- YouTube Chapters allow you to easily add timestamp links
in your video descriptions
to specific time codes in your videos.
But it's not just a handy tool for viewers
to navigate your videos easier.
With a few little tweaks,
you can easily add in optimized keywords
that can also get those time codes ranking
in Google search results and generating more traffic
for your videos.
So in this video,
we're gonna run through a complete YouTube Chapters tutorial
showing you exactly how to add YouTube timestamp links
fast and easy and maximize your potential traffic
in the process.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
where we help you grow an audience
and scale your revenue with online video.
If you're seeing value in this video,
make sure you're giving it a thumbs up.
It really makes a huge difference
and all the links to everything we cover in this video,
you can find the link in the description box below.
Let's jump into it.
Now for a little bit of inception in this video,
if you wanna jump straight to the part
where I'm showing you how to set these up,
then check out the chapter markers below
and jump straight there.
But before we get there,
I'm gonna cover a little bit of background
to explain how to get the most out of them.
Now there's a few different places
that the timestamps and chapter markers
can be used on both YouTube and Google.
The first one is on YouTube in your video descriptions.
You can essentially create a list of the different chapters
or of the different sections of your video
with a linked timestamp or time code
to where those sections start.
So if one of your viewers goes down
to your video description,
they have a full list of everything that you cover
along with a clickable link,
taking them directly to that section of your video.
Now, if you're adding those timestamps
into your video description correctly,
and don't worry we're about to show you how,
then you can also have them showing up
inside of your video playback bar or progress bar,
down the bottom of your video as well
with clear sections marked out for the individual chapters
or sections of your video,
making it really easy for people to easily jump
between the different sections while they're watching.
And the third place that these chapter markers
can show up,
is inside of Google search results.
So when Google shows a YouTube video
that has captions on it,
then those captions can be shown on mobile and desktop,
underneath the video.
So the viewer can easily again,
jump to the different sections
and see what's actually covered in the video
before they click it.
Now, this is something that's changing constantly,
but it's also something that just seems
to be getting more integrated
with Google and YouTube over time,
which makes a lot of sense for Google
being able to get the right information to people
when they're looking for it.
Now, this is something that Google
has actually been playing around with for quite a while.
Not just featuring full YouTube videos as I suggested
or related video for people
to click in Google search results,
but even bringing up for some videos,
a featured snippet or a little section of the larger video
that is related to what people have searched for
to solve that pain or problem or speak directly
to what it is that they've searched for.
So they then took this one step
and started auto generating chapters or sections
inside of your videos without any input
from the user or from the creator at that point.
So they were listening and looking at what content
is being delivered in that video.
And it was automatically creating chapter marks
or chapter sections inside of your videos
with no human input.
So again, we've been lucky enough to have this happen
to a couple of our videos
where I might be talking through 12 steps to film on iPhone
or 12 steps to film on Android.
And it's actually pulled out and identified the 12 steps
again, without any input from us,
but it's something that people can easily jump directly
to those specific steps
inside of a greater piece of content.
So where they're at now with this though,
is that they're now accepting human input.
So us as the content creators can actually tell YouTube,
tell Google, what is happening when inside of our videos
using these chapter markers.
So these are not only gonna help your viewers
jump around in your content or figure out
what it is you're actually going to cover in your video,
but it's also gonna help Google and YouTube
understand what your content is about as well,
so that it can then place it on the platforms
in front of the people who it's a fit for,
people who want to see your content.
So where I think the big opportunity
with these chapter markers is,
is not just giving your chapters
inside of your videos random names.
Really look at what is the content
that you're covering in that area.
Maybe even going and doing some keyword research
to see what people are searching for,
are looking for in relation to those topics
and starting to use some of those keywords
or your research in your chapter names.
So this can help you get your content showing up
and ranking overall,
or even just for those specific chapters
or specific sections inside of your greater video.
Now for those of you who really wanna level up
your keyword research
and to have your content ranking on YouTube,
then make sure you stick around to the end
'cause we've put together a free guide
showing you exactly how to do it.
Now we've been getting a lot of questions
through about these chapter markers
with people wanting to know, is this a good thing?
Should I be adding these to my videos?
Is it going to help me increase watch time
or is giving people the ability
to jump around in your video,
going to really hurt your watch time?
Because people could jump forward,
just watch a small piece and then leave
obviously then watching less of your videos.
So we've been adding chapters to our videos
for quite a while now,
and we've actually seen an increase
in our overall watch time, not a decrease.
Yes, we would have a percentage of people that just jump in,
find that specific section of the video, watch that,
and then leave.
But at the same time,
we also now have a clear index,
which is easily visible for anyone watching our content
to quickly figure out and validate
that our video is one that they wanna watch
based on the different topics
and sections that we're covering in our video.
So whether they jump in to a specific section
and then figure out, yes, this is the video for me.
