EP 336 - YouTube for Coaches: How to Get More Views with Titles, Thumbnails & SEO in 2026 (Part 5 of 5)
If you want to get more views on YouTube as a coach, you're in the right place, because in this episode we're going to show you exactly how to do it with titles, thumbnails, and SEO.
In Part 5 of this 5-part YouTube for Coaches Series, Debbie Shadid and YouTube Strategist Nicole Janton break down exactly how to get your coaching videos found on YouTube in 2026 - using the right keywords, thumbnail strategy, and SEO tools so the right people find you every time you publish.
If you're new to my channel, my name is Debbie Shadid. I'm a Business Growth and Life Coach and the founder of the Business Building Boutique. For over two decades, I've helped women learn how to become coaches, get clients, grow their businesses, and create meaningful income doing work they love.
If you want more people to find your coaching videos on YouTube, YouTube SEO is the skill that makes it happen, and this video breaks it down in a way that's simple, practical, and built for coaches.
In this episode, we'll walk through:
The 4 places YouTube looks for keywords to decide who sees your coaching video
Why your title and thumbnail should never say the same thing, and how to use both to double your reach
How to choose thumbnail colors, fonts, and photos that get coaches noticed in the YouTube feed
How to use TubeBuddy and VidIQ to find the best keywords for your coaching videos
YouTube is not just a platform. For coaches, it is a library of trust-building content that works for your business around the clock, and once you understand SEO, every video you publish starts working harder for you.
When you commit to YouTube as a coach and learn how to get your videos found, your channel grows, your authority builds, and your coaching business compounds in a way no other platform can match.
Ready to build your coaching business the right way? Book a free Business Blueprint Call: https://www.debbieshadid.com/schedule
Free Canva Workshop — Build Your YouTube Brand: https://www.debbieshadid.com/canva
Debbie's Favorite Recording Setup:
Logitech Full HD Webcam: https://amzn.to/4m2rRye
Blue Yeti Podcast Microphone: https://amzn.to/4cfd4gc
Office Lighting (no ring in glasses!): https://amzn.to/4rZ9hrZ
Phone Tripod Stand (adjustable to 62"): https://amzn.to/40Y7WqB
Descript for Video Editing: https://descript.cello.so/6xw4YgGx34a
Listen to the Podcast:
Life Coach Business Building School Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
If this episode was helpful, share it with a coach who's been talking about starting their YouTube channel. Subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the rest of the series - we're just getting started!
Disclaimer: Some links above may be affiliate links. I only recommend products I personally use and love.
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Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
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Transcript
if you're a coach on YouTube, you have now recorded your videos, and what you're concerned about now is how is somebody gonna see these videos? I wanna make sure that my videos get found. That's what we're gonna be diving into today. We're gonna talk about titles and thumbnails and keywords. I'm Debbie Shadid. If we have not met yet, I wanna introduce myself. I've helped thousands of coaches build boutique style coaching businesses that are also profitable. And today I have brought with me Nicole. She actually is our strategist behind all we do on YouTube. Super excited today to talk about titles and thumbnails and keywords. This is Nicole's specialty. Yes. I love this stuff. SEO, everything. Let's get your videos bumping up so that when people are searching for certain phrases, you're popping up and being found as the go-to expert. And you've done a great job on that. I can tell you that for sure. So what would you like us to know about getting videos found on YouTube? Yeah, so the first thing to know about getting videos found on YouTube is that the algorithm, by and large is built off of. Of keywords and key phrases, and these keywords and key phrases can be found in four main places. So number one is the title. It's what we oftentimes think about, right? Number two would be the thumbnail. What are you saying on the thumbnail that's gonna capture attention? Third is in the description. So what is written underneath your video, giving people an idea of why they should want to watch. And then number four is actually in your subtitles. So this is something especially new creators on YouTube tend to overlook, is you should be uploading your subtitles separately as an SRT file and that way. YouTube is going to have the transcription for your video. They can display it on the screen, which helps when people are watching with no audio. But it also really helps from a reach perspective. So lots of different places that we can add things, and we really wanna think about who am I trying to reach? Why? Right? Like what are they looking for? What do they need support with? What are they typing into YouTube? And then how can we make sure our video pops up when that person is searching it? Okay, so a couple things I wanna talk about is, number