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3 months ago, I had zero clients.
Today, I've helped channels grow from:
• 59 → 2,701 views (45x)
• 504 → 15,345 views (30x)
• 104 → 4,712 views (45x)
What changed?
I stopped trying to be everything to everyone.
I picked one thing: YouTube SEO.
Then I:
→ Posted daily
→ Commented on 10 posts a day
→ Connected with 10 people a day
→ Showed real results — not promises
The lesson:
Depth beats breadth. Every time.
If you're starting out, pick one lane. Own it.
What's your one lane?
Business ConsultingDigital MarketingSearch Engine OptimizationAhrefsSEMrushTubeBuddyyoutubeseovideoseoyoutubeanalytics
I've seen this exact pattern so many times. One metadata fix, and the video that was "dead" suddenly starts compounding. It's never the content. It's always the packaging.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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504 views.
30 days later: 15,345 views.
Same video. Same thumbnail. Same editing.
The only thing that changed was the metadata.
Here's what actually happened:
This video had been sitting at 504 views since it was published. The creator was frustrated — genuinely good content, but nobody was finding it.
The problem wasn't the video. It was that YouTube didn't know who the video was for.
So we fixed three things:
The title — rebuilt around real search intent
The tags — cleaned up and made relevant
The description — rewritten to match what people were searching for
That's it. No new content. No paid ads. No thumbnail change.
30 days later:
→ 15,345 views (+1,032%)
→ 599.8 watch hours (from 19.7)
→ +61 new subscribers
→ 71.7% traffic from YouTube search
Same video. Different metadata. Completely different result.
The truth about YouTube:
Most creators think they need to make better videos. They don't. They need to make their videos easier for YouTube to read.
YouTube doesn't watch your content. It reads the signals around it.
Fix the signals. Fix the discovery. Watch the views follow.
If your video is stuck at low views, the problem isn't your content. It's your discovery.
DM me "SEO" and I'll take a look at your channel.
hashtag#YouTubeSEO hashtag#YouTubeGrowth hashtag#ContentStrategy hashtag#VideoMarketing hashtag#MaimunurSEO
Starting on Contra with zero reviews and zero client history.
My plan to land client #1:
→ Publish clearly labeled concept projects
→ Pitch a few local businesses with spec redesigns of their sites
→ Share the process, not just the final visuals
Designers who landed their first client here: what actually moved the needle for you? Portfolio, outreach, or something else?
I'd love to learn from your experience.
Best of Luck
Check the Live Sitemap Before Signing Off the Release
A sitemap can export correctly while the live website still serves an older URL list. The task needs a check at the public sitemap address after deployment.
That check should compare the published file with the pages the team agreed to include.
Imagine an export containing 200 URLs. The public sitemap also contains 200, but it still lists a retired service page and omits the new replacement. The totals match. The contents do not.
Before closing the task, check:
• The production sitemap address returns the expected XML.
• Its complete URL list matches the agreed inventory.
• Each intended page type is represented, including a newly published page.
• Deliberately excluded pages remain absent.
• Someone owns the process that keeps the file current.
Start with the sitemap already on the site. It may be an index pointing to several smaller files. Include those files in the comparison so a working index does not hide an outdated section underneath it.
Keep the inventory decision explicit: which service pages, locations, articles or products belong in this release? A crawler's export tells you what it discovered. Compare that list with the pages the site was supposed to publish.
Open a sample of the listed URLs as well. Check that they reach the intended production pages and use the preferred addresses. If the sitemap includes modification dates, those dates should reflect significant page updates; exporting the file again does not make every page newly updated.
For a site that publishes regularly, document how new pages enter the sitemap and how retired pages leave it. An automated generator still needs clear inclusion rules and a check when those rules change.
Keep the public address, inventory comparison and update owner in the release notes. Make the sitemap discoverable through Search Console or robots.txt, and check for retrieval or processing errors. Submission does not guarantee that every listed page will be crawled or indexed.
I put together the generation, export and publishing steps in the full guide on Technical SEO Notes:
https://technicalseonotes.org/how-to-generate-and-export-an-xml-sitemap/
Projects and client work: NikoCodes
https://nikocodes.com/
Solid checklist. I'd add lastmod: if every release stamps today's date on every URL, Google learns to ignore it. It should only change when the page content changes. Also worth confirming every sitemap URL returns a direct 200, not a redirect.