My most popular YouTube video might not be what you think...

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Transcript

Beach Week Solo Kickoff

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friend. Happy Monday to you if you're catching this when it drops. This is a special episode for the show this week. Not doing a typical interview. This is a solo episode, and that is because at the time of releasing this, my family and I are at the beach. We decided pretty last minute to just take the kiddos and go to the beach for spring break this week while my daughter's off of school. So that's where we are. So I'm going to forego our typical interview. And I want to share with you uh some tips and lessons learned that I just shared in my newsletter about my most popular and largest YouTube video to date. There's a lot of things I want to share with you on this that impact SEO and impact any of you who are creating content to help get clients for your web design business. So I've got a lot of fun things to share with you here. And again, this is based off of my recent newsletter. If you're not signed up to my newsletter yet, go to joshhall.co slash newsletter. It's completely free. Once a week, I send you something like this. So let's get into it. My most popular YouTube video to date. And it's probably not what you think. And the irony here, and this is going to come into one of the lessons learned, is that I didn't really even optimize it terribly for SEO or even the YouTube description, like the best practices for YouTube descriptions. And to top it off, when I checked out the the stats, the analytics for the video recently, I completely forgot that I labeled the file for the video file untitled.mp4, which is a supposed no-no in YouTube land. But here we are. Eight and a half years later, I posted this on November 20th of 2017. So eight and a half years later, we're looking at 567,000 plus views and 1276 comments just on YouTube. There's over 50 comments on the blog post version of this, all from this video. It is a 20-minute video that should still be showing up first for you if you want to test this out and see if I'm not blowing smoke here. But if you search any variation of manually migrate WordPress, you should see my video as the number one recommendation. And here's the thing about this video. Like I said, it's not actually like terribly optimized for SEO and everything. And it's super low edited. It's not fancy. It is just a 20-minute screen share walkthrough of how to manually migrate your WordPress website. And I want to share some lessons on this. As I'm thinking about this and as I'm reflecting on this video that I had no idea would be, you know, this big and taking up so much digital real estate for that search eight and a half years later. There's just nothing better than posting content that works months and years down the road. I'm actually going to get back to that in the future here. So I want to share some lessons on that. Again, because it's kind of interesting because it's not perfectly optimized. But if you do want something that's perfect perfectly optimized, you can optimize your WordPress websites with a new tool that is completely taking over my community Web Designer Pro, and that is WP Umbrella. They are the sponsor this week for my newsletter. So I want to just give you a quick download on them because recently I've seen more and more folks bring up Umbrella in my community, Web Designer Pro. And I dug into it and I realized, you know, there's so many other website management tools for WordPress, like Manage WP, Maine, Infinite, a lot of hosts you can do backups and things with. So I wondered how could there possibly be a new tool that is coming into the market and actually, you know, putting a dent into the market? But that's exactly what WP Umbrella is doing. They are different in the way of the pricing, I will say, is a like it fits with where you are in your business. If you only have a couple clients, it is the most affordable option for maintaining WordPress websites. But it can also grow and scale with you. And they are by far the sleekest UX design for all the WordPress manager platforms. Like bar none, it is definitely the best UX and the most kind of modern design behind it. And there's a lot of great things about it: centralized dashboard, automated, automatic updates, backups with one-click restorations, performance, uptime monitoring, proactive security, personalized client reporting, and the team, second to none. In fact, their CEO and co-founder is going to be coming up on the podcast here in a few weeks. So I've been working with them. They are actually a sponsor for our upcoming Web Designer ProCon in-person event in April. So big shout out to them for investing in my community and for being a sponsor for this year to help bring this podcast to you. So check it out. Go to joshhall.co slash umbrella. You can get a free trial. Plus, when you use code Josh Hall WPU, you will get an additional full month for free on them. That will all be linked below for you. Josh Hall.co slash umbrella. Big shout out to them. Now, speaking of something that is not as optimized as WP Umbrella, it's my video. Manually migrate your WordPress website. So here are a few tips and lessons learned