one, the title and the thumbnail. Do not say the same thing. Do you wanna talk about that? Yeah, what we like to do is create a different thumbnail than the title, because. A lot of the time, your title is too long for a thumbnail. It's gonna create so many words that the text is going to be small, and also it gives us two chances to capture attention. So if the title didn't necessarily have the key word that they were looking for, if we can include it on the thumbnail, that's gonna help boost it or even more so, right? A lot of the time people are looking for relevant content, so if you could include the year. That you're publishing it either in the thumbnail or in the title or both. That's gonna be really helpful. But the title and the thumbnail play off of each other. So I would think about them as a compliment. The title is usually a little bit more SEO oriented. Key words, key phrases. The thumbnail has that, but it's a little bit more attention, urgency. what is the key word that's gonna stand out? So, for example, on our channel, we've really noticed. That if we include coach or coaches or coaching and we highlight that word on the thumbnail, then the video gets a lot more reach. And for those of you who are like me, who love everything branded and matching all the same, we kind of threw that out the window, didn't we? Nicole? The colors that work on YouTube are not necessarily the colors that are in your brand. Can you speak to that? So, I mean, a lot of the time you do want your branding to come across on the channel, and we do this in certain pieces in that we have a navy blue that is often in the background of our covers, and that is a brand color. But our other brand colors are very like. Soft, a soft blue even our red is a little bit more, it's actually, Debbie's lipstick red, so it's like a deeper red or very nice, but it doesn't necessarily have that pop of color that we're looking for. So I find that neon color is like a yellow and orange, even like a neon type green can really stand out on the feed. So I would just choose one highlight color that compliments your brand colors that could be part of your YouTube brand. What you don't wanna do is just be throwing out like all these random, bright colors, 'cause you think it's gonna work and now your channel doesn't feel cohesive. But that is a really key piece. So we added yellow in to Debbie's thumbnails and it really does help things stand out. So let's talk about photos, because I did not wanna play along with the photo ideas. me say first that yes, I have professional photos that we're able to put into Canva. You can remove the background. But as you have scrolled on YouTube, you might have noticed, or you'll begin to notice, that sometimes some of the photos that are actually on those thumbnails are photos where people look surprised or they are pointing their fingers somewhere. And I haven't wanted to play along very well with that. But Nicole, do you wanna talk about the kind of photos that actually might be more effective? and of course, what I wanna say is you need to go with what works best for you, which is why I was like, look, I don't like those silly photos. Let's use photos that I feel. Like look more normal for me, and also I utilize my iPhone to take additional photos as well. Yeah, so I think, you know, it's really funny if you're, following along on audio here. I was just making some of those funny faces on the video, and it's true, you know, you do see a lot of those on the YouTube covers, and it's because, like I said with the words, the thumbnail is like the urgency, the shock value to help it stand out from the feed. So if it's like. You know how to start your business in 2026 versus don't do this when you're starting your business in 2026. You know the second one's going to stand out more because it just triggers more emotion in your body. That being said, if it doesn't feel aligned with you or your brand and it's not something that you would do, I wouldn't recommend it. Just like, you know, maybe a funny trend on TikTok or Instagram might get you hundreds of thousands of views if you feel awkward doing it or it's not aligned with who you are. It's not a good fit for your business, right? So what I do recommend is making sure that your Photos that you choose for your thumbnail are as high resolution as possible. So if you're gonna take it on your iPhone, take it on the back camera. I know it's nice to take the selfie when you can see yourself, but this is just how it is. Like if you could do it in front of a mirror, it's gonna be better. The higher quality is gonna allow your thumbnail to look more professional, higher resolution, which actually the algorithm in YouTube will recognize and want. To boost it up because it sees it as higher quality. So above all else, make sure that it's high quality. And if you wanna keep it really simple, you could just take a selfie with the back camera right after you're done recording. It's really nice when you can have an outfit match between the cover and what's inside the video, but that's largely way less important than having a good quality photo that feels like you. You know, the thumbnail is the only promo really. I don't wanna put too much weight on it, but it really is the only reason why