Can You Learn SEO and Rank Your Website by Watching Youtube Videos?

A growing trend at the moment are SEO and Marketing channels on Youtube all claiming to be the foremost experts in the SEO and marketing industry which always makes me wonder.. If you’re so great at SEO, open an SEO agency and you’ll be inundated with work, which begs the question, “Can you rank your own website at the top of Google simply by following the steps and guidance of these Youtubers?” Short answer is No, and here’s why.

The people you see on Youtube claiming to be SEO and marketing experts are simply Youtubers wanting to drive traffic to their channel so they can monitise their videos, run ads and make a living from it, nothing wrong with making a living off Youtube , many people do it, however these people have chosen an industry where people and businesses are desperate to rank their websites so they turn to these Youtubers thinking they have discovered a way to rank on Google without needing to hire a marketing company when in reality most website owners end up harming their rankings after following the advice of these hacks.

Can anyone learn Organic SEO?

Of course anyone can learn organic SEO but not by watching a few videos and not in a few weeks or even a few months, Top Rank have been in the SEO and marketing industry for over 10 years now and even we are still learning and adapting our methods every time Google does a new update to their algorithm, even if some of these videos do have some correct advice at the time of filming they end up out of date within a couple of months.

We have worked with a number of companies and individuals over the years who have tried to learn from these SEO and marketing channels but ended up damaging their rankings. Many have been so brainwashed by these self appointed experts that even after coming over to us for professional SEO and marketing they question our own work right up until the day they rank page 1, sending us emails and phoning us to give us advice – we are not kidding – and even sending us links to Youtube videos to “Help Us” which sounds crazy when you consider that they have already tried to follow the advice given on these channels and failed to rank their websites.

How do we know these so called experts don’t have a clue?

Basically, because we are SEO and marketing professionals and have never failed to rank our clients on page one and we would never follow the guidelines given in these videos.

A dead giveaway that they have ulterior motives are the long drawn out intros to lengthen their videos, talking about how great they are, how they successfully ranked there own website at the top of Google in a few days and how they are going to share these secrets with YOU for free, this usually goes on for a while before they get around to telling you how.

For website owners the advice they give seems legitimate, they sound so confident but for real SEO professionals their lack of a basic understanding of SEO stands out mile and we can see them for what they are, Youtubers, earning a living off youtube by choosing a niche where people want help and want to save money.

None of them can code for start which IS a required skill for any SEO expert, you need to be proficient in both client side and server side mark-up and programming languages before to can even think about messing with a websites code.

A lot of our own initial on page work focuses on correcting code syntax, layout, optimising META data, structured mark-up, rich snippets etc where as these experts always seem to use off the shelf content management systems such as WordPress or drag and drop builders such as Squarespace or even WIX

As their business is Youtube and not SEO of web development, when you go to their URL you find a very basic and poorly structured WordPress or Squarespace website which always makes me wonder why anyone is taking these hacks serious.

Some do mention SEO basics such as citations but off course have no idea how to create these so they send you to an online tool – usually paid as they are on commission – to create these automatically which is NEVER a good idea. Rule one in SEO never automate anything, Google can easily spot this and WILL penalise you.

One of the worst examples we saw recently was an SEO expert ‘cough, cough’ trying to sell a website template that he made in squarespace, he was trying to sell it for $400 which is around the price our own professional bespoke web design service starts at which are fully Google optimised bespoke (coded) websites that come with free hosting/domain and a custom CMS.

This certain individual was claiming that this template has everything needed to rank at the top of Google which is hilarious because around 75% of SEO in still done off site.

The main themes of all or these videos are the same; they are telling viewers how to rank, never showing them, because basically they don’t know.

In our opinion these channels are dangerous; however, they do send a lot of work our way so we where in two minds whether to write this article. We chose to write and post this article because it is far easier and quicker for us the rank a website where no SEO work has been carried out rather than a website where someone has taken the advice of these Youtubers and already damaged there rankings.