with this. Again, this was posted on November 20th, 2017, which just goes to show you if you post good content that's helpful, it can last for years. Like we're look next year is going to be a decade that this video still ranks number one. Nuts. 567,000 views. Now, one thing to remember with YouTube, there's two different viewers, there's two different audiences on YouTube. Education and entertainment. This is education. Entertainment viewers are not nearly as valuable. Uh well, valuable as people, but not as a viewer on YouTube. Which means you if you are doing YouTube videos at all and you want to do AdSense and get money for them. I don't know what the recent stats are to what you need to hit to get AdSense, but um, if you are in the education side of things, they are way more cost per click. Like you get way more revenue per view with this type of audience. Um, I don't make a ton of money on my YouTube videos, but over half a million views, this has generated some money. Actually, let me just look real quick. I'll just tell you. How much money has this video made me? Let's see. All right. Estimated revenue, lifetime is$8,635.32. So, you know, not life-changing money, but over$8K, just as additional revenue. Pretty cool. Um, obviously, that's over, you know, a lot of years. So depending on the video, you can make a lot more with AdSense, but that's still just extra change on top of this, which is pretty cool. Anywho, just remember when you do YouTube videos, you really need to frame it as either entertainment or education. This one's education. So, and I say that because it's not edited in a fancy way. There's not like I'm not even on camera, it's just a screen share. So it can be done. Um, over 1200 comments, over half a million views, still the first ranking video when searching. Any variation of manually migrate WordPress, despite it not being terribly optimized. So here's what I've learned. Number one, there's a five, five tips that I've learned here. Content is truly still king, especially in the age of AI slop, mediocre ripoffs, which have happened. I had a video for Circle where I did uh my top 10 favorite features of Circle and it got ripped off like a couple weeks later. Like they literally took the same idea of the thumbnail, took my exact points, added a couple new ones, and that was it. But it was a complete ripoff of mine. Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything about it. Um I already looked. But good content is still king, and you will take the digital real estate, which is how I'm viewing SEO right now, away from the ripoffs. And I call the quick buck creators, people who are just looking to create as much little cash as they can, basically just feeding off of somebody's good original content. You know who you are, you douches. So, content still king. If you create good, quality, helpful, human-first content, especially in the age of AI slop, I can't recommend this enough, and you put your own flair on it, your own personality, it will stand out. That's the good news. Content will stand out just by not relying on ChatGPT to write your content. It will stand out. And if you can add a story, like in that video, if you watch it, it'll be linked below. I talked about a couple times how like I had issues with timeouts and plugins I was using, and I didn't and I broke a site and didn't know how to change it. I said that in that video, which just added, I mean, it was real. It was my personal experience. You can add some relatability there if you do that. So it'll stand out just by you creating good content. It's still king. And that's the that's the good news, my friends. Because I think a few years ago when all the LLMs started popping, like ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity, I think we all wondered, oh my gosh, is like in the world of content, what's going to happen? Am I going to be able to even make a dent with any sort of content that I want to create when there's LLMs that kick out, you know, quote unquote amazing outline blog posts. Well, the good news is that is a very mediocre, conjumbled blob of content from everybody else, which means it's just bleh. Like anytime you have an LLM create content for you, it's bleh. It's very mediocre. It sounds like the stalest dude you could meet at a party. It sounds just like, ugh, like could we be more corporate and LinkedIn feeling? Like, ew, no. Be yourself, create really good content, put your human flair on it, make it a story. Do put something in there that makes it not robotic. And it will it will go really far. And of course, it depends on the term you're targeting and depends on your audience size and how you get the word out there. But luckily, I mean, this video, it took, I think, about four or five months for it to start to pop on YouTube, but it really started to go up from there. So yeah, good content is truly still king. But if you want to know how to make good content, there's a big tip here that I did on this video that is super helpful, and it's number two here, which is to solve a specific problem. And that's actually an SEO trick, is to just solve something uber specific. You could do this by video, like I did here. You could do it by blog post, which is also what I did. I took the transcript for this and