- Did you know that one of the best things
that can happen to your YouTube channel
is when your click-through rate actually goes down.
Let me explain this one.
- [Narrator] VidIQ
- [Female Narrator] VidIQ
- [Narrator] VidIQ.com
- [Rob] This is a very popular
question we often receive: I have X%
click-through rate, is that any good?
It's a reasonable question to a new
YouTube analytic and when I look
at the channel itself, they have some
solid thumbnails, but let me counter
the question of CTR with this: would you
prefer a click-through rate of 7.8%
with 106 views or a click-through rate
of 2.8% with over 100,000 views.
Hello, everyone, welcome back to VidIQ.
I am Rob and you are watching another video
in a series all about how to make better
thumbnails that get you more clicks.
For the full playlist, make sure you click over here.
And if you are new to VidIq, make sure to
download the Chrome extension that
will help you research YouTube, analyze videos,
audit your own channel, and take actionable steps.
There is a link in the video description
and it is free to download.
Now, throughout this series we've been talking
about the thumbnails themselves, the essentials
of how to create one and how to make
thumbnails that people will click on,
but what is the end result?
That is click-through rate.
It is one of the newest and most powerful
analytics on YouTube, but at the same time,
in the wrong hands, it can be downright confusing
and a detriment to the growth of your channel.
A lot of people get fixated on the number
and compare themselves to other channels
or what YouTube is telling them is a good number,
which will just drive you insane, so let's get down
to a brass tax, when is click-through rate important
and when is it not-so important?
In simple terms, click through rate
is the number of thumbnail impressions,
or how many times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube,
divided by the number of times someone
clicked on that thumbnail to view your video.
For example, if your thumbnail is seen 1,000 times
on YouTube and 100 people click on it,
that's a click-through rate of 10%.
Now that all sounds relatively simple,
but it gets pretty messy pretty quickly
because it's quick complex to count
all of these impressions.
YouTube themselves admit they don't count
every time a thumbnail is seen.
For example, when it appears on an external website,
through an email, or a push notification,
of if less than 50% of a thumbnail is seen on screen.
So, when it comes to the analytics
and you look at your impressions
and your click through rate and your views,
the maths will never add up.
This is, of course, beyond your controls.
If the numbers don't add up, just be aware
that there is a margin of error.
Next up is that horrible question
everybody asks because they want the perfect answer,
which turns out to be a terrible one.
What is a good click-through rate?
(groans)
Hate that question!
YouTube's official Help Center answer
is this: half of all channels and videos on YouTube
have an impressions click-through rate
that can range between two and 10%.
However, you need to be very careful
about how you interpret these numbers.
First of all, the smaller the channel or video,
the smaller the numbers, the smaller sample size,
which means that you can get bigger spikes,
whether it be 30% click-through
rates or 1% click-through rates.
Secondly, the age of a video can affect
its click-through rates.
When you first release a video,
it's hitting all of your subscribers
and its getting an extra boost from YouTube,
so you may get a higher click-through rate.
And imagine this, what if your
video starts off with a high click-through rate
and then all of a sudden you get a boost
from YouTube, get lots of extra views,
and the click-through rate goes down?
Is that what you want?
Quite simply: Yes.
As YouTube explain, if a video gets
a lot of impressions, for example if it gets
promoted on a Home Page or Watch Next,
it's natural for the click-through rate
to be lower than for videos where most
of the impressions are from sources like your channel page.
I mean, what would you prefer?
YouTube to share your content amongst your friends,
your family, your subscribers, your close-knit community
who are more likely to click on your content
or for YouTube to share your content amongst
the entire platform's audience
where they might be less invested
in your content, but you're bound
to get a lot more clicks.
I know which I would prefer.
And when it comes to wider distribution,
I'm more than happy to drop a couple
of percentage points when it comes to click-through rates.
Also, another thing that video creators
tend to do is panic when they see
they have one analytical number
and YouTube is suggesting they
should have a completely different one.
And at this point the video creator
naturally wraps themselves up in negativity.
Why have I got this number?
Why is YouTube not helping me out?
What have I done wrong?
This is why magic numbers can be so dangerous.
Imagine if YouTube revealed what the ideal,
average watch-time for a video should be
or the ideal audience retention percentage should be.
Once there is an official benchmark out there in the world,
everybody strides towards that number.
And it doesn't matter where you are in your journey
or how far you've got to leap to reach that number,
if you don't meet it, you feel unfulfilled.
You feel like a failure, so let's stop for a second.
(inhales)
Take a step back and work out how
we can set some realistic goals
to improve click-through rate.
(upbeat music)
Let's start with this question: when it comes
to YouTube analytics, who are you competing against?
Is it the big YouTubers who inspired
you to start your own channel?
Is it channels who make similar content
to you and that are of a similar size?
Or are you competing against numbers
that YouTube have recommended you should be hitting.
If you said yes to any of these,
I'm afraid you've got this all wrong.
They only analytics you should be competing
and comparing against are your own
because, put very simply, those are the only
numbers you have complete control over.
Now, just in case you don't know
where the click-through rate analytics are, let me show you.
In the new Creator Studio, click on the Analytics section
and from here, you want to click on the reach viewers
tab at the top and then from these boxes,
you can click on impressions click-through rate
and this will show you what it is for the last 28 days.
As you can see, our current click-through rate
is 4.8%, which according to YouTube, is below average.
However, what they doesn't take into account
was where we were this time last year.
Back then, the click-through rate on our
channel was in a much worse state,
averaging between just two and three percent.
That's when we really started to focus
on our thumbnail game and you can follow
that journey by the other videos
we've made in this thumbnail series.
When you've already got a lot of content
on your channel, it can take a while
for the changes to take effect,
but as you can see, gradually throughout the year,
that click-through rate began to climb
and then really took off towards the end of the year.
But in real terms, what does this mean?
Well, this is the click through rate and views
from 1 1/2 million impressions
before we started working on improving our thumbnails.
Six months later, this is the result.
For the same number of impressions
and having increased our overall
click-through rate by 68%, we've increased
views by 54%, but this is based off exactly
the same amount of impressions
or distribution by YouTube.
What we are not taking into account here
is that the higher the click-through rate,
the more YouTube will distribute your content.
So, let's make this a month-to-month comparison.
For roughly the same amount of published videos
and days in month, impressions have increased
50%, click-through rates more than 70%,
and we've more than doubled our views.
And remember, we are no where near YouTube's
fabled 10% click-through rates.
We simple assessed where we were
and improved that number.
Oh, and in the last six months,
we've been even busier.
Now, of course, this is all not
just down to click-through rate.
There are other factors, which have influenced
the growth of these numbers.
However, what I will say is that
click-through rate was the catalyst.
We sat down a year ago and said,
this is where out click-through rate is,
we have to make this better.
And that's why getting potential viewers
to look at your impactful thumbnails
and reading your intriguing
titles is so important.
Click-through rates, watch-time.
More is better, YouTube rewards you
when you improve these two numbers.
If you want to know more about the watch-time
side of these analytics, we've got a video over here.
If you want to see the full thumbnail playlist,
video's all down there.
We'll see you on any of those right now
and, of course, as always, enjoy
the rest of your video-making day.