You can often hear, even in the modern world, the proverb that as you call the ship, so it will sail. This scheme often works in practice concerning video blogging. Thus, it is not only the content that you offer to your audience, not only your message and efforts but also the name of your video on YouTube that matters. The name should work like a magnet and, if it falls into the user’s field of vision, attract the maximum number of clicks.

Imagine that your video has collected 30-40 thousand views and hit the YouTube trends in a day. This means that a huge number of users who go to the trends tab will see your video, among others. In this case, the name can play a crucial role, and the number of views will grow several times more.

There are several unspoken rules and tricks regarding the name of a video on YouTube, which allows you to increase traffic and bring a more target audience to your YouTube channel. We will discuss this issue in more detail later.

Criteria for selecting a title per million views


First, you should decide on the new video’s theme and generate 30-50 ideas for this. Then in several stages, filters out the ideas until there is only one best one left. Which, according to your gut, should “come in” right now. The easiest way to deal with this is for those who make reviews of trailers and movies — after the release, you need to make your own video immediately, and increased attention is provided. See if your chosen topic has the same trends or if you need to create hot topics yourself.

It would then be best if you chose a temporary working name for the content in the video. The video title must represent its content. Otherwise, you are playing with the risk of running into criticism from viewers, dislikes and unsubscribes from the channel.

We analyzed many videos that have collected more than a million views and identified the main criteria for making headlines. When doing the analysis, we did not take videos from promoted channels, since most of their views are collected at the expense of subscribers, not due to the name’s correct choice.

Of course, in the case of regular subscribers, the video’s name also matters, but other factors may affect this, such as knowing your viewers, feedback, and contact with them. For example, you promise to shoot a video in a week about what your subscribers have been asking you for a long time — of course, a large number of views at the release of this video is expected.

Here is the list of our main recommendations:

  1. Be real to its content.
  2. Make people care, trigger the need for a response, opinion, statement, comment.
  3. Provoke, add calls to action, use triggers
  4. Added value, create benefits to your target audience.
  5. Use the names of celebrities, popular places…
  6. Be a pack leader – aim to pick an underrepresented subject and be among the first to make a video on a topic that will be very popular during the day or week, for example, a meteorite fall.
  7. Register of the name

How do I name a YouTube video to get a lot of views?

And now we will focus on each point in more detail.

  1. Be true to the content.
    Be in sync with the video’s content— as already mentioned, above-you should not deceive your audience. This will lead you to experience a decrease in views and likes and scare away everyone interested in the first place. For example, the names of videos often say something like “Exclusive details from the life of a celebrity”, but in fact, the content does not correspond to the stated feature.
  2. Requires a response.
    Or opinions. This can be a sharp question, coverage of the problem, or just a question to the viewer. For example, beauty bloggers often ask for help in choosing an image for a holiday or hairstyle. Novice bloggers can cover a piece of popular news or event, and the name itself may sound like “the Trick of a star: in fact, he(she) is not like that”.
    Situational is also of great importance in this case, which we will discuss a little later.
  1. Provocation.
    This method is often used by those who want to increase the audience. This can be any actions, usually from the category of freaks. For example, on YouTube, all sorts of “challenges” are popular. These so-called challenges and tests are happening when a blogger does something out of the ordinary (wrapped in 100 layers of Scotch Tape, takes a bath of beer and Doshirak…) and encourages the viewer to do the same. People are also most interested in videos whose title contains the words “fight” and others from this category. See how well the channel dedicated to fighting games uses it.
  2. Benefit
    This can be competent tips, training videos, guides, manuals, and just high-quality content. The benefits for the target audience should be outlined in the video title itself. For example, “Minus 2 kilograms after watching this video” for the channel about proper nutrition.
  3. Popular names
    The most popular videos now are videos shot as reviews about celebrities, popular tourist destinations, sports or political events, in which the author expresses his opinion. Their names use the names or surnames of people in the event — the presence of these details in the video title will allow you to collect more views on the video. In one of her videos, a beauty blogger uses a well-known name.Young girls who saw somewhere the name of this video, and at the same time want to improve or change their appearance or want lips like Jolie’s — clicked and watched the video, from here so many views on a fairly modest channel.
  4. Contextuality
    Always pay attention to keeping your finger on the pulse of events on the Internet and in the world. Quickly prepared and filmed material on a relevant topic will help in gaining popularity.
  1. Unusual design
    To make the text line above the video even more attractive, you can use different spellings:
    – CAPS — all in capital letters.
    – Each new word with a Capital Letter.
    – Emoji in the name 🤨 🧐 🤓

Another way to increase the number of video views is to use — clickbait.