I used SEO to grow a YouTube channel from scratch to over 25,000 subscribers, 3 million views, and more than 33 years of watch time.
That growth came from applying a few simple, proven SEO strategies I learned from Backlinko’s Brian Dean.
In this post, I’ll walk you through 5 lessons I learned from growing my YouTube channel and how they apply directly to B2B marketing.
Lesson 1: All Good Content Starts With a Real Problem
The first thing I believe comes before SEO and content marketing is this:
A business is born out of an unsolved problem.
For example:
My Youtube channel was focused on helping people get better at an online video game called “League of Legends.”
League of Legends has over 10 million daily players and I managed to reach the top 0.1% of players in the world (which gave me the credibility needed to teach the game to others).
As time went on, I realized something that made increased my views, engagement, sales, and most importantly my connection with my viewers:
The main reason why my viewers watched my Youtube Channel was to get better at the game.
It sounds stupid simple but often times we can get caught up in our own idea of what’s “cool” and forget the people we’re serving.
Whenever any of my messages weren’t related to getting better at the game, my video watch time, views, and engagement plummeted.
But when I kept the focus on strategies they can use to get better at the game, all of the metrics that mattered improved.
What does this mean for you?
“Keep the most important thing the most important thing.”
As time goes on, I’ve realized this:
In business, the most important thing is to create value for another person by solving a problem for them.
Simplifying my Youtube channel into “problem/solution” framework made everything I do more clear, strategical, and less stressful due to improved mental clarity.
For example, here’s what my Youtube Channel looked like through a problem/solution framework.
The problem:
My viewers wanted to get better at the game. This content needed to be given to them in a way that’s both easy-to-watch, digestible, and educational at the same time.
Also, the concepts need to be broken down in a way that’s simple to understand because of how complex they can be.
The solution:
My Youtube Channel. I taught players everything I used to reach the top 0.1% of players worldwide.
I did this by not only teaching the strategies that I used but also explained them with easy-to-understand stories, metaphors and analogies.
For you, it may look a little something like this...
The problem:
B2B businesses are aware content marketing is important but they have no clue where to begin.
They know it’s effective but they have no idea where to start, what to create, how to create it, and other content marketing-related issues.
The solution:
Your B2B content agency. Your business helps them create content that effectively markets their business, creates a strategy around it, brings in leads, and more.
The more business experience I gather, the more I realize it comes back down to this:
Every business begins with a problem. If there’s no problem, there’s no business.
All of a sudden, I started to see my business a whole lot different.
Keyword research went from this overly technical, complicated SEO task into just a problem someone wanted help with.
My viewers were coming to my Youtube channel as a way to solve their problems.
The phrases they typed into the search bar was just them stating what problem they have:
- “How to improve at League of Legends”
- “Guide to getting better at League of Legends”
- “Tips to improve at League of Legends”
Once I made this “click,” I began viewing my Youtube videos like the medicine to their problems.
Kinda like if I was a “League of Legends doctor” and they were my patients.
They’d come to me and share their sickness (which they shared with me via the search bar), and my Youtube videos was a way to help them feel better.
The Problem/Solution framework simplified everything and became my “action compass.”
It took away any anxiety, stress, and gave clarity to my mind because it filtered through actions that were high-value and low-value.
Lesson 2: Mastering SEO And Content Creation Skyrocketed My Views
When I first started my Youtube Channel, I had no idea what type of content to create, how to create it, the structure of a video, and everything else under the sun.
So what did I do?
I created a video on whatever topic came to mind and attempted to teach it in the most entertaining way possible.
That got me some success.
But it was very slow, inconsistent growth that took literally years of grinding.
What skyrocketed my Youtube Channel views were three strategies I snatched from Brian Dean.
I did the following three things:
- Proper targeted keyword research,
- Conduct an analysis of the top results for that keyword, and
- Created the best video I could on that topic that surpassed the content quality of the other videos.
After doing these three strategies, here’s what happened:
My views went through the roof because I wasn’t relying on Youtube to promote me through it’s suggestions algorithm.
Instead, whenever someone typed in the keywords I targeted, now my videos showed up at the top which brought in new viewers every single day.
I did this for every one of the videos I created and boom...
My daily video count went from 50 visitors per day (without SEO + content marketing) to over 3,000 views per day (with SEO).
The takeaway is this:
In any difficult journey life brings to you, there are a few key actions that bring about the highest results.
With my Youtube Channel, when I did proper keyword/problem research, video competitor analysis, and created the best video on that topic, my channel views blasted through the ceiling.
My invitation to you is this:
Discover what your few fundamentals are as a B2B content agency.
The good thing about fundamentals is that they’ll never be a waste of time.
Every deposit you put into the fundamentals back will pay dividends as times goes on.
Lesson 3: SEO Gets the Click But Connection Gets the Client
My core offer for my Youtube Channel was 1-on-1 coaching.
The average rate of a League of Legends coach was $25/hr.
My rates were literally 4x more than this.
But just because I had premium rates doesn’t mean I had a shortage of clients.
In fact, quite the opposite.