somebody is gonna stop and click on your video. Most of us don't go read descriptions. We're not reading the title, we're not reading the subtitle like you're talking about. You really do. If you think about your own kind of practice on YouTube, you look at a thumbnail and you're like, am I gonna click or am I not? So it it really, it really is important. Yeah, and I think that this is where like creating your professional brand in general is so important. So we mentioned in a last video the Canva workshop. Do you wanna speak to that a bit? Debbie? Yeah, for sure. There's gonna be a link in the description. I will walk you through in this Canva workshop, how to create your brand with your colors, your fonts, and having consistency is. In that is very important. Now, again, I wanna reiterate what Nicole said. We actually picked different fonts and a different color for our YouTube thumbnails, but there is consistency in all of those thumbnails on YouTube. So make sure that you have that professional brand in anywhere you are. Honestly, that's the way that you set yourself apart, for sure. Yeah. And Canva's gonna be a really great place for you to make your thumbnails. That's where we make our thumbnails. They have plenty of templates that you can use and rebrand with your branding once you have it created there. and then also like. Debbie said, we've switched up the fonts a little bit. So something there is, you know, our brand font is, Playfair display is one of the key brand fonts. it's a Serif font. And what we find on YouTube is that actually a Sans Serif font is gonna perform better because it allows it to be that much bolder and stand out. So as you're designing your thumbnails. Take the essence of your brand and then add that sort of like attention urgency piece just so that it can really stand out. So I would love to talk about some of the other tools that we use. We will leave links for those as well, whether it be Tube Buddy or Vid IQ, and how you utilize those tools to help you with descriptions, with keywords, with even titles. Now, I do wanna preface, you don't have those tools to get started. You definitely can just pick a title. Don't let any of these things be barriers if you have to go learn new software. Don't let that be a barrier, but I'd love for you to talk about how those can help you in getting your YouTube channel. I guess, seen get more views, get found easier. Can you share about that Nicole? Yeah, so both Tube Buddy and Vid IQ allow you to do searches around your SEO and essentially see. Scores from their software on your title, your description, your tags, et cetera, so that you can start to get an idea. Is my videos tracking with creating good SEO? Am I popping up in the search feed? And it's quite cool because you can. I both identifies key phrases, so what are people actually searching? You can put in different variations of it to see what performs the best, and then from there you can actually see what are the top videos that are popping up in that category, both one for inspiration, two to pull other related keywords. oftentimes in their description they'll say similar things, so you'll wanna include those key phrases as well in your video. And third, just to keep track of like, how well am I ranking. So we have a few key phrases that we target again and again. And it's quite cool to see like, oh, we actually own, you know, six outta 20 of those. Top places in that key phrase versus zero when you start out. Right. So that's a fun two buddy feature. They have a ton of different features, like something else that's nice is if you wanted to bulk update. So I had mentioned earlier with SEO, it can be helpful to add the year in there. But then now things switch over. It's not 2025 anymore. It's 2026. Well, tube buddy has a bulk editor, so you can just essentially do a find and replace, just like how you would do in a Google Doc, but with the titles in your video so that all the 2025 gets turned into 2026, or you know, your program name changes or your IP changes, you can replace the whole blurb with your updated blurb. So lots of different pieces there, but from a search and find perspective, it's really about. Identifying the key phrases and then analyzing your title, description and tags to see how is it going to rank in that key phrase, how likely is it to show up at the top of the search results? So they're really great tools. I mean, tube Buddy is a pretty. Low cost tool, I would say. but something else that YouTube came out with a little bit more recently that you can check out even if you don't have those tools, is they have an inspiration section inside of your YouTube studio. And whilst it's not going to tell you. The SEO of your video is 80 versus a hundred. Like how to buddy would, it will give you ideas based on your content, based on the audience that we are recognizing. Watches your videos. Here are some hooks, here are some titles that you might wanna create from. So just as a starting point, if you don't have either of those, go and check out the insights tab in your YouTube studio. You're talking about using Tube Buddy and Vid IQ for analytics, but YouTube also has some great analytics. Yeah, so we actually don't use Tube Buddy and Vid IQ as much for analytics on, say