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YouTube keyword research means checking search volume, competition, and the view counts of currently ranking videos before you record anything. Sunny Lenarduzzi’s rule is research before you record, and she recommends new channels target topics with fewer than 50,000 competing video results.
Sunny helps entrepreneurs grow on YouTube and has over a decade of experience as a video, social media, and brand strategist. Her clients have generated over $5 million in revenue from organic YouTube traffic, and Forbes and HuffPost have both named her channel a must-watch for business.
Below is her research process, the scripting formula that holds retention, how she converts tutorial views into email subscribers, and the ecommerce case study where a single livestream produced $20,000 in sales.
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Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- Target topics with high search volume and low competition. Under 50,000 competing video results is Sunny’s threshold for a new channel.
- Check the view counts on currently ranking videos. Top results with few views mean nobody actually watches that topic.
- Retention is the number one ranking factor, so get to the substance within 30 seconds using a hook, an outcome, and a credibility line.
- There is no ideal video length. A 15 or 30 minute tutorial holds attention as long as there is no filler.
- Send viewers directly to YouTube for the first 24 to 48 hours, not to an embedded video on your blog, because embeds do not generate ranking signals.
- One of Sunny’s videos, three years old with over half a million views, still adds about 300 email leads a day.
- Stone Coat Countertops doubled subscribers from 70,000 to 140,000 in 90 days, and their first livestream generated close to $20,000 in product sales.
- Sunny films four to eight videos in about four hours, once every one to two months.
How Sunny Lenarduzzi built a YouTube business from an $80 webcam
Sunny’s channel started as a way to stop answering the same client questions individually. She had built a one-woman social media consultancy after leaving journalism, and as a solopreneur she hit a ceiling where meetings about client questions were eating the time she needed to do the work.
Out of desperation she filmed a tutorial on Periscope, which had just launched at SXSW and was the biggest question her clients had. She sent it to her clients and thought nothing of it.
Her YouTube channel had no subscribers and contained old demo reels and family videos. The next morning that tutorial had 2,000 views.
She committed to one social media tutorial a week for a year. That year produced 50,000 subscribers, 3 million views, an email list in the tens of thousands, and her first digital product.
The equipment was a window for lighting and an $80 webcam, with editing done herself. Her first speaking engagement came from NATO’s social media manager finding her on YouTube and flying her to Brussels.
Her earlier path was journalism. She covered the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler straight out of school, realized on a logical level she was on a great trajectory, and felt stifled being told how to edit, what to say, and how to dress.
Why tutorial videos are the best way to start a YouTube channel
Tutorial content is the fastest path to traffic because YouTube is a search engine, and people search for solutions to problems all day. Educational videos put you in front of people who have never heard of you, which is the entire mechanism.
That is how Sunny went from 10 consultancy clients to 3 million viewers in a year. It is also why the majority of her channel is still tutorial content despite having an audience.
Every business solves a problem, including ecommerce businesses. Your product exists because it helps somebody, whether the impact is small and fun or significant and health-related.
Once you have an audience, you can diversify into lifestyle content or more varied formats. Tutorials keep generating the new leads that feed everything else.
How to do YouTube keyword research before you record
Sunny’s rule is research before you record, because publishing without research means uploading videos and hoping. Her evaluation runs across three factors.
| Factor | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Search volume | How many people search that term monthly. Higher is better. |
| Search pool (competition) | How many videos already exist on the topic. Under 50,000 results for a new channel. |
| Views and velocity | View counts on currently ranking videos. High views means people actually watch it. |
The free tool she recommends is Keywords Everywhere, a Google Chrome plugin that shows search volume for any term or long-tail phrase typed into Google or YouTube. TubeBuddy rates competitiveness directly, from poor through great.
The views and velocity check catches a trap the other two miss. If the top three videos for a topic have been up five years with a handful of views, nobody wants that content regardless of what search volume suggests.
Smaller competition is always better, and the right threshold depends on the niche. Established channels with more authority can go after bigger topics.
YouTube is a ranking game, so momentum comes from ranking first. That means low competition and high search volume together.
The hot script formula for YouTube retention
Sunny’s hot script formula is hook, outcome, testimonial, delivered in under 30 seconds. Retention is the number one ranking factor on YouTube, so getting to the substance immediately is what makes a video rank.
The hook states what the video teaches. The outcome tells viewers exactly what they will know by the end, so they know they landed in the right place and this is not clickbait.
The testimonial is a credibility line: what you have achieved or what results you have produced for others. Her own example runs “I’ve helped my clients go from scratch to 100,000 subscribers in 10 months and 10 million views leveraging this formula.”
