How to Optimize Your YouTube Channel
A YouTube channel is like a storefront where sections showcase how products are organized. Many growing channels populate the top section with their most popular videos. Sections and thumbnails conform to the brand message and organize content to elevate the value proposition. YouTube uses video metadata to index videos against viewer searches. By optimizing metadata, a channel can maximize its presence in YouTube search, promotion, suggested videos, and ad-serving. Let’s explore how to optimize your youtube channel!
Tips To Optimize Your Youtube Channel
Keywords
Look at “average percentage viewed” per keyword to rank relevancy. Update metadata as keywords and phrases shift over time. You can look at the top 25 keywords that people use to find your videos, which can help you to optimize video metadata for what viewers are searching for.
Titles and Descriptions
For serial content, add the episode number to the end. Video titles have important keywords in front so they’re not cut off. Link to other episodes or related videos and playlists in your descriptions. Decide which keywords are most valuable for your channel, then integrate only the most relevant keywords into video metadata. Add links and other bits of information you’d like to share in your description.
Tags
Include a mix of both general and specific tags. Update them to keep up with trends. Make sure they represent content in the video and are listed in order of relevance. Finding out what and how viewers find content is important. Use the Traffic sources report for help. Dig into traffic sources and playback locations to uncover how viewers find your channel.
Comments
You can look at video comments to uncover more details about viewers’ sentiments and identify recurring themes. Comments can help you figure out subjects that appeal to the audience so that the channel can create more videos on those subjects.
Optimizing Thumbnails
While you’re starting out, you can just select a thumbnail from the ones that YouTube generates for you, but as you grow more familiar with the tools available to you, you can upload a custom video thumbnail which allows you to create a recognizable, branded look that people will see when they come across your videos. Custom video thumbnails reflect the brand personality, so make sure you design thumbnails to help promote consistent branding.
Playlist
A playlist is an ordered list of videos that a channel creates, often with a specific theme (eg: yoga exercises). To analyze playlists, look at the playlist metrics in the Watch time report, and access the Compare metric drop-down menu. Identify the total playlist watch time of your video(s) from your audience, the average view duration for each playlist, and the average number of views after a playlist was initiated. You may uncover an opportunity to create more playlists or add curated playlists (such as video likes, video collabs, and working with brands). To improve performance, try promoting playlists in links, cards, and end screens.
Cards and End Screens
Cards are pre-formatted signage overlaid on a video to enhance the viewer experience with contextually relevant information. With end screens, you can add up to four elements to promote your content, channel, and websites during the last 5-20 seconds of a video. To get information on how viewers interact with cards and end screens, look at the Cards report and End Screens report.
Use Hero-Hub-Help To Optimize Your Youtube Channel
To even better optimize your YouTube channel, get started with the Hero-Hub-Help programming strategy. Hero-Hub-Help is a way to program complementary types of content to drive up audience engagement. Your programming strategy depends on factors such as the channel value proposition, viewer passion points, and production resources.
Look over these charts to help you better understand the patterns and actions of posting a successful YouTube video.
Learning how to optimize your YouTube channel is crucial! There are so many tips and tricks it’s easy to get lost and confused in the hustle. If you have any questions or some secret tips you’d like to share with us, please comment below!