YouTube keyword research is important in finding the words and phrases users are searching for on YouTube and search engines.
This can help you rank your videos high on YouTube’s search and even Google search result page since Google has started showing YouTube videos on their search results page.
This means more views and exposure and will tremendously help you gain more views, stay ahead in the game and grow your YouTube channel in no time.
Videos that display high in search results often get the most views.
This is why you need to find keywords that people are searching for and optimize your videos to rank as high as possible on YouTube and Google search results.
In this YouTube keyword research tutorial, I am going to show you a secret strategy for doing YouTube keyword research to find the best keywords for your niche using VidIQ.
This method is very effective and will tremendously help you with YouTube keyword research.
So this is somewhat of a VidIQ tutorial. If you don’t know what VidIQ is, you can read our VidIQ Review here.
Here’s what you are going to need for this method:
- Atleast the lowest VidIQ plan ($7.50/month plan)
- Google Sheets (you can also use Microsoft Excel, but there are some commands that we’re going to use which are only specific to Google Sheets)
- Topics/keyword ideas you want to do research on (you shoul have atleats 10 topics because we are going to narrow down and pick the best keywords for your videos) By implementing this strategy that I am going to show, you are going to blow up your YouTube channel.
This isn’t the only thing to having high performing YouTube channel; you also need to make high performing videos that have a high audience retention and high click through rate (CTR).
So if you are all set, let’s get started with the YouTube keyword research process.
Step 1: Go to VidIQ Keyword Tool
Log into your VidIQ dashboard and click on the “keyword tool”
Step 2:
Enter your keyword in the search field and click enter as shown below (fishing in my own case)

Step 3:
Highlight all the keywords

Step 4:
Copy the keywords by pressing ctrl/command C or right click and select copy
Step 5:
Go to Google Sheets and paste it there.
You will notice that it contains some coloring.



Step 6:
Click on format at the top menu bar and scroll down to the bottom and then click on “Clear Formatting”.
This will remove the color and will make it more plain and clear.



Step 7:
Repeat step 1-6 for your other keywords
Step 8:
Next we are going to remove column A (Related keywords) and column F (Number of words).
So select on each column, right click and delete



Step 9:
You may notice that there are duplications in the keywords, so we need to remove the duplicates.
We will do this by using a function that is unique to Google Sheets only.
So click on the first row in column “E”
Next: Write the following in the function tab and press enter
=UNIQUE(A1:D)
And you will see your unique keywords in column E-H



Step 10:
Next highlight the unique keywords on entirely from column E-H and copy



Step 11:
Open and new sheet and paste the keywords by right clicking > paste special >paste values only or CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+V.



Step 12:
Now we have our unique keywords but you will observe that the “overall score” column has the score written /100 which will not allow us to sort the keywords appropriately.
So we need to remove the “/100”
Next: go to the menu and click Edit >Find and Replace or CTRL/CMD+H
Then enter “/100” in the “Find” section
Then click on replace all. This will remove all /100 from the overall score



Step 13:
Now we need to sort the keywords from the highest overall score the lowest.
The higher the overall score, the better
So select on the overall column (D), right click > sort sheet Z-A
You are going to go through the list and find ones that relate to every video you are going to upload on your YouTube channel.
Keywords with the highest overall score are the best, easier keywords and the ones you will use for your videos.



Conclusion
Now you’ve got everything you need to do YouTube keyword research and find the best keywords for your videos. Now go ahead and implement what you learned in this keyword research process.
Leave a comment below of what you think about this YouTube keyword research tutorial.
One more thing: Did you know that people who share useful stuff like this look awesome (EMOJI). Share with people who will find this useful and let’s reap the benefits together (win-win).



Jason has been in the digital industry for years. He has vast experience in email marketing, advertising and using digital marketing tools. As a digital consultant, his focus is helping you get competitive advantage using internet marketing tools available today.