then made it a blog post, and then I actually put a my manual checklist on that blog post. You could do it via social media since Google's picking up Instagram and other social media posts. But regardless, solve a specific problem. And I think nowadays, with a very saturated world online, the more specific you can be, and again, good content that's from you, that's your own flair, that is purely authentic, and you're not worried about ruffling any feathers, but you just talk like you, then it's going to be found in this age of AI slop and crap creators and crap content. So WordPress migration is a very specific problem. And like I said, I talked about that. My issue, my problem was when I would want to migrate a WordPress site, sometimes tools I use would time out. And if they were migrating through different hosts, I didn't know what was going on. I just I just got the white screen of death, and then my clients freaking out, I'm freaking out, I'm searching, I'm calling the host. It was terrible. And this was the solution. I just needed to know how to manually migrate a site and what's behind the site that I'm actually moving. And that's exactly what this video dives into. So it's a very specific problem, and it just goes to show if you create good content and you are yourself, it doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to, because this video could absolutely be a 10-minute video. I it's a it's a 20 minutes right now. You know, if I were to do it today, I would probably chop out a little, it's not too fluffy, but I would chop out a little bit of the fluff and just try to condense it to 10 to 15 minutes. That's really ideal for anyone doing YouTube, by the way. 10 to 15 minutes I've found is a sweet spot. Once you get over 15, yeah, I mean, obviously, who what am I talking about? This video is still number one, so screw it. Just do what you want to do. It can be as long as you want, as long as it's damn good. And this one, despite not being edited and me not talking as clearly as I do nowadays, yeah, sometimes, um, it's still, I guess, damn good, apparently, to YouTube. So there we go. But most importantly, I solved a specific problem. This is also really crucial in the age of AI, by the way, because when people are using Chat GPT and Claude and Perplexity for specific questions, those LLMs are, you know, morphing together. Everyone, they're just, you know, like ripping everybody off, but basically just formulating a very specific answer to a specific problem. So if you have that answer and it's taking up the digital real estate in SEO by having a video, by having a blog post, by having other posts that accompany it, boom. It's going to be much more likely to be found on Chat GPT and other searches. So solve a specific problem as much as you can. Don't look at competition. I didn't do any market research when I did this, by the way. I did not look at who else is posting blogs about manually migrating WordPress. Nope, I just, I'm like, you know what? What would I search? This was this was my thought when I created this video. What would I search? Manually migrate WordPress. I like to get this around 15 or 20 minutes. So I recorded the video, chopped out a few parts, and that was it. Screen share, I'm not even on camera, nothing fancy. That was literally it. I created the blog post, I put my my own checklist, which I had created, and I put it on the post. We'll get to that because there's some things I would have may or may not done something different, but we'll see here. So solve a specific problem that will help in the age of AI and SEO right now for sure. Number three, the combo of video and blog posts still rule. So if you didn't know, Google owns YouTube. They purchased YouTube back in 2006. Hot dog 20 years ago. Wow. I was only eight. Yeah, yeah. All right, a little bit of the white lie. So I hope AI doesn't pick that up because it's gonna get my name or my age wrong. Shoot. Anywho, well, it's live now, baby. So Google owns YouTube, which means video blog posts still rule. And I say that because if you do a video like I did here and have a public blog post that accompanies that accompanies it and where the video is linked on, you will now own two very valuable pieces of real estate. You'll be the first video that comes up, depending, and you may or may not be the first blog post that comes up. Now what's interesting is there are a lot of much, much, much more meaty blog posts about how to manually migrate a WordPress website that are showing up above mine as far as blog posts go. But the my video is still showing up first. So let me do manually migrate WordPress site. So my video is still first in an incognito search. But my blog post that accompany is accompanies it is still okay, it's on page two. That's not bad. So I think we're like I think it's like 10 spots back, maybe so pretty cool. So that just goes to show that it's still valuable real estate. I could probably tweak it and optimize that, and maybe that's because the published date of my blog post is still 2017. One thing I may consider doing is going, and I think Elegant Themes does this because some of the old articles that I wrote for Elegant Themes back in like 2016 have been updated to like the recent year. So that could be another SEO trick