Using YouTube to Promote My Website? (Finance Niche)

[narrator]

Hi, I currently manage a YouTube channel with a decent amount of subscribers and want to create a website for the channel. But I have lots of questions as a complete SEO newbie.

1) How hard is it to get impressions for my niche, which is finance. My channel is pretty similar to channels like Jack Tran, MagnatesMedia for reference.
2) AVD is really important for YouTube. Is it the same for websites? How can I make sure to maximize it? In YouTube we just do fancy editing.
3) I'm also planning to start a forum for the channel. We have a discord, but why not get some ad revenue for something we're already doing? Can having a forum help with getting indexed by Google?

 

[ryandiscord]

1. Finance is going to be one of the tougher niches to get started in. Google is protective of your money your life (YMYL) categories. Sites that rank in this niche compete to showcase expertise, authority and trust (EAT).

2. AVD or more commonly referred to with websites as "average time on page" isn't a direct ranking factor however Google does see a quick pogo back to the search results as a negative factor. You can avoid this by providing content that is helpful in answering the searchers question, not bombarding them with interstitial ads and by having a site that loads quickly

3. If your audience is willing to make the jump from discord to a forum that would allow for some user generated content that could rank. This would require careful moderation and clean up. For example look at this forum how lower quality posts get consolidated into an off topic thread.

Purely anecdotal but I feel like see less forum posts and more reddit threads ranking. Building your presence in Reddit could help drive traffic to your site and Youtube channel. Read the crash course section on Traffic Leaking.

 

[narrator]

Thank you for your answers!

1. Finance is going to be one of the tougher niches to get started in. Google is protective of your money your life (YMYL) categories. Sites that rank in this niche compete to showcase expertise, authority and trust (EAT).

That's what I was afraid of as well and I thought having a forum would give me some authority. For example, the actual website would be X.com and the forum forum.X.com. Could this help with ranking?Sorry if this is a silly question, I am currently going through the 30 day course on here and am actively learning.

3. If your audience is willing to make the jump from discord to a forum that would allow for some user generated content that could rank. This would require careful moderation and clean up. For example look at this forum how lower quality posts get consolidated into an off topic thread.

Many viewers are young people and I have recently found out that majority of them are already users on a forum that is not related to my niche. I think it'd be pretty easy to make the jump. Yes, moderation is probably way harder for a forum and I planning to hire some people. I am actually amazed with this forum, as I have learnt so many things just in a few days of lurking.

Purely anecdotal but I feel like see less forum posts and more reddit threads ranking. Building your presence in Reddit could help drive traffic to your site and Youtube channel. Read the crash course section on Traffic Leaking.

Do you think Reddit is good for my niche? I feel like it's the most anti-entrepreneur place on the internet. Again, thank you for your recommendation! I will experiment and report back to other people on this great forum.

 

[Ryuzaki]

For example, the actual website would be X.com and the forum forum.X.com. Could this help with ranking?

By putting the forum on a sub-domain, you’re telling Google to treat it as an independent site from the main site. If you put it in a sub-folder like x.com/forum/, it would be treated as part of the main site.

There are arguments for both but I wouldn’t allow UGC (user generated content) on my main site. I don’t even allow comments any more. You can moderate it but unless you intend to edit everyone’s posts (you shouldn’t) you can’t control the quality that well.

I think the move would be to either put the forum on a sub-domain or separate domain and interlink between the two. This will isolate them but also share the page rank and other signals that will contribute to branding, EEAT, and whatnot.

 

[saeja]

Hello @Ryuzaki

Our company has a service/SaaS product which we usually sell at a physical location. We recently started selling the service/SaaS product online as well.

For this, we are looking to focus on our B2C website.

Now the thing is that we already have B2B customers for this SaaS product (which they offer as service), and we have a separate website for them on a subdomain.

We also talk about our SaaS product on our company's main website.

And for trial purposes, we are looking to develop another website selling B2C service.

This means we have four different websites.

website 1: B2C
b2cservice.com

website (subdomain) 2: B2B
b2bproduct.b2cservice.com

website 3: B2B
brand.com

website 4: B2C
anotherB2Cdomain.com

I think you've always advised of keeping properties separate.

Now, going by the discussion here, would you recommend interlinking sub domain b2bproduct.b2cservice.com with b2cservice.com?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I think you've always advised of keeping properties separate.

For me it's a matter of not connecting SEO-based projects to each other where everything hinges on SEO and the benefits to linking them together are very minuscule but the risk could be higher if you end up getting more aggressive on any one of them (in such an egregious way that Google would hunt for your other sites). If you're doing penalty-worthy activities, I wouldn't connect them.

But from what I understand from your post, this is all the same product and offers across 4 sites, with two different demographics. If it would be harmful for the B2B to see the B2C pricing or vice versa, then I wouldn't mix them together. But if your branding is on point it's going to be very simple for them to find that information anyways. And that's why I wouldn't hesitate linking sites under the same brand and umbrella together. It's not like Google's not going to figure it out anyways. If it benefits the user or you can speed up the rise of a newer site by sharing links to it, why not. Especially if you're not doing anything shifty.