the video, but more analytics on the content that you're putting into the video. So you'll put in your key phrase, let's say, how to grow on YouTube as a coach, and then see based on the title and the description that I've written, what is the ranking there. But you're also gonna really wanna make sure that you're paying attention to your analytics. Post publishing. So Tube buddy pre publishing, getting all the SEO lined up. And then afterwards, how did my video perform? YouTube has an incredible analytics dashboard. You can see their regular analytics. You can go click into Advanced and see everything from like what countries watch, what timing, what is the gender breakdown. Pretty much anything that you'd wanna see about your videos, you can find in the YouTube analytics. All that to say though, just to bring it back full circle, is it's easy to get lost in there. And like we said in a previous video, focus on like vanity metrics. You really want to center yourself in why are you doing this channel? What is the positive outcome for you? And that might not be a million views. It might be, you know, every two videos I have somebody reach out to me. It might be every video. I have 20 calls booked on the backend, right? It's gonna differ for your business. But I'd encourage you that while you use the analytics to help guide future content, you're really staying grounded in your why. Oh, for sure. It is fun if you have the right mindset. It is fun to go look at your analytics and be able to Yeah. how many minutes are people staying on my videos? Like what point did they drop off on my video just at a glance, which like topics seem to do the best. I know you have looked those up, Nicole, based on, You know, key words that we know are best for us. But if you have the right frame of mind, it is good to go in there and look, now I'm saying the right frame of mind because I also don't want you to judge yourself. If you go in there and look and you're like, oh, people drop off at three minutes, like I'm doing something wrong. No, you're not doing anything wrong. That might be the average drop off rate for your videos. But we're not worried about everybody. We're worried about the handful of people that are gonna reach out to you that actually did watch the whole video, and we're like, I love that girl. Right? That's who we're actually thinking about. So make sure you use those, analytics wisely to help you instead of to, punish yourself for maybe thinking you're not doing good enough. Yes, exactly. Don't look at those drop off times and beat yourself up. People are always gonna drop off on a long form video, right? It's just part of the game. a really key part inside the analytics that I would recommend you look at is the content tab. so inside there you can see how did viewers find my channel? Right? Even your shorts, did they find me in the shorts feed? Did they find me from? Searching did they find me when browsing. So that can help you to get an idea of what you can lean into for growth. And you can also see what your top videos are, right? So if you have a video that takes off and gets five times the views of the others, there's a good chance that you should be making more videos on that topic or something similar. One last thing I wanna mention about analytics, because I know you ladies out there, my 50 plus ladies, you get worried about the stalkers, you get worried about the guys that are watching you and leaving you comments. I'm just gonna tell you, don't worry about it. Those are people who have nothing else to do. Nobody can actually connect with you. Okay? When I look at my analytics, I'm like, how could it be like 40% of the people watching are men? When I literally say I coach women 50 plus. So not only will we able to see the ages, like of the people who are watching, but you'll see the gender, how many men and how many women. Look, you're always gonna have comments of people saying things. A virtual assistants trying to sell you something, you know, whoever it is. Don't worry about those. You just worry about connecting with the people who actually need you, okay? That's where your focus should be, not on the kind of creeps that are out there commenting on things. Yes, and if those creeps are finding your video, honestly, it's usually a good thing because it means that more and more people are finding it. Same with if somebody is commenting on your video, like, Hey, the SEO could really be improved on this, or you could really improve your thumbnail. They're mass sending out those comments. So don't take it personally. Actually take it as a pat on the back 'cause they found your channel enough to want to promote to you. That is so true. talk about how you can utilize a video to get somebody to the next step. Should people be adding calls to action? What should they be adding in the comment section of each video? Yeah, so you wanna encourage people to comment on your videos because when people comment, it increases the engagement, which then increases the reach. It's just like any other social platform. The more social activity that you can create, the better. So a few different ways that you can do this. One is just a strict engagement call to action. So, you know, like let's say you're talking about your