- When is YouTube gonna start suggesting your videos?
We're gonna talk about it, and we're starting right now.
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As part of our subscriber Q and A series,
today's question is from Rambling Recruiter.
Rambling Recruiter asks,
"When you are primarily making search videos
"and getting most of your views from search,
"is it just a matter of accumulating watch time
"to start getting suggested traffic?"
That's a really good question.
Thanks for asking.
So I'm gonna talk about that, and I'm also gonna talk
about just getting suggested traffic in general
and some of the factors that are really important
in order to get your video suggested more on YouTube.
So first let's talk about if you do have search content
where you're getting views from search,
but you're not getting views
from pretty much anywhere else yet.
What is the factor, what is the tipping point
that's gonna cause you to start getting more search traffic?
As a matter of fact,
we're just gonna carry this on through for everybody
because it doesn't matter if you are getting traffic
from search or from everywhere else,
the same rules apply in terms of if you are going to get
traffic suggested from YouTube or not.
So, when it comes to YouTube and getting YouTube
to suggest your videos next to other videos on the platform
or even on the homepages of people as they login to YouTube,
there are some very critical elements
that you need to make sure that you're keeping in mind.
The very first is that it's not just total watch time
accumulated on a video
that will get you suggested next to other content.
There's additional factors.
Within those factors, there are the big ones
that will get you suggested next to other videos
and will get you on homepages as well specifically.
So those factors are basically
your ability to get people to click on your videos
and watch your content for a fair amount of time
and then further engage.
What YouTube is trying to accomplish
is they're trying to get as much watch time per impression,
regardless of the source,
every time that they show a video to somebody on YouTube.
What that means is, every time YouTube shows your thumbnail
and your title to somebody on YouTube,
that's counted as an impression.
Now, what they are trying to do
is for every single time that they show your thumbnail
and title to somebody on YouTube,
they're wanting people to click
on that thumbnail as much as possible
and then go and watch your video for as long as possible
because that shows YouTube that people are satisfied
with the content that they are watching.
Now if we take that a step further,
then there's also the engagement side.
So if somebody clicks,
then they're interested in that video.
If they watch it for a long period of time,
that basically tells YouTube that,
"Hey, the people that were watching this video,
"they enjoyed this video, at least enough,
"to where they watched it for a fair amount of time
"to where they were satisfied
"with the content that they got."
And then, if they further engage,
that tells YouTube that not only
did they enjoy the video content,
but they also enjoyed this content so much
that they went and left a comment,
maybe they gave the video a thumbs-up,
maybe they shared it with their friend,
added it to a playlist, or something like that.
In the big game on YouTube, to make all this simple,
the big game on YouTube is to simply be able to compete
with all of the other content that's out there on YouTube.
That means that when other people
are publishing videos on YouTube,
especially people in your space,
but when people are publishing videos on YouTube,
your videos, in terms of people clicking
on your thumbnails and titles, watching the videos,
and further engaging in your content,
they have to be competitive
with the other content that's on YouTube.
If your videos are not competitive,
if your thumbnails and your titles don't get clicked on
as much as the other videos on the platform,
and people aren't watching your videos for as long
and further engaging like I talked about a second ago,
if that's not happening at a competitive rate,
then your videos are not gonna get suggested
to people on YouTube.
But, if they are,
and you can get people to click on your thumbnails,
and once they do click on your thumbnails and titles,
they watch your video for a fair amount of time,
anytime YouTube pops up a survey
and they ask people after they watch your video,
"Was this a satisfactory experience?"
and they're like, "Yeah, this was great."
then what you're doing in that situation
is you're proving to YouTube
through your ability to get people to click,
watch, further engage, answer surveys in your favor,
and stuff like that,
what you're doing is you're proving to YouTube
through all of those different metrics
that if they put your content
in front of a viewer on YouTube,
they're going to stay on YouTube.
They're also going to watch and get satisfied
from the content that you are presenting to people,
and they also go deeper into YouTube as well
from your content,
which means that they end up watching more videos
after they watch your video.
If you can do all those things,
then YouTube is going to show your content to people more
because it's competitive at that point of time
because that's what all of the other videos
that they showed people on YouTube, that's what they do.
Now, one disclaimer that I wanna make here before we move on
is that satisfaction thing is really important on YouTube.
So you might think that,
"Hey, in order for this stuff to work out,
"for the watch time per impression, all that,
"then I need to make sure that I have videos
"that are like 10 minutes long or something like that."
That's not the case at all.
You can crush it with videos that are one minute
if it's competitive for the space that you make content in.
A really good example of this
is a channel called Lucas the Spider
where they have just incredible thumbnails.
The animations are great.
So good, in fact, they got a TV deal from it,
all with really short content.
But how that works is, on YouTube side,
when people respond at a super high rate with a thumbnail,
even though the videos are short,
people are still coming in and they're completing the videos
which then shows YouTube,
"Hey, people are enjoying this content
"enough to complete it."
And then the content itself is entertaining
so then people start clicking on the other thumbnails
that have Lucas the Spider on them in the sidebar
which then starts the entire chain of a trap
where people go in, they watch one video
after it's presented to them on the homepage,
and then after it's presented to them on the homepage,
they click on it, they come in, they're watching that video,
they're clicking on the other videos in the sidebar,
and then they just get caught in the web,
see what I did there, of Lucas the Spider content.
