
Google provides some additional pointers to up your watch time specifically.īut take a step back and understand the YouTube landscape overall and the relationship between all these metrics. Knowing what YouTube is looking for, means you can work toward that with your video content strategy.
Engagement: How often people comment, like, favorite, share or subscribe to your video. Rewatches: How many times people rewatch your videos or parts of them. Average Percent Viewed + Average View Duration + Audience Retention: How long on average your videos are able to retain a viewer. Watch time: The total amount of minutes watched on your channel. If you want to optimize your channel overall, you’ll need to know which metrics YouTube uses. You can optimize your channel overall, playlists and individual uploads, so let’s dig into all three. Optimization should be built into your channel set up so you can be successful. We ask: what’s the point if no one will find it? To create a new playlist head over to YouTube Studio while signed into your account, or click the big blue “YouTube Studio” button from inside your account (next to “Customize Channel”).īonus Material: Optimizing Your New YouTube ChannelĪs SEO professionals we care more about how any type of content channel will perform and acquire new eyeballs, than the channel itself. Organize the best content according to their theme and upload these as playlists. The videos that are targeting keywords and that you’ve put the most production value into are most likely to perform. Otherwise, lean on your keyword research and common sense. If you have no idea which videos are best, you can wait, measure and decide then. Good marketers know to always put their best foot forward, and on YouTube, that means making sure your best videos are listed first. Your uploaded videos will automatically be tiled under “Videos” unless you organize them. Once the basics of your YouTube channel are in place, you can start uploading content. To edit your actual channel thumbnail you’ll have to do so from the Google About Me control panel automatically created alongside your account. The green numbers show where this video ranks in YouTube for that tag query. With this installed, you’ll see these types of insights when you click on the tags tab of a competitor’s video. You can also use extensions like Tube Buddy to see which tags your competitors use for their videos. Do they have consistent branding on the thumbnails?Īnswer these questions clearly in your mind before you even buy a selfie stick. Do your competitors use music on their videos?. Study what these leading channels have done with their content, and aim to make your content even more engaging. You may even see the same competitors showing up again and again for the queries you’d like your content to show up for. Once you have a decent list of keyword research, plug those same queries into YouTube to see which one of your competitors rank for these. This will expand your acquisition strategy, making it easier for you to gather new channel viewers and subscribers. Yet so many who start vlogging, find that their content is buried under the thousands of content uploaded that day.
In fact, the number of new YouTube channels doubled between 20, from 15 million channels to over 30 million. That’s why so many newcomers are still trying to break into the video scene. The more people consume content on YouTube, the more advertisers pay to put their messages there, and the more influencers (even micro ones) make money.Īnd while the golden days of YouTube money-making have somewhat passed, the opportunity for individuals and brands to effectively market themselves on the platform is still very real. This phenomenon is simply in response to user behavior. Many have built careers off of vlogging and made millions. Other video platforms have tried to follow suit but pale in comparison to the mighty YouTube content engine. We’ve all heard of the hundreds of hours of content uploaded each day on YouTube, and the billions of hours watched every month, and it being the world’s second-largest search engine. YouTube single-handedly changed the way that we consume content.