That's the same logic for the site and forum sub-domain. Of course they're operated by the same people. The forum is on a sub-domain of the top level domain. So there's nothing to gain there from hiding the connection, because you can't. So you might as well get the minor gain of linking between the two, even if that's "just" a sitewide footer link from one to the other and back again. Share the page rank and other signals. But keeping the forum off of the main domain will also shield the main domain from any "forum-esque" signals you wouldn't want on the main domain, while still allowing it to strengthen the brand.

 

[saeja]

Precisely that, 4 sites, with two different demographics

All under same GSC profile.

I beleive we are not doing anything shifty. We haven't tried anything that BuSo wouldn't approve of. In fact, we aren't doing many things that are recommended on BuSo.

Here's what they look like

website 1: B2C
b2cservice.com

website (subdomain) 2: B2B
b2bproduct.b2cservice.com

website 3: B2B
brand.com

website 4: B2C
anotherB2Cdomain.com

 

[ryandiscord]

Thank you for your answers!

That's what I was afraid of as well and I thought having a forum would give me some authority. For example, the actual website would be X.com and the forum forum.X.com. Could this help with ranking?Sorry if this is a silly question, I am currently going through the 30 day course on here and am actively learning.

Many viewers are young people and I have recently found out that majority of them are already users on a forum that is not related to my niche. I think it'd be pretty easy to make the jump. Yes, moderation is probably way harder for a forum and I planning to hire some people. I am actually amazed with this forum, as I have learnt so many things just in a few days of lurking.

Do you think Reddit is good for my niche? I feel like it's the most anti-entrepreneur place on the internet. Again, thank you for your recommendation! I will experiment and report back to other people on this great forum.

Ryuzaki's points are spot on about subdomains. If you do decide to go with the forum, subdomain would be the cleanest route to keep UGC separate from your written content on the primary domain and easier to get rid of if you decide it's no longer worth maintaining.

Another thing you could consider is curating the best conversations you have on Discord into roundup style posts encouraging readers to join the discussion on Discord. That would eliminate the mess of UGC on your site, and allow you to use your discord as a walled garden of content that you can cherry pick from.
I find that Redditors love to share financial advice, even when unwelcomed. r/antiwork isn't going to be your best starting point but I'm sure you can find some financial advice conversations in dedicated and not so dedicated areas if you're thinking creatively.

 

[narrator]

Ryuzaki's points are spot on about subdomains. If you do decide to go with the forum, subdomain would be the cleanest route to keep UGC separate from your written content on the primary domain and easier to get rid of if you decide it's no longer worth maintaining.

Another thing you could consider is curating the best conversations you have on Discord into roundup style posts encouraging readers to join the discussion on Discord. That would eliminate the mess of UGC on your site, and allow you to use your discord as a walled garden of content that you can cherry pick from.
I find that Redditors love to share financial advice, even when unwelcomed. r/antiwork isn't going to be your best starting point but I'm sure you can find some financial advice conversations in dedicated and not so dedicated areas if you're thinking creatively.

Well, after doing more research by reading older threads here I am kind of confused about the forum idea. It sounds like having a well regulated subreddit would be better for growing the main site as you initially suggested. Excuse me for asking too much, but do you think it's possible to grow a general finance site at this point? I am not sure how to grow as there are giant media companies like Forbes, WSJ etc. It's easy to grow on YouTube since video content is much more ever green, and those companies usually have channels just to say they're on YouTube. But I am not sure If we can beat them at their "own games".

 

[ryandiscord]

Well, after doing more research by reading older threads here I am kind of confused about the forum idea. It sounds like having a well regulated subreddit would be better for growing the main site as you initially suggested. Excuse me for asking too much, but do you think it's possible to grow a general finance site at this point? I am not sure how to grow as there are giant media companies like Forbes, WSJ etc. It's easy to grow on YouTube since video content is much more ever green, and those companies usually have channels just to say they're on YouTube. But I am not sure If we can beat them at their "own games".

A forum is a viable option, you just need to consider if the time spent maintaining it is worth it for you and how you plan to manage the impact of low quality content potentially residing on your primary or subdomain.

You're not going to outrank the big guys on big terms at least not in the beginning. SEO is a long term strategy, start small, then scale. There's several keyword research guides and strategies mentioned on this forum that cover this approach.

those companies usually have channels just to say they're on YouTube

Ask yourself what your goal is for your website, are you building one to grow as a brand or just to say that your channel has a website? Either objective is okay but defining that will help you figure out your approach.

 

[narrator]

Ask yourself what your goal is for your website, are you building one to grow as a brand or just to say that your channel has a website? Either objective is okay but defining that will help you figure out your approach.

Wow, answering this question honestly really helped me understand my thought process better. I feel like I was doing what I accused other companies doing. Instead of starting a website linked to my channel I can always start an unrelated website in a different niche or start other channels in different niches. Instead of asking some vague questions I can try and see how the market reacts to ideas in my head.