- Today we're talking about how you can trigger
the YouTube algorithm so that it starts suggesting
your videos to more people and basically gives you
free marketing that gets you more views, subscribers,
and grows your channel.
(upbeat music)
So this is actually part one of a five part series
that I'm doing called Triggering the Algorithm.
And if you wanna see the rest of videos in this series
I'll put a link down below in the description
to the playlist that has all five videos in the series.
Guys if you're new here to this channel,
my name is Jeven Dovey, I do filmmaking tutorials,
product reviews, I also do a lot of YouTube training.
So make sure you hit that Subscribe button,
and turn on those bell notifications
so don't miss one these tutorials.
So if you've trying to grow your YouTube channel
then there's a lot of talk around how to basically
optimize your videos so that it shows up in search results.
Search optimization is one way
that you can get your videos seen by more people.
Because if you've optimized your video properly,
then what happens is when someone types in a search
then your video's gonna pop up at the top
of those search results.
That is one way one how you get more views into your videos.
Now the second way that you can get traffic to your videos
is by suggested videos.
And what that is is basically
YouTube recommending your content
for other viewers to watch.
And there's four places
that YouTube is suggesting your content.
The first is on the right side, that is your sidebar.
The second is after a video finishes,
YouTube is gonna automatically make another video play.
The third place is when you're in the app,
when you're on your phone,
when you scroll down you'll have suggested videos.
And then the fourth way that YouTube suggests your content
is on the home screen.
And so 70% of all the views that come on YouTube as a whole,
as the entire platform,
70% of those views are coming from
YouTube suggesting content.
So your goal as a creator is to get YouTube
to suggest your videos as part of that 70%.
And at its core the way you get YouTube
to suggest your content to other people
is to have content that YouTube sees
as content that people are watching, consuming more of,
and staying on the platform longer.
That is the ultimate goal of YouTube as a company
is to get people to binge watch content,
stay on the platform longer,
and keep watching video after video after video.
So if your video is helping to keep people
on the platform and keep people watching,
then YouTube is going to suggest your content.
They're gonna take that video and serve that to more people.
Now it sounds simple but it definitely is not as easy
as it sounds, especially for smaller creators.
Now bigger channels do have the upper hand
when it comes to suggested video,
because more likely these channels have been around
for a little bit longer,
and these channels get more momentum
right out of the gate.
So my aim with this video in going through how this works
is to help you as a creator,
whether you're a big channel or a small channel,
get into that suggest content.
And the beauty of getting it into suggested content
is that if one video starts getting suggested,
then other videos on your channel
will start getting runoff from that
and people will start watching more of your content,
so it starts to snowball.
And the key is to get one of your videos
to become a suggested video, and then another video,
and then another video, and as that happens,
as the snowball starts rolling into a giant snow boulder,
that's when youR channel will starting taking off
and you'll start seeing subscribers views
and all that coming in.
So the key for any channel to get into suggested content
is to have one high-velocity and two high-watch time.
Now let's bread down both of these
so you understand what each one is.
So view velocity is basically momentum,
how many viewS per hour, how many views per minute,
is your video getting.
The more velocity that you have,
the more momentum that you have,
the more that's telling the YouTube algorithm
that people are really interested in this video
so I need to pay attention to this,
and I need to start testing
and serving this up to more people.
So a tool I use to see the velocity of my videos is vidIQ,
and I'm sure you've heard about this
on other people's channels.
It's a Chrome extension, you don't have to go out there
and purchase this extension,
but it is there and there's a free trial
so you guys can check it out
and play with it on your channel.
But I like to look at my velocity using vidIQ.
And the reason is I can go into a video
and see how many viewS per hour a video is getting.
Some of my videos have five to six views per hour,
whereas other ones have 40 to 50 views per hour.
And a lot of these videos are older,
so what that means is
that they are ranking in search results
or YouTube is suggesting these to more people.
You'll also see a high-velocity
when you first launch a video,
and the reason for that is your video's new,
people are interested in this video that you put out
because it's a new video.
