videos that's all you need to worry about you don't need to worry about backlinks clustering entities semantic search none of that nerdy and the level of competition on YouTube is Child's Play compared to what you'll face on Google for many keywords there are simply no videos created yet here's the search for best testosterone supplement with no side effects see there's no targeted videos attacking this keyword and even if there was here's how well the algorithm rewards good new content I ranked number one on YouTube for share sale tutorial when people watch the that video and they sign up for share sale I earn money when I made that video there was no shortage of share sale tutorials already on YouTube but YouTube's algorithm has a huge boner for new content you'll go straight to number one right away and as long as people click and watch your video you'll stay at number one which is why this video continues to perform for me generating views and conversions on autopilot now let me just say not all is Awesome with YouTube so I want to take a look at the other side of the argument by the way here's a quick word from the sponsor of this video search intelligence this campaign got us big links in websites such as Life Hacker Wells Online daily record and about 20 other news websites let me show you how we've done it we knew that people will be flying a lot this summer and we knew that journalists will be writing about this topic a lot so on behalf of our client we put together a nice guide about how to fall asleep on the plane then we use mrack to find journalists who write about travel then we put our advice in a nice email and send the tips to the journalists within just a few days the links started Landing securing our client natural placements in really big websites just like this this and this this is a great example about how you can leverage seasonal Trends to earn links to a website anticipate what journalists want to write about at all times and give them the stories that they need they will reward you with some great juicy links I hope this is helpful now back to the video YouTube indeed has its cons which you need to know about okay so although YouTube usage is growing there's still less search volume compared to the same keyword on Google according to HRS there's only 30 Global searches per month for best VPN for Netflix while there's 5.8 th000 searches per month on Google here's another example that's even more suitable for video-based Content best Netflix series 22,000 searches on YouTube but 27,000 searches on Google that's not just because there's less YouTube adoption than Google for some searches you simply wouldn't want a video answer if you're comparing laptops you might want to see specs side by side in a table if you want a quick answer to does Lisa from blackpink have a boyfriend you want to scan an article in 1 second rather than watch a 10-minute video by the way she does don't shoot the messenger another reason is that YouTube is primarily an entertainment platform it's not ideal for many niches where making money is your goal building YouTube channels is also extremely hard to scale especially compared to building websites this is what the process looks like for creating a YouTube video first you start with research on the topic the same as when you're writing an article manually that said AI software can do the research for you next you start scripting and it's more complex than simple article introduction content conclusion format you need to plant psychological hooks use storytelling and other retention techniques then there's the actual filming which you need to do yourself or find actors for and then you need to edit the video to make it entertaining with b-roll and animations each of these roles is more skillful than their website equivalents it's not like SEO where nearly everything can be shipped off to commodity writers or even AI this makes the whole process more complex there's more moving Parts I can publish 10 articles per day per website but I can only publish one to two videos per week per Channel and that's if and only if I'm not personally involved as a script writer and the face as it is with this channel being the face of the channel will indeed get you the best result people see your face which helps to build your personal brand plus there's no risk of a hired face threatening to leave and holding your channel hostage but it's a nightmare to scale I used to post one video per week now it's once every other week the problem is scripting it freaking Burns you out alternatively you can hire voice actors or use AI voiceovers and just go with a face Channel but that only works for some niches and your main play there is AdSense money also I mentioned before that YouTube's algorithm is pretty straightforward but that's kind of also a con the YouTube algorithm is less gameable you need to produce good content that's it no ifs ANS or butts you can't leverage iio Concepts like topical Authority and great backlinks to speed the process up the YouTube algorithm rewards quality not quantity perfectionists thrive on YouTube and the first year will definitely test your patience as you build these skills in your audience the next YouTube con is a big one and you absolutely must not take it for granted when you make a YouTube channel bro you do not own it Google owns your channel and you can lose it at any time say the wrong thing or use some copyrighted footage and you're gone so what most people try to do is get their audience off YouTube and onto an email list for example but anytime you pull people off the platform with an external link the algorithm punishes you for it that's because the YouTube algorithm also considers time on platform and if your video causes people to leave YouTube then it gets less exposure and let's say you've done a great job of building building up your channel but maybe you're getting burnt out and want to move on you can sell your channel but it's not like selling a website where there's marketplaces Brokers and a huge pool of buyers because of this if you can find a buyer your channel will sell for less than a website generating the same amount of money and if your channel is built upon a personal brand like mine just forget about it all right so you've seen both sides of the coin at this point Google SEO versus YouTube which should you be focused on if you're looking to make a lot of money the backbone of the internet is still based on websites and that's the world of Google SEO I personally don't know of many non- influencer YouTube channels making over $50,000 per month but I know a buttload of websites making more than $50,000 a month powered by SEO and these websites can be sold for 35x monthly profit making nearly $2 million here's a list of over 50 such people in my course the affiliate lab who have sold sites for over six figures that said it does seem like video is a way that the world is moving towards AI content saturation will eventually cause a lack of mistrust for the written word when you're reading an article these days do you ever wonder if a human wrote it or a robot I'm predicting in the future that people will need to see a human say something in order to believe that it came from a human YouTube is harder to do but that's the nature of business SEO was also easier 10 years ago so my final answer is to do both make money with SEO today the earning potential is still amazing and this will last for a long long time but start getting good at YouTube to ride the growing tide for the future and remember to use coupon code digity 20 for 20% off video creation services at Epic video until the end of the month