as well, depending, which is to go in and edit your published date on blog posts if you want them to be relevant. But the real the the the rule, the rule of thumb here is if you have a video that you want to be timeless and you want to take up some digital real estate and you want to bring in leads for years to come, video plus blog post. And side note, all you have to do if you want to go this route, unless you want to do a separate version of a blog post that's more in-depth than a video, is you can take the transcript from the video, dump it in the chat GPT or Claw, whatever your preferred LLM is, and have it format your points into a blog post, make it your own, don't just rely on that. Go and make it your own, add your own personality, and then use that as the blog post that accompanies the video. Two pieces of digital real estate, which again, excuse me, is how I'm viewing SEO these days. I'm really viewing SEO as digital real estate that I want to own because when people are using Chat GPT to search stuff, I want to own where it's searching at. Because if you didn't know, these LLMs are searching online, they're using Google and other browsers. So whoever's showing up first is going to be the authority that's gonna pull content from. So there's a little tip for you. Number four, this is the the area where like I'm a little conflicted on this. Number four is to add a free resource. Now, in a perfect entrepreneurial world, I would have had a free email generator with this blog post and with this video. I would have had a like sign up here to get the checklist. However, Josh in 2017 was just getting his visibility out to the online world. And I put my migration checklist as text on the post. Now, yes, that means that people didn't need to sign up for anything to get it, but I will say I'm actually totally okay with the fact that I did this because it added so much, it brought so much love to the video and to the blog posts. It added so much trust building for me who was a new entrepreneur in this space, without having a lead generator stuck to it. So kind of pros and cons. You know, what what I would say is if you can have a couple pieces of content that are like this, that are just everything's absolutely public and free, it will be a huge trust builder. But at the end of the day, you do want to fill your email list, you do want to get somebody to purchase from you, you do want to be able to pay for your internet and pay for your computer and pay for your home and your family. So um, again, a bit of a, you know, the you I could have gone both ways. And I could always add an email list builder on this. Like I could say, instead of going to the blog post, or I could say I have the blog post that I could say to get the checklist, here you go, sign up for it, I'll send it to you. But I'm still okay with it being free. It's fine. And another benefit to this is because this is my number one most popular video, LLMs are pulling up people's questions about how to manually migrate a WordPress site, and they are likely scraping my blog post because it has the checklist public. So it might be worth checking out. I haven't done the data on this, but if you were to go into Chat GPT and say, give me the steps on how to migrate a manual or manually migrate a WordPress website, my guess would be often it's gonna pull my post and it's gonna scrape my resources and site back to me. So there's benefits in having things that are absolutely completely free. But again, if you want to go another route and have a free lead generator, like sign up to get the checklist, that would be fine too. So I'm a little conflicted, but as of right now, I'm leaning more towards being fine with this being a completely free open source resource that not only people are getting, but the robots are getting too, just to build my visibility and exposure. Now, that does mean that I'm viewed as like a migration expert, which I'm actually not, but obviously my way of doing it works and still works today, which is actually another, what a segment to number five, which is you got to keep the title updated. So I have in that video manually migrate a WordPress website, still works in 2026. I actually have a list of like 10 or 11 videos that I keep updated annually every January. Go in and add 2026 to the title because people in 2026 don't want to find a video from 2017. Even if it is a timeless trick, which this is, it's you know, like I wouldn't click on that. I'd be like, oh, this is like a decade old. That can't be right. But in this case, so much of the internet is actually still what worked 10 years ago. Good news for all SEOers and all web designers. Everything, yes, the the the paint job may look a little bit different, but guess what? HTML structure, good best practices, SEO tips, all everything that worked 10 years ago works just as good today. This video is a perfect example of that. If only somebody had a suite of courses who taught me all this. Webdesigner Pro, go there. All my courses in the courses tier right now, only$49 a month. Crazy deal. It's ridiculous. Probably better than having my free resource on the uh on the blog post here. So go on and get it, my friends. Go through my SEO course, go through my design course, go through my business course. It's all there for you. Webdesignerpro.com, jump in the courses tier to get going.