With YouTube video viewing on the rise due to exponential mobile and tablet use, individuals and businesses are desperately trying to find feasible methods to increase their YouTube views, comments and likes.

Everyone is competing to have their video ranked for a multitude of keywords. The hope is that their video will snowball and become a viral sensation.

For some, having their YouTube videos go viral is the difference in their business being in the red or black for the entire year.

With much on the line, personally and professionally, many businesses posting YouTube videos are willing to try just about anything to increase their subscribership and viewership numbers.

But today, I’ll share with you the 3 top actions you shouldn’t take when trying to increase your YouTube video viewership and subscribership numbers. The actions that I’ll discuss will definitely decrease, if not destroy, your YouTube video rankings in search engines.

In the recent weeks, Google has gone on record stating that websites that use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) will receive a bump in their website’s search rankings.

If you have not a clue as to what I’m talking about, when I say “HTTPS”, then I suggest you read up on SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and HTTPS, and why and when they’re to be used.

In short, banking, shopping, email and social media service providers are among the top users of SSL.

SSL is used primarily to keep data encrypted and private from those snoopy eyes trying to pry into the most intimate details of your life. SSL only protects the transferring of data from one connection point to another.

As a matter of fact, if your banking, email, social media, and online shopping providers are not using SSL, the chance of your sensitive data (i.e., credit card information, social security, passwords, username) being compromised is at a greater risk.

Also, just because SSL is used doesn’t mean that the database one stores your information in is secure.

Again, SSL on deals with securing your data as it is transferred throughout wild superhighway known as the Internet. But I digress.

So why then is SSL being used in search such a big factor at all is probably your question?

Today I received a $50 domain inquiry for a top 3 word .com.

I’ll take a few moments to share a few thoughts for domain buyers and sellers.

I’ve received a few offers on this same domain over the last year, so I knew that I was not going to rollover and blindly accept this offer without doing a little research.

Just based on the previous domain inquiries and offers, the lowest price I was willing to accept was $25K.

As I do with every domain and right from the start, I also checked to see if the other domain extensions where registered, available, or developed.

And to my surprise and advantage as a seller, all other domain extensions were registered and a few had fully developed websites belonging to thriving businesses.

So I did what anyone should do, which is performing a few business searches to be sure that those businesses were legit.

I recently was invited to an Entrepreneur Summit sessions held in Round Rock, Texas by a close friend and business partner.

I always find it an intriguing challenge to hear from business owners looking for ways to launch, sustain and grow their businesses.

Having had a chance to address a small group of entrepreneurs about how to grow their businesses as it relates to SEO and domain names, at the table was a photographer, baker, imports/exports operator, and an online retailer.

I didn’t learn much about the online retailer as he wasn’t too forthcoming with his business or business model.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed answering internet marketing and business strategy questions about the photographer, baker and imports/exports operator.

We talked about and discussed many aspects of launching, sustaining and growing their businesses. I’ll attempt to highlight some of the questions asked and addressed in our short time together.

Things have definitely been moving at a fast pace around Kickstart Commerce, especially pay-for-performance SEO (white hot!).

Customers that signed and executed agreements nearly 6 months ago are finding profitable success in generating greater website traffic and new customer relationships.

Their rankings have not only increased, but their website is listed for multiple listings and a variety of keywords on page one and two of Google. That’s right, the big kahuna of search, Google!

One of the reasons I make mention of the pay-for-performance SEO customers is that the commonality in their success is domain name and high-quality content. Yes, there is more to SEO than just domain name and high-quality content. The focus on domain name and high-quality content is what sets these customers apart from their competition and highly visible search rankings.

Again, a good bit of present day SEO and future SEO will depend on high-quality content being shared by real people finding value in that content, generating and boosting greater backlink profile and link building value. And one way to build and boost your website’s link building value is ensuring your website has a solid foundation in regards to a domain name.

It’s easy to write high-quality content, if your website is information driven, and place that high-quality content, or any type or quality of content on a long and not easy to remember domain name. Can the website rank? Why, yes it could and can rank.

But the real question, will the customers remember the website without having to go back through their varying search steps?

Subdomains have been around for a long time, but it’s only quite recently that internet marketers learned how invaluable they can be. In fact, there was a time when using subdomains was thought to be ultimately bad for SEO.

However, with every cat, dog, and bird update constantly changing search engines, many small business owners and internet marketers are clamoring for anything that can even remotely increase views and ranking.

This has given birth to loads of white-hat, grey-hat, and black-hat SEO marketing tactics.

One marketing tactic many use to boost their rankings is using subdomains.

Once considered gray hat, making use of subdomains for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings for specific keywords or keyword phrases is now considered black-hat SEO.

But don’t lose hope just yet, as subdomains can be ethically and effectively used via white-hat SEO tactics and strategies.

Don’t believe me? Just check out such sites as Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, and Shopify, to name a few.

These popular mainstream websites offer services that allow users to create their own websites using subdomains instead of subdirectories.

So take a step back before we venture too far down the path of subdomain SEO. Let’s take a moment to define domains, subdomains, and subdirectories.

With search engines closing in on 20 years, it’s safe to say that we are still in the early years of search although there have been many advancements along the way.

We’re just now turning yet another corner in search as social and mobile search both progress beyond their infancy.

Small businesses stand the greatest chance to capitalize on learning SEO because of the markets they serve. Small businesses tend serve geographic-specific audiences.

Nevertheless, search plays a key part to every business’ marketing and advertising, not only small businesses.

Whether a small, moderate, or critical percent, ranking your website, once considered optional, has become a mandatory task that businesses can no longer afford to ignore.

If you’re a small business owner with a website, then chances are likely that a good bit of your business, outside of word of mouth and referrals, comes from search engines.

Whether Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, AngiesList, or another source, small business owners that are looking to boost their local business presence are in great need of learning about small business SEO and local SEO.