Every round of coaching I did, I always had a surplus of clients somewhat “begging” me to become their teacher.
A question I consistently asked both myself and my coaching students was this:
Why choose me when there are plenty of other coaches charging 1/4 of the price?
Clearly money wasn’t the main factor because if it was they would’ve chosen another coach.
The answer was simple:
These people had a stronger emotional connection to me than my competitors.
The keyword here is emotional.
It’s true that I was teaching these people to get better at a video game.
But what made them know, like, and trust me more was the emotional connection.
Here are a few reasons why they trusted me more than my competitors:
- They’d spend hours of time watching my videos which naturally builds a relationship with them
- They would apply my teachings into their own gameplay and experiencing the improvements first-hand
- My unique spin on the teachings and the content I created.
All of these things is what created a long-lasting connection with my viewers.
That connection is what allowed me to charge 4x more than 99% of other League of Legend coaches.
For new people who came to my channel, they watched my videos because I could help them solve their problem.
As the connection with them developed, the relationship transitioned from something transactional to something a whole lot deeper.
The takeaway?
If your business is a house, SEO will bring them to the front door, but your connection and relationship with them will make them stay for longer.
The more you help the businesses you’re serving solve their problem, the more the trust you’ll build with them.
The power comes when you build trust with them, and SEO gives you the opportunity to make that happen.
Lesson 4: Don’t Be Scared To Tackle Competitive Keywords
One thing I see recommended by many SEO experts is to go after the “low-hanging SEO fruit.”
The keywords that get a decent chunk of traffic with little competition.
I’m not disagreeing with this tactic.
It’s smart and relatively low-effort if the competition is low.
However, if you can put your money-where-your-mouth is from a content creation perspective, don’t be scared to tackle highly-competitive keywords.
For example, one of the keywords I targeted for a Youtube video was “how to jungle.”
This video gets more than 15,000 searches per month and the keyword difficulty is rated “high.”
This would put many SEO-people off.
But I knew that if I was able to create an amazing video and target this keyword, it’d be one of my most popular videos.
That’s exactly what happened.
This one video helped me get the following:
- 384,000 video views.
- 44,800 hours of total watch time (or 5 years and 1 month), and
- 5,500 subscribers.
All because I was willing to go after the “big fish.”
I’m currently doing the same thing with my SEO business.
I’ve created a local SEO guide for dentists that’s more than 13,000 words long, took me 3+ months to write, and contains every SEO strategy I’ve used to build sites from 0 to over 1,500 daily visitors.
The keyword I’m targeting is highly competitive but because I know I can “hang with the big cats,” I’ll do just fine.
Here’s how this applies to you:
Too many businesses play it safe with content.
They aim for low-difficulty keywords, write 1000-word posts, and hope it ranks.
But the reality is:
If you’re in a competitive B2B niche, everyone is doing the basics.
Playing small won’t make you stand out.
If you’re able to produce the best piece of content on a topic, back yourself, stamp your foot on the Google playground and show your competitors who you are.
If you do the work and trust the process, it’ll open the door to:
- Higher traffic potential,
- More qualified leads,
- Longer-lasting rankings, and
- Stronger brand authority.
But only if you’re willing to be bold about your content.
Create something truly exceptional — content that actually solves problems better than what’s already ranking.
That’s what I learned from YouTube and it’s exactly what I’m applying to B2B SEO now.
Wanna hear how it’s working out?
I’m ranking #1 in New Zealand for my target keyword after only one month because of that guide I’ve created.
If you're confident in your expertise — don’t just nibble at low-hanging fruit.
Go after the big fish.
Lesson 5: Consistently Is King
When I found a “hit” piece of content, I didn’t just stop there.
I created as many pieces of content around that topic as I possibly could.
If I had just stopped at the first viral video, I wouldn’t have gotten nowhere near as many views and subscribers as what I did.
From what I’ve experienced with my Youtube channel, success comes from consistency of the fundamentals.
When I used these SEO and content marketing strategies consistently, my Youtube Channel skyrocketed.
It’s the “yin-yang” of hard and smart work:
- The smart work is the strategical side of SEO + content marketing
- The hard work is doing that everyday.
Everyday, I’d wake up and ask myself:
What’s the highest-value action I can take today that will move the needle forward?
When I did that consistently, I moved Youtube mountains.
The same can (and most likely is) true for your B2B agency.
My question to you is the same:
What actions can you do today that, if completed, will be 10x more valuable than any other action you could do?
If you do that everyday, with time you’ll be in a much better spot than where you are currently reading this article.
It’s not sexy.
But it’s what will separate you from the rest of the competition who isn’t disciplined enough to put in the work day in and day out.
The Takeaway For Your B2B Marketing Business
I have a saying that rings true the more business experience I gather:
People are people and people have problems.
It took me time to realize this:
The people who watched my Youtube are real-life individuals who have dreams, goals, aspirations, pain, loss, grief, and every-other human experience under the sun.
With that human experience comes problems.
The more positive emotions I can give to these people through solving their problems, the more connection I created with them, and the better my business did.