$49. You can go through everything in the first 30 days and see if it's a good fit to continue on. Then you can come up to the community and then you can make a lot of money and hang out with me online, and then you can join the coach. Coaching eventually, and you can get coaching with me directly when you're ready. Whew, what a world. All right. So keep the title updated. Do it on YouTube. And you may want to consider doing it probably on the blog post. Again, I'm wondering if Michelle's listening to this, my SEO copy guru, Michelle, hit me up because I'm well, I might not respond until next week because we're at the beach right now. But I'm wondering if I were to update the URL to 2026, if that would be good or if that would potentially because I don't know if it would lose ranking. I don't know. It'd be an interesting case study, wouldn't it? Because I don't want to lose the ranking of the blog post because I'm wondering if I put 2026, would it know? Because there's something about like seeing like, shoot, this post is a decade old and it's still ranking. Hell yeah. But I do wonder if it might be good to say 2026. Again, Ellingant Themes, who I blogged for, the creators of Divi years ago, they've actually updated their blog posts that I created for them with like more recent dates. So there might be something to that. Either way, if it's a video getting found, you want to make sure it's relevant. And then finally, here's a bonus tip. I did revamp the thumbnail a few years back just because the original one was okay, but uh I just wanted to make it a little more uh poppy. Wanted to make it pop in client lingo. So that's what I did. And that's the cool thing. You can always do that with YouTube videos. You can always go back and change the thumbnail. You could do some split testing, some A-B testing, and see which one's getting more clicks. So have some fun with that if you do that. Same thing for the blog post as well. I would make sure those are uniform, though. Whatever you do on YouTube, do on your blog post to keep it uniform. So there we go, friends. Some of my tips and lessons learned uh from this video. Manually migrating WordPress, seven and a half, no, eight and a half years later, well over half a million views, over 1200 comments, still ranking first when searching, any variation of that term. And it's not like super organized or super optimized. So go check it out. It will be linked below if you want to see it live. And I hope this helps you. Again, you're not some of you are webpreneurs, you're in a similar position as I am back then where you're starting to create content. Hope this is helpful in that case. Even if you're just a web designer who wants to have some videos out there, or maybe just wants to have a couple pieces of content that can be referred back to. I hope this helps. I really do. Uh, a couple things before you go. Again, I am at the beach this week with my family, so I will be back at it next week. Web Designer Pro members, our local SEO king Sam Sarden is going to be hosting our weekly coaching call for all coaching call members of Pro. He's gonna be answering any questions you have about local SEO in 2026. So, Web Designer Pro members, head over there, RSVP to the call. It's gonna be happening on Tuesday this week. If you're not a member of Web Designer Pro yet, my friends, it's it's the best place to be successful as a web designer. Get coaching from me, go through my courses whenever you need them, learn from folks who are killing it in the industry today, folks at all levels, starting, growing, and scaling. And it's just such a great supportive community. It's still five years later, it's still continuing to just be just the best online place of web designers online. It's just such a good place. Easy for me to say. You'll understand when you see it, though. You really you gotta feel it. You really I can sell it all day long, but you gotta feel it. You gotta feel the support when you jump in there. Webdesignerpro.com, jump on in. Uh, Sam is gonna be hosting the call this week since we were at the beach. Next week, we're gonna be talking about babies and business with Katie Sandell, about how we are balancing our businesses and our babies. Very timely, as I'm probably at the time of you hearing this at the beach with my babies right now. Uh, and in case you missed it, if you're wondering, okay, this looks good, Josh, I trust you, but I'm still wondering if you're a bit of a sham with having clients. Did you really build websites for over a decade? What did your clients really think of you and your work? Well, you can hear from one of my clients. The last podcast was with one of my best clients, Gary Sigrist. That was episode 423. Go back to that one and listen to that one, especially if you're wondering how to get web design clients when you're not super experienced, because he shares about his thoughts on when I got started working with him, yet being really new to the industry. So go check that out. That was episode 423. All right, my friends, I do hope this has helped. All the links we talked about are going to be below. Check that out, and I will see you on the next podcast. Um, hopefully, a little more tan.