favorite shoes. What are your favorite shoes? Let me down, no down below. Or even better to ask something, almost like controversial that people can't help but share their opinion on. That's always gonna get people going off and maybe even like going back and forth in the comments with each other. So it's not to say that you have to pose a position in the controversy, but even just saying it and asking some sort of a question about it, like it could be about for coaches like dancing on TikTok, like that could be a, I dunno, it's not super controversial, but anyways, you get the idea. to do it. It's, it's controversial. They don't wanna do it. I know that for sure, Nicole. So anyway, go ahead. Yeah, so anyways, getting people just to engage. So as you're recording, think somebody is on the other side listening and they could respond to me. So how can I get them to do that? I would weave that in your video a couple times. As long as it feels natural. You don't wanna like. Pause your time to just be like, let me know your dog's name in the comments. Ps me and Debbie both love dogs, so if you wanna let us know your dog's name in the comments, we would love to hear it. so that's one piece engagement. The other piece is, as you said, Debbie, like how are we getting people back into our world? How are we getting them onto coaching calls, for example? So you can have your links in the description. I recommend putting your links closer to the top if you can, because people don't tend to scroll a whole lot and then in your video itself, you can have different call to actions that send people places either to free resources, right? Like we mentioned in a previous video, we have a really great free Canva workshop, and it's complimentary to the video. It's gonna help you take your next step so that you can build your professional brand and bring that over to YouTube. So any way that you can weave in things like that, that you're gonna be able to provide additional value to your audience. You can either let them know that the link is in the description, or my preference is to have them comment a keyword.'cause again, the comments are going to just boost your engagement. So comment Canva if you want the link to that Canva workshop that we were talking about, for example. and then of course we reply to our comments regularly to make sure that those links are getting sent out. And then the other piece is just direct to a call, right? I would use this one least often, especially on YouTube. You don't want to be displaying like, I have all this free time on my calendar all the time. As a coach on YouTube, you wanna show up as that professional manner. And though if people want a chance to book a call to take that next step, you should make it clear. So is there a contact form, is there an application form that they can reach out to? And just include that in the description. Even if you don't mention it in the video, you can mention it in your videos as well. Like, Hey, if you wanna take this to the next step. Book this call with us, and here's the outcomes that we're going to get to. I would just say use that one a little bit more sparingly than the other two. Whenever you can show up and provide value, give, give, give. People want to reciprocate, Debbie, you can speak to this. It's like, you know, we're more often being like, go grab our free workshop. We have these amazing free graphics. You can use these here. And then people reach out to us via email. They go find our contact form, they find the booking link, and they just have much more like no and trust because we've given them those assets. Right. I have to give credit to you, Nicole, because I. came on to help me just as a business manager all the way around, but also to help me with YouTube, I was focused on our podcast that we were also sharing on YouTube, the video version of it. And during that podcast, which there's lots of episodes of, I was always promoting, Hey, let's get on a call, head over to debbie shadow.com/schedule, or I was saying, come to my workshop, this is what I'm gonna do. I was even selling the program on the podcast, and when you came along you're like, look, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna, let's promote value and let's not pitch, basically, you know, on every single one of the videos. And I was really concerned about that. I have to tell you because I had been doing it all along and I thought, how is this gonna work? But I must tell you, to my surprise and to my delight, we don't actually have to say schedule a call with me, debbie shadow.com/schedule, because. You guys watching YouTube are smart, right? You know how to find whatever's in the comments. And honestly, it even feels better when I get somebody like that on a call when I haven't actually made that pitch because most of the time they've watched not just one, but several videos and they really feel like they know me. So I wanna encourage you if you feel that same thing, like I have to make sure I can make this YouTube pay off for me. Just focus on giving the best value in the video and then just trust that they're gonna click on the link to get on a call with you. So thank you, Nicole, for helping me switch my mindset around that. It's been super fun to have calls booked