If you are working with YouTube videos you probably also know how hard it is to do YouTube SEO on your videos to compete for all those valuable viewers. Writing titles and descriptions and finding the best tags can be hard work and with endless hours of optimizing over and over.
But there’s help to find with TubeBuddy. In this article I will try to review one of the best YouTube SEO tools for you and hopefully, you find it useful enough to give it a try.
What is TubeBuddy?
In short, TubeBuddy is a tool that will help you to manage and scale your YouTube channel. It contains a variety of different features that will help you doing YouTube SEO on your videos, like a YouTube keyword research tool that will find the best keywords to make your videos rank higher. The best part is that all these great features will be available from inside the YouTube dashboard. So every handling of your YouTube channel will be located in one familiar place.
How does TubeBuddy help me with my YouTube SEO?
TubeBuddy is basically just an extension you install onto your browser. It works for both Google Chrome and Firefox. The extension will display as an extra menu inside your YouTube account which makes it easy to access.
In the sections below, I will go deeper into the features TubeBuddy has to offer.
TubeBuddy features
This section describes some of TubeBuddy’s really useful features that can be used all together to really optimize your YouTube SEO.
Productivity
- Bulk Processing
This feature automates processes that can take a long time, like Copy Cards for the marketing of your brand, Copy End Screen to branding other videos, playlists or channels, Deleting Cards, and Deleting End Screens. - Emoji Picker
One way to make your video stand out from the others and make it capture the eyes of a potential viewer is by using emojis. TubeBuddy’s emoji Picker, located at the right in the title field, makes it easy to pick an emoji icon relevant for your video title. - Comment filter
As your YouTube channel becomes larger you will get more and more comments on your videos. Keeping up with them all can be a challenge. With TubeBuddy’s comment filter you can select which comments you want to see. You can filter many different types of comments. To name a few:
– Comments you haven’t replied to
– Questions
– Questions you haven’t replied to
– Comments that contain specific words
– Comments that contain links
The comment filter will save you a great amount of time when engaging with your audience. - Thumbnail generator
Creating cool thumbnails that will make a viewer click on your video can be time-consuming and expensive if you need a Photoshop license just to create thumbnails. With TubeBuddy’s thumbnail generator you can save templates that you can re-use to give your videos clean a consistent look. - Upload checklist
With TubeBuddy’s upload checklist you get a list of important steps to remember when uploading new videos. You can then check off each step in the list as you complete the task. - Video Topic Planner
Coming up with the ideas for your next video can be troublesome. With TubeBuddy’s Video Topic Planner you can save suggestions from your viewers when they comment on your videos. - Canned Responses
Rewriting the same response over and over isn’t the best use of your time and resources. Utilizing TubeBuddy’s Canned Responses you can use pre-written messages to publish answers and comments quickly. You can even use some form of personalization with shortcodes to address a user by their first name. - Best time to publish
Publishing a video instantly might not be the ideal if you want to achieve the best possible engagement. This feature utilizes TubeBuddy’s algorithm to find the best time to publish your video.
TubeBuddy’s Productivity features will help you save a great amount of time when working with many video uploads.
YouTube SEO
- Keyword Explorer
The Keyword Explorer is a fantastic tool to help you with your YouTube keyword research for your video titles. This is essential for ranking your videos and increasing the reach. With the Keyword Explorer, you will get a view of the competition of a specific keyword you want to use and a recommendation by TubeBuddy on whether this is a keyword that is worth targeting based on the competition. You will also get a list of related keywords that you can choose to target.
- Search Rankings
With the Search Ranking feature, you can see how your videos rank on specific tags. This feature will help you identify certain tags that your video isn’t ranking for and, therefore, can be removed. The historical chart will show you how your video ranks day by day. - SEO Studio
Optimizing a video’s title and description for the best YouTube search ranking can be a difficult task. With TubeBuddy’s SEO Studio this work becomes a lot easier. On setting a targeted keyword, SEO Studio will score your YouTube SEO based on that keyword.
- Suggested Tags
By just typing in the keyword you want to rank for, this feature allows you to find the best possible tags to make your videos get maximum exposure. This is key to optimizing your videos for a higher rank in YouTube’s search results. Suggested Tags saves you a lot of time instead of you trying to find all the tags yourself. - Best Practice Audit
This feature helps you to ensure that you’re following YouTube’s recommendations, that your video is set up correctly and your descriptions don’t contain any broken links.
The YouTube optimization features are fantastic in helping you writing the best and most optimized titles and descriptions and selecting the best tags based on your specified keywords.
Data & Research
- Health Report
Getting to know what’s working and what’s not is extremely valuable when trying to optimize your videos. TubeBuddy’s Health Report watches your video’s retention and traffic and gives you an overview of your videos’ overall performance. - Social Monitor
See on which social platforms your videos are sharing and talked about. This gives an idea of how popular your videos are. - Brand Alerts
Get notified when someone uploads a new video, creates a playlist or channel matching your brand. This is an awesome feature that gives you an idea of how popular your brand or name is. - Retention Analyzer
This feature allows you to see how your videos across your YouTube channel are performing. Identify what makes your viewers leave and work to improve your overall retention rate.
Data & Research will help you identify specific problems with your videos and help you further optimize them for better results, for example increasing retention rates or higher search rankings.
Pricing
- Free plan
TubeBuddy has a free plan if you want to check it out at first. The free plan, of course, has some limitations. You will not be able to use the bulk features and the tag recommendations will be limited. The free plan is great if you just want to get started and check the tool out to see how it can help you. - Paid plans
TubeBuddy has three paid plans. Pro, Start, and Legend. The cheapest is the Pro Plan at $9 a month, or $7.20 a month if you subscribe for a year, which gives you access to features centered on productivity like thumbnail generation, card templates, and video topic planner and optimization like keyword explorer, tag lists and SEO Studio.
The Star Plan at $19 a month, or $15.20 a month for a yearly subscription, gives you access to the pro plan plus data and research tools like a health report that gives you an overall look on the health and performance of your channel, and the social monitor which tells you on which social platforms your video have been shared.
The legend plan at $49 a month, or $39.20 a month for a yearly subscription, gives you access to the whole shebang.
Is it safe to use TubeBuddy?
Yes, it is completely safe. TubeBuddy is “YouTube Certified” meaning that is has gone through a formal process by Google.
Conclusion
Making YouTube SEO for maximum exposure and making video optimization for better retention rates is a very time-consuming task and if you are an active YouTuber or want to be one, this can amount to many frustrating hours. TubeBuddy can ease you with a lot of the common tasks of uploading, writing titles and descriptions, creating thumbnails, etc.
With this great video optimization tool, you can start to increase your YouTube SEO ranking, your views, and your overall YouTube popularity.