So that's gonna instantly trigger high-velocity
right out of the gate.
Now when it comes to watch time,
basically your watch time metric comes from
your views multiplied by your audience retention.
So you might say why is watch time so important?
Well I found this article by digging through
some of YouTube blogs and it talks about
what watch time is and why they effectively changed
the algorithm to focus more on watch time.
This is actually an older article
but it really is telling of what YouTube is doing
with watch time.
"Today's topic, why we surface videos that drive watch time.
"We have made changes to the YouTube
"to encourage people to spend more time watching,
"interacting, and sharing with the community.
"To support this, we've updated how viewers find videos
"to watch via search and suggested videos.
"These changes better surface videos
"that viewers actually watch,
"over those that they click on and then abandon.
"The best thing creators can do
"to be successful on YouTube is make videos
"that people want to watch.
"Simple."
Even though this article is from 2012,
it still is relevant to how the algorithm works.
Basically if your video is getting a ton of views, velocity,
people are staying through the entirety of your video,
your audience retention,
then what that is telling YouTube
is that this video not only drives traffic,
but it keeps people on watching longer,
so I'm gonna send this video out to more people
because this video obviously keeps people on the platform.
Now I have some tips for you
on how to get a higher velocity
especially for newer creators.
Now like I was saying earlier,
bigger channels have a little bit of advantage
when it comes to this because if you have more subscribers
that means more notifications are going out
at the time of upload,
which causes a higher velocity because if your channel
is engaged with your content,
more people are gonna click on that and wanna watch it,
and then what happens, that's telling YouTube
that well I'm gonna start serving this out to more people.
And if you're making good content,
if you're making content
that your subscribers actually want to watch,
they care about,
they're staying for the duration of your video,
then that's just going to propel your video even further
in the YouTube suggested algorithm.
Now for small creators or for people
that aren't getting into suggestion a lot,
there are a few things that you can do
to help boost your video right out of the gate
so you get that higher velocity.
Now number one is just make that your following
as actively engaged.
If you're doing through and doing like sub for sub,
buying subscribers, or just like trying to do videos
that are all over the place,
then you're not going to get a high-velocity out of the gate
because your subscribers aren't actually
gonna watch your content.
So this goes back to everything that I've talked about
when it comes to building your YouTube channel
is you need to build a highly engaged following,
people that actually care about the content
that you're creating.
And if you wanna see a series
on how to get your first 1,000 subscribers,
I put together a series of videos with Nick Nimmin,
and it's all about not only how to grow your following
but the things that you need to think about
when you're growing a following.
And one of those key things is having a specific niche,
because if you have a specific target audience, a niche,
one thing that you're creating,
well then when you release a new video, as a small creator,
more people are gonna watch that video.
Whereas if you have channel split
in all these different ways,
then a very small percentage of those people
are actually gonna watch your video,
which ends up in a low-velocity,
which means that you're not gonna get suggested videos.
So understanding that your niche is important,
your channel's important, your content is important,
and that's why I always say,
dial that in first before you try and grow your channel
because it's more important that you figure out
what content you're creating, and create good content,
then work on how to grow your channel.
The second way that you can get more traffic
to your video right out of the gate is by external traffic.
So if you're part of groups,
share your video with these groups.
So if you're in like a specific community,
say you're in the drone community,
well find groups around the web
that allow you to share your content.
And when you put out a video,
make sure you share it in as many places as possible.
What's gonna happen is,
if you're as part of these groups and actively engaged,
and it's a place that people actually allow you to share,
then your video might get a ton of traffic off of that.
Now one place to check is Reddit,
if you can find a good subreddit to go into
and actually post your videos,
and it makes sense for the content that you're creating,
and the subreddit that you're posting on,
and it doesn't look spammy,
then what could happen is that could trigger that video
to get a ton of traffic right out of the gate,
especially if it starts trending on Reddit.
Finding different external places to post your video
will help boost your video right out of the gate.