Under 30 seconds is ideal and under a minute still works. The reason it matters is that the goal is not serving your existing audience, it is holding brand new viewers who have never heard of you.
How long should a YouTube video be?
There is no ideal length. Sunny has 15-minute videos that hold attention because they are tutorials with no fluff and no filler.
If explaining the outcome takes 30 minutes, people will watch 30 minutes. Someone who genuinely wants to learn something will watch the whole video, in one sitting or across several.
How to keep viewers watching until the end
Tease an incentive at the beginning and deliver it at the end. That might be an invitation to a community, or a downloadable guide.
Structuring content step by step also works, because viewers have to reach the end to get the complete outcome. Sunny can see the drop-off in her analytics at the exact moment she directs people to a guide or a Facebook group.
Linking videos to each other with complementary content
Sunny alternates end-of-video calls to action between an email opt-in and another video. Every platform now wants to keep you on it longer, so channel watch time and overall YouTube watch time both matter.
The complementary pairing is sequential. A video on getting comfortable on camera points to a video on making your first video with your phone.
That alternation grows watch time and channel authority while still building the email list and community.
How to optimize a YouTube video for search
Your primary keyword must appear at the front of the title or the video will not get found. That is the single most important optimization step.
Descriptions run 200 to 400 words for Sunny, restating the video’s subject with the primary keyword repeated and secondary keywords added. Long descriptions matter less than they used to.
She specifically warns against listing every step from the video in the description. Viewers will read the steps instead of watching, which destroys your retention.
Tags still deserve attention without going overboard. Reiterate the primary keyword there too.
End cards and clickable cards throughout the video round out the optimization phase.
How important is the YouTube thumbnail?
Thumbnails are vitally important because there is so much competing video. Most YouTube traffic is mobile, where the thumbnail renders tiny.
Sunny’s advice for new channels is no more than four words in large bold text. She has moved to text-free thumbnails featuring a bold image of herself on a bright background, which works because she already has an audience.
If she started over today, she would use three to four word punchy headlines. She tests constantly.
Why the first 24 hours after publishing matter most
YouTube pays close attention to engagement in the first 24 hours after a video goes public, so distribution during that window drives how far the video travels. Comments, likes, and shares in that period signal quality, which pushes the video up in both search rankings and suggested videos.
Sunny shares every new video to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and her email list within the first 24 hours. Even an audience of 10 people is an unfair advantage worth using.
The 24-hour clock starts when the video becomes public, so an unlisted video that you switch to public starts the timer then.
Why you should not send traffic to an embedded video
Send viewers directly to YouTube for the first 24 to 48 hours rather than to a blog post with the video embedded. Traffic through an embed does not generate the engagement signals YouTube needs.
People do not go to a blog, click into the embedded video, and then leave a thumbs up, a comment, and a subscribe. They watch and move on.
Sunny switches the links to her own site after that first window. Embedding immediately is a large missed opportunity.
How to distribute videos when you have no audience
Borrow other people’s audiences through relevant Facebook groups and forums. Sunny did exactly this at the start, joining social media marketing groups, asking admins for permission to share, and posting her videos.
The higher-value version is answering questions. When someone in a group asks about a topic your video covers, linking that video is genuinely helpful rather than promotional.
YouTube is a long game, and every video moves you forward. Do the research, script and film properly, optimize correctly, and distribute where you can.
How to build an email list from YouTube
Attach a hyper-relevant lead magnet to each video and pitch it at the end. YouTube viewers are warm leads because they arrived actively searching for the answer you just gave them.
Sunny’s video on getting more views on YouTube has over half a million views, is three years old, and still generates about 300 email leads a day. The attached lead magnet is a YouTube SEO checklist PDF covering how to optimize videos correctly.
The mechanism is both a spoken call to action at the end of the video and a link in the description. Those leads funnel into her programs and products.
YouTube case study: $20,000 from one livestream
Stone Coat Countertops, which sells epoxy products, doubled from about 70,000 to 140,000 subscribers in 90 days working with Sunny’s team. They are now close to 200,000.
Their first video in the program was a livestream demonstrating how their products work, structured as a product launch. It generated close to $20,000 in product sales.
That month became their highest revenue month ever. Retention on the stream was extremely high because a live product demonstration is inherently engaging.
How to make YouTube videos for a product that does not solve an obvious problem
Build videos around the benefits rather than the product. If you sell vitamin C, list everything vitamin C does and turn each benefit into a tutorial.
A video titled “how to get clear skin with vitamins” walks through the steps, and one of those steps mentions the product you sell with a link below. The tutorial does the ranking work and the product placement follows naturally.