And then go back and watch it from the start
or whether they just jump in and watch one or two sections.
The fact that they're jumping in,
they're interacting with your video.
They're no longer a passive viewer watching,
just sitting idly on the couch.
They're interacting with your video as well.
And that's also something that YouTube is looking for.
Actual interaction with the platform,
actual interaction with the videos.
So that helps your overall ranking as well.
But overall, yes,
we've seen an increase in our watch time
from people being able to navigate through our content,
jump between the different areas
and obviously figure out
what's inside of our videos as well.
So it is something I would say is worth exploring,
adding these to your videos.
If the content you're creating
can be broken down into small chunks
or steps in a bigger process or chapters.
Now to add these timestamps and chapter markers
to your videos,
you just wanna open up the video,
that you wanna add them to and press edit video?
Then you want to come down to your video description.
We're gonna add ours in here.
So what I'll normally do is just add a title
for the section.
This isn't required and I'll call it timestamps.
But what is required?
What you need to do here is start them all off
as 00:00 so the absolute start of your video, space,
what you actually want that chapter to be called.
So what we'd normally use here is pretty much the title
of the videos where we got,
"How to Edit Video on iPhone and iPad, LumaFusion tutorial."
We'll just copy and paste that into our first timestamp.
Then you'll play through your video
and find where you want the next section to start.
So in our case, in this video,
it's going to be at one minute 35 seconds.
So we're gonna put 01 for one minute,
colon, 35, for 35 seconds seconds,
space and then what we want to title that section.
So we'll go with,
"How to get started on LumaFusion."
And then we go and find the time
that the next section starts,
which in this case is three minutes 39,
so we would go 03, three minutes,
39 seconds and enter our chapter name.
So you're gonna go through your entire video
and add as many chapters or sections,
as you need into your video.
Now in order to make this work,
it is important that you have the first one at 00:00.
If you don't have that,
or you have it starting at 03 or 5 or some other number,
it is not going to work properly.
You need to have 00:00.
You also need to have a minimum of three for this to work.
If you have less than three,
then it's not gonna show up as chapter markers.
And each one of these chapters needs to be
at a minimum 10 seconds in length.
So it needs to be at least 10 seconds gap
or 10 seconds of content
between each one of these chapters.
Outside of that, you can create as many as you would like.
Once you're done, you just wanna hit save
and then if you go and view your actual video now,
you can see that we have those chapter sections here
already added to our video.
And if we open up our video description, let's go show more.
We can see that we have those in here, down the bottom.
And each one of these is also a clickable link.
So it's like an index to our content.
So if we wanna go to this section on adding transitions
in LumaFusion, we can click on this link here
and that's gonna take us straight to that section
in the video.
Likewise, if you wanna jump between the different sections,
you can just click on them
and you'll be taken straight to that section.
And you can also bring up a full list of the chapters
on the side, over here,
just by clicking on one of the chapter names.
So if we click on this one here, now,
then we can view our chapters on the side here as well.
And again, just clicking on a section
is gonna take you straight to the start of that section.
Now these work exactly the same on mobile as well.
You can see down the bottom of our YouTube video
on the playback bar there,
we have all of the different sections
and we can just press and drag along that progress bar.
And we can see all the different chapters in there too.
We can also look into the description
and we have clickable links in there,
just the same as we have on desktop.
So by pressing one of these links,
it's gonna take us straight to that section of the video.
And if we tap on the actual chapter title itself,
then that's gonna bring us up a list down the bottom
of all of the different chapter areas.
So it's much bigger and much easier to navigate through,
to dive in and out of the different sections of the video.
Now, when you're using Google on a mobile device
and you have a video that is featured,
that has those chapter markers out is,
like this one on screen now,
then you can interact with those chapter markers
just by tapping and scrolling across.
So you can see that we can,
easily see what's covered in this video
and just tap on one of those.
And we're taken straight to that video
at that point in time.
Now this is in Google itself, not even on YouTube.
Now here's another example of how one of our videos
has been displayed on Google,
on mobile that doesn't have timestamps
or chapter mark is added to it,
and it's automatically pulled these out
from the video itself.
So you can see it's pulled out
these three sections from the video
with thumbnail images included.
And another one of our videos down here further,
you can see it's identified, "10 key moments."
So if we press the down arrow on this,
then we can jump straight
to those specific sections in there.
And again, this was an older video
that didn't have chapter markers added to this one either,
but now that we have the ability
to help Google and YouTube with this,
this is, where the power really comes in.
So now that you've got a solid understanding
of YouTube chapters,
if you wanna maximize your results
and grow on YouTube faster,
we've put together a free PDF guide designed
to help you with your YouTube SEO and your keyword research,
which will help you with your chapter markers too.
So to grab your copy,
just hit the link on screen or below in the description,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Cheers.