Now the third way to get more traffic right away
is having an email list.
Now this is super important and a lot of creators
aren't thinking this way,
but I think it's one of the most important things
that you can do for your channel,
and that is build your email list.
What happens is when you release a video,
you can send out a mass email to everyone on your email list
that goes out at the same time of your video.
And so not only are you getting all your notifications
going out from the people that are subscribed,
but the people on your email list
might miss those notifications
or they might not have the bell icon turned on.
So now you're sending them an email
and they're gonna be like, oh there's a video,
I'm gonna go watch this video.
It's gonna result in a higher velocity out of gate,
more views, and also more watch time
because there's a good chance
if someone's on your email list,
that means they're actually interested
in the content that you're producing.
So guys, make sure you turn on those bell notifications,
so that you don't miss videos,
cause that's one really important way
to get people to see your videos out of the gate.
Turn on those bell notifications,
and that's why I always say at the beginning of my videos,
turn on the bell notifications.
That is one of those verbal cues that you should do
to optimize your video
to get more people to click the bell.
And that's, you know, the first way
I was talking about by notifications.
But also build an email list.
Now I'm gonna talk more about building an email list
in this series on triggering the algorithm,
so stay tuned, it's coming in the next few videos.
Now the fourth way to get more velocity out of the gate
is to optimize your video for search.
Now something that I noticed is that
when I post a video and I've optimized it
for a specific keyword,
it ranks higher out of the gate on that keyword.
So newer videos will be pushed higher
in the search algorithm.
And I think what's happening is that YouTube
is actually testing that video
to see how well it does for that search.
And if that video is driving views
and it's driving watch time,
your video will continue to rank,
but if it doesn't out of the gate,
it's gonna keep getting pushed lower and lower
in the search.
And I've watched this happen with a lot of my videos.
I will post a video and it will end up
at one of the top slots for a search keyword.
And if that video is doing well,
it's gonna stay around there.
But if that video is not getting as many views
as my channel typically does out of the gate,
I'll see that video start drifting down the search results.
And that's something that I've just kind of been observing,
because it's interesting to see which videos
stay in the search and which ones don't.
So optimizing for search is super important
and I've talked about that in a lot of my other videos.
I also talk about that in my course,
The YouTube Growth Academy.
And so it's super important that you optimize your video
for search and specific keywords,
so that you can get that additional traffic
from specific keywords that you're targeting in your videos.
Now the fifth way that you could get a lot of velocity
out of the gate is a little bit different
and it's something that I'm actually testing
with this series that I'm doing right now.
I've done this a few times on my channel in the past,
and what I call it is a content blitz.
So if you're putting out videos around a specific topic
and you put 'em out in succession,
you're gonna drive more interest to your channel
for that specific topic.
So I've done this in the past around Christmas time,
I'll put out a ton of videos on products
and products that are coming out around the holidays,
and that drives a lot of attention to my channel.
Now I've also done this when other products have come out.
So when the Osmo Pocket came out,
I put out video after video
and my channel exploded during that week
because I was optimizing for the keyword Osmo Pocket,
and because those videos came back to back in succession
they were getting more velocity out of the gate.
So a content blitz is basically putting out
videos in succession around kind of the same topic
so you can build more velocity and momentum
around that topic, hopefully driving your channel upwards
and resulting in more views and subscribers per day
after the blitz is done.
Now I'm trying this out with this video
and if you guys are interested in my results
I'll put a link to where you guys can check it out
down in the description.
But I'm basically doing this series
on how to trigger the algorithm,
putting out a video a day, five videos, five days,
I'm gonna see if I can drive more momentum
with the series and see what happens with that.
One thing with YouTube is you always gotta be trying
new things for your channel.
Once you figure out what works,
try something new and see what happens.
All right guys, that's it.
Make sure you head down in description,
I'll put links to everything I was talking about,
and if you wanna see the next video in the series
put it right here somewhere and down below.
So guys, I'll see you on the next video.