without me asking for 'em. Yeah, it's so exciting to see those calls come through and. And we were also just reflecting in behind the scenes about, you know, like the quality of these calls that come through, and just how fast they're able to move along and even be, you know, willing to pay in full for a program versus joining an installment plan. That is so, so true. Is there anything else that you want somebody to know about your workflow, about anything to do with getting the video up scheduled and live? Yeah, so I mean, we've talked about a lot in this video and it got a little bit advanced. There with, okay, we could find the key phrase and then figure out what SEO is gonna match the key phrase. That's all fine and dandy. But if we were to just pair this down to make it super simple so that you can get your first video up as like. What topic is your video about? Right? What is somebody searching for about that topic? That's probably gonna give you a really good idea of what your video name should be. And then from there you can pay attention to the analytics and keep improving and developing. And also know that you can always go back and change the video title. You can always go update the description as you improve, as you figure out certain things. so I just keep it simple, you know, what are your people searching for? Just thinking about it logically. And then designing your video around that. That is so true. So yeah, if you guys are starting out again, thinking about your thumbnails and the things that you are worried about doing, right? The good news is you can always go back and change anything, right? Anything can be updated. actually in the process of doing that with some of our older videos because you can even bring New Life or even some of our best videos, right? You can bring new life to it by bringing new covers, new descriptions, new titles. All of that can be changed as well. Is that right, Nicole? And this is actually one of the biggest reasons I would say as a coach, like YouTube is such a great use of your time because on what other platform are you searching and finding videos from six years ago? You know, literally our videos from six, seven years ago, some of them are. Still getting views regularly week after week after week. And so it really is an evergreen sort of like lifelong strategy for your business that positions you as this expert online. So I would just say like I hope that this series has simplified things enough to get you inspired to get started because the possibilities are endless. There is so much room for coaches to grow on YouTube. So, so true. I wanna encourage you to take this attitude that somebody that I was recently listening to said, they said, when I started on YouTube, I decided I was gonna marry YouTube. I was gonna commit to it so fully. That I was gonna do it no matter what. And I have to tell you, she decided to marry YouTube before she ever did her first one for three years. That's what she committed to, but you guys cannot believe what happened to her YouTube within one year, just with that level of commitment. Within one year she had. Dramatically changed her business. It had impacted her results and her coaching business so much. So I really want you to take YouTube seriously as a way to grow your coaching business, to grow that you know, know, like, and trust. Again, just referring back to that 7 11 4 study done by Google seven hours. Can be covered so easily when we're talking about YouTube videos where somebody can watch and really feel like they get to know who you are and feel like they know your personality. So please don't make this too complicated. Just start with your first video. Nicole's giving you the tips on how to get started, get it set up. Do your first video. Don't worry about not having a bunch of followers, a bunch of subscribers. You will build a channel. I, I'll tell you, you'll build a channel that will grow subscribers. Once you add YouTube shorts in it. When you're ready, once you start utilizing some of the software, you'll get better at the videos as you go. You'll get better at seeing what titles work and your progress will compound, You'll pick up speed as you go, so please put yourself out there. Use this as the way to grow your coaching business And make sure to check out any of the resources that we have linked below. We talked about Descript and about Tube Buddy, and about Vid IQ and Canva. All of those things will make this so much easier for you. Okay, so before we go, I wanna thank Nicole. Thank you so much for being here. She's not only an incredible asset to my team, and to my business, so thank you so much. But also, man, you just really helped us make YouTube seem simple and approachable. So thank you so much. Oh, well thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure and I really hope that this inspires you all to go and start a channel. If you do like, leave a comment below. We wanna follow a. On with your channel, we'll be your first subscriber, so drop that in the comments for us. Oh, that is so good. I would love to subscribe to your YouTube if that's what you decide to do today. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure you follow along for more and we'll see you guys in our next episode.