How to get over camera fright on YouTube
Focus on the value of the content rather than on how you look or sound. Sunny went from a multi-million dollar morning TV set to a webcam and struggled with it, because she had no lights, no team, no producer, and no director.
She also worried people would see putting herself on camera as egotistical. What resolved it was recognizing she was helping people.
You do not strictly have to appear on camera, and it works considerably better when you do. It is called YouTube for a reason.
Her practical starting exercise is a brain dump: write a list of everything you have mastered in your business, then run each item through the keyword research process. Everyone is genuinely expert at something and already talks about it constantly.
Common YouTube mistakes new creators make
The biggest mistake is believing you need to post daily. YouTube rewards quality over quantity, unlike Instagram or Facebook where constant activity matters.
If you can produce something that inspires, educates, or entertains every day, do it. Publishing filler daily does not help you.
The second mistake is copying creators whose situation does not match yours. Casey Neistat and Peter McKinnon are world-class filmmakers, and Gary Vaynerchuk has a 20-plus person brand team with a dedicated full-time editor and videographer.
Be realistic about your capabilities and lean into what makes you distinctive. Nobody supersedes the original.
Should you delete your old YouTube videos?
No. Sunny leaves everything up, good and bad, and considers deleting old videos a waste of time.
You can unlist them if you prefer. A better use of the effort is re-optimizing old videos, which Sunny has seen push aging content to the top of rankings and generate new views.
Should you put your podcast on YouTube?
Uploading full podcast episodes to YouTube hurts your channel because retention on a long unedited conversation is poor. The version that works is short tutorial clips.
Jordan Harbinger does this well, taking mini tutorial segments from guest interviews, giving each a proper thumbnail, and uploading them optimized for YouTube. Each clip functions as a standalone tutorial.
YouTube vs Facebook video
Facebook video is excellent for engagement in the moment and it is not evergreen. You post, get a couple of days of engagement velocity, and then need something new.
YouTube keeps working. A ranked video continues generating leads and subscribers for years without further effort, which is why Sunny calls it a lazy strategy in the best sense.
Her repurposing flow sends every YouTube video out as Instagram stories, an Instagram feed graphic with a caption, an email to her list, and a Facebook post. Going live on Facebook to announce the new YouTube video drives the most immediate traffic.
What retention number should you aim for on YouTube?
Retention above 50% is good. Expect a drop in the first few seconds regardless of quality, since some viewers leave immediately for reasons unrelated to your content.
What matters is a relatively flat line through the body of the video before the final drop-off. Sunny can identify exactly where she directs viewers to a guide or group by the dip in the graph.
How Sunny produces videos today
Sunny batches four to eight videos in about four hours, filming once every one to two months. That is her total on-camera time.
Her team edits, creates teaser clips for other platforms, and handles distribution across email and social. She recently brought an in-house videographer on board who also covers course content and promotional ads.
You can find Sunny at SunnyLenarduzzi.com, where her YouTube for Bosses program is listed under the work with me section.
Frequently asked questions
How do you do keyword research for YouTube?
Check three things before recording: monthly search volume for the term, how many videos already compete for it, and the view counts on videos currently ranking. Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome plugin for volume, and TubeBuddy rates competitiveness directly.
How many competing videos is too many for a new channel?
Sunny Lenarduzzi suggests staying under 50,000 video results if your channel is new. Established channels with more authority can compete for larger topics.
What is the number one YouTube ranking factor?
Retention, meaning the percentage of your video that viewers actually watch. Above 50% average retention is a good target.
How should you open a YouTube video?
Use a hook stating what the video teaches, an outcome telling viewers what they will know by the end, and a credibility line, all in under 30 seconds. Getting to the substance fast is what preserves retention.
How long should a description be on YouTube?
Sunny writes 200 to 400 words restating the video’s subject with the primary keyword repeated and secondary keywords included. Do not list every step from the video, because viewers will read instead of watch and your retention will drop.
Should you send traffic to YouTube or to an embedded video on your blog?
Send traffic directly to YouTube for the first 24 to 48 hours, since embedded views do not produce the likes, comments, and subscribes YouTube uses to judge a video. Switch links to your own site afterward.
Should you upload full podcast episodes to YouTube?
No. Retention on a long unedited conversation is poor. Cut short tutorial clips from episodes instead, and upload each one optimized as a standalone video.
How often should you post on YouTube?
Quality matters far more than frequency on YouTube, unlike Instagram or Facebook. Sunny batches four to eight videos in roughly four hours every one to two months and publishes weekly.