Now, of course there are other factors involved.
So YouTube also says in the YouTube Creator Academy,
they say that they suggest videos
also based on videos that people typically watch together.
So, as an example of this, let's say
that people typically watch video A,
and then when they're watching video A,
YouTube continually recommends
a particular video in the sidebar,
and people respond to that a lot.
Then what's gonna happen is that video's gonna end up
going into that next up-spot,
and then people are going to be continually
watching these videos together
which is going to solidify that relationship between videos
which will keep them being shown together
for quite some time.
YouTube also mentions in the YouTube Creator Academy
that they also show videos next to each other
that are topically related.
So what that means is, when you're writing your titles
and when you're making your content,
it's really important that it's super clear
what the content is actually about
because if you have content that is about a particular thing
and people respond to that content
in terms of clicking and watching it and engaging
like we talked about earlier,
then you're massively increasing your chances
of YouTube showing your content
next to other content like yours
that continually gets a lot of traffic
that can also bring more traffic
into what it is that you're doing
again, as long as yours is competitive
and you're checking all those boxes
in terms of I get people to click,
I get people to watch, they're engaging,
they're enjoying my content.
But the important things to think about
when you're trying to tap into YouTube's
recommendation features, either suggested
or showing up on homepages,
is that you have to come to compete.
You gotta come to play the game
because there's so many really good
content creators on YouTube
that can make just incredible thumbnails,
they're so good at writing titles
'cause they've been doing it for a long time
or maybe they used to be a blogger,
and since they used to be a blogger
then they have a history of writing headlines
so they know how to get people to click.
But you're going against all of this competition on YouTube
that is really, really good.
That's why it gets suggested to you all the time.
Because when these content creators
that have been doing it for a while,
they put out this content and people respond to it,
they respond to it because the content creator
knows how to get people to respond as well,
which then starts this big snowball
of people coming in, watching and responding to the content,
then YouTube, therefore, takes that content
and they try to find other users on the platform
that they think would be a good candidate
to actually watch that content,
which then brings new viewers into the channel
which then helps the channel grow.
Then as it grows and more content's put out,
there's more and more videos being recommending
next to other pieces of content,
more and more videos showing up on homepages
and things like that,
and it just creates this awesome snowball
of recommendations that you're getting from YouTube.
Now, when it comes to search,
if you do have videos that are ranking well in search,
if those terms are competitive in terms of
there's other people that are going
for those particular terms
because they are competitive terms,
and they're clicking on your thumbnail
and they're watching your video
and they're getting satisfied from your content from search,
then as long as you can maintain rankings in search,
there's also a really good chance
that you'll start getting suggested as well
because if you're able to maintain search rankings,
it still has the same concepts, like the same stuff applies.
You gotta be able to get people to click,
they gotta watch your content, they gotta engage,
they have to enjoy the experience that they have
when they click on your stuff.
So because of that, if you are good
at ranking videos in search,
then it's just a matter of time.
If you're not getting suggested already,
it's just a matter of time before you start picking up
some suggested traffic from the suggestions over on the side
or under if you're on a phone.
It's also just a matter of time
before you start showing up on homepages a lot
because if you're able to maintain rankings
for competitive terms,
then in that situation, that proves that hey,
at least for search terms, when people have the intent,
when they're looking for that particular thing,
they're responding to what it is that you're doing.
Like, you're winning there.
So what you have to think about,
is "Okay, when I'm doing this for search,
"maybe I'm just going for like a certain keyword phrase,
"so if I wanna get suggested more,
"maybe I need to make sure
"that I'm being a little bit more compelling."
because the difference between search traffic
and YouTube's recommendation feature are this.
When people are looking for something on YouTube,
they're looking for it.
They have the intention of watching the video that you made
so the only people that you're competing with
are the people that are right there at the top of the screen
when the page loads on YouTube.
So those are really the only people
that you're competing with
because people are looking for that specific thing.
So you just have to be able to get them to click.
But when it comes to the recommendation features on YouTube,
totally different game.
Those people, the ones that are clicking
on all the stuff on the recommendations,
content is happening to them.
So they're not actively looking for the content,
the content is just being presented to them.
So your ability to get recommended is going to come down to
your ability to take somebody
that is completely unsuspecting
of getting presented your video
and converting them from a potential viewer
into an actual viewer by your ability
to make a compelling thumbnail and title.
So, when you're putting your titles together,
instead of thinking,
"Okay, I just need to put this one keyword phrase
"because that's the thing that I'm trying to rank for.",
put that keyword phrase
but then add something compelling to it
so that when you add that compelling element to it,
that thing that would make somebody click on it
even if they weren't looking for that content,
that's where you start winning
when it comes to pulling in search traffic
and pulling in traffic from all of YouTube's
recommendation features as well
because then, you're good at getting people
to click in search,
and you're getting good at getting people
to click through all the recommendation features as well.
To learn more about growing your YouTube channel,
click into this playlist right here,
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Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you next time.