Why aren't my videos getting suggested by YouTube? What steps can I take to get more
traffic from suggested videos? Here's a screenshot showing views that are being suggested from
videos from my own channel. Here's a screenshot showing views that are being suggested from
another channel. I'm going to show you how to get discovered
on YouTube via suggested videos, how suggested videos work, where they appear on YouTube,
and how to find the videos from other channels that are recommending your videos. Hi, my
name is Herman Drost. If you want to grow your audience on YouTube and generate traffic,
leads, and sales on autopilot, hit the subscribe button and click the bell notification icon,
so you'll be notified every time I upload new content.
What are suggested videos? This is a personalized collection of videos that an individual viewer
may be interested in watching next based upon their prior activity on YouTube. Here's some
insights from the YouTube staff. Speaker 2: What is changing constantly is
the rankings in suggested and those are updated pretty much constantly. We collect over 80
billion bits of information, feedback from the audience every day, and we feed that right
back into the system so that they can know which videos are engaging and satisfying the
viewers on each suggested list. Speaker 3: When you're saying the ranking
is changing, do you mean you change the algorithm or do you mean viewers' interest are changing?
Speaker 2: It's more about viewers' interest are changing and different viewers are coming
in and viewers' tastes are changing over time. The other thing to think about with these
rankings is that they're actually different for every viewer. You and I could go and watch
the same video today at the same time, and the recommendations in suggested that you
see will be different based on your history compared to what I see.
Herman: I've been watching a lot of cat videos, then YouTube will recommend more cat videos
for me to watch on YouTube. Where do suggested videos appear on YouTube? The show and the
viewers on the right side of the watch page on the "Up Next", below the video on the YouTube
app, and as a next video in autoplay. You can also see which videos are bringing viewers
to your channel via suggested videos by going to traffic sources in YouTube Analytics.
We'll talk about this later in the video. How do suggested videos work? Let's see what
YouTube has to say about it. Speaker 3: In analytics, I know this is something
a lot of you want to look into if you're seeing a decline in your performance. Specifically
with suggested, when you're looking at that in YouTube Analytics, that's literally a list
of the videos that people watch last before they either discovered your video or your
channel. That's really powerful information. Speaker 2: You want to go into traffic sources
and suggested, and what you'll see there is a list of videos. That's basically where your
traffic's coming from on the watch page. Speaker 3: It can show you videos that don't
belong to your channel that your audience is also watching. Most of the time, it's probably
videos that are owned by you, but a lot of the time, you can get an idea of what else
your viewers are interested in, what they're watching. If you see trends are not changing
over time, you can understand why your audiences' interest is either increasing or declining.
Herman Drost: Videos can be suggested and recommended from other channels including
the one you're watching. YouTube says that viewers tend to watch a lot more videos based
upon recommendations from a variety of different channels. Some of the signals that contribute
to recommendations are the videos that people see on the right side of the watch page while
they're watching the current video. YouTube will show videos that are topically
related as well as videos from our viewers' past watch history. Here's how to find channels
that recommend your content. Let me show you Morningfame and how this works. Click Login
to log in to Morningfame. Click "Analytics Report." Click "Algorithm." Under the heading
How do YouTube's Algorithms Promote You, you'll see YouTube Search, and you can get the "Top
Search Terms," "Top videos," Google Search, "Top Videos," and Suggested Videos.
If I click on "Top Recommending Channels," I can see that vidIQ with 474,000 subscribers
is sending 21 views to this video of mine. If I click "Show more sending videos from
vidIQ," then it shows other videos from vidIQ that are sending views to my other videos
on my channel. If I click on "Show more receiving videos," I can see that vidIQ has sent 18
views to this video. This happens every 28 days. You can also see that I get suggested
views from videos on my own channel. You can see that this video is sending 492
views to all these videos on my channel. Click the link in the description to get access
to Morningfame. How can you use this information to get more views from suggested videos? After
you've identified the videos and channels that are sending you suggested traffic, create
more of those types of videos and link them to each other.
You can do this by putting them into a playlist that link to the playlist from each of the
videos on the playlist. Here are some suggested video tips so you can get more views from
suggested videos. Number one, make strong calls to action. Instead of just ending your
video, suggest to viewers what they should watch next. Ideally, this would be a similar
video to the one that they've just watched. Number two, create a series of videos that
are organically connected. When you think of a video topic, don't just think about a
solo video, but think about a series of videos that takes a deeper dive into your content.
Here's a video clip from the YouTube staff that recommends creating a video series
Speaker 3: Tactically, as a creator, if you have a question like "how do I get more traffic
from watch next," you can't really optimize your videos for a traffic source or a service,
but you can for your audience. If you really want your viewers to continue watching your
videos, one strategy I see some creators doing is, of course, making really consistent content
or a series. That way, if those videos start being watched
together, they're topically related, and they attract the same type of viewer, they're really
likely going to come up next to each other in watch next. That's something I think sometimes
we call it co-watch, like videos that are watched together. That's one of the signals
that inform ranking. Series are a really powerful way to keep viewers watching.
Herman: Number three, create playlists. Add a series of videos to a playlist and link
to that playlist from the video that they're just watching. For every video on the playlist,
link to that playlist using a card or end screen, so you can binge-watch more of your
videos. When people watch more than one video in a playlist, it'll extend the session time
of that particular video. Increased session time leads to more watch
time, which is a big ranking factor on YouTube. Number four, avoid long endings. Don't telegraph
the ending in your video by saying something like, "That's all I have for you." It will
shorten the watch time of that particular video. Number five, create videos in popular
formats. For example, you should make a list-type video then people know what to expect next
in the video. You can just create a series of bullet points
that you want to talk about so people will know what to expect next. Number six, improve
your click-through rate by creating better thumbnails. If they don't click on your thumbnail
when they see it in the search engines on the right side of the watch page for suggested
videos, they're not going to watch your video. As they don't watch your video, all that time
and effort you put into creating your video will come to waste.
Click the link in the description to download my free thumbnail checklist. You will receive
10 ways to make your thumbnail stand out on YouTube. Number seven, create a title that
complements your thumbnail. Your title should include an optimized keyword phrase as well
as something compelling for the viewer. Click the link in the description to get my secret
formula for writing video titles that get ranked in the search engines.
Number eight, create an engaging video. If you want to get suggested traffic from other
channels, you need to have a high click-through rate and high average view duration. This
means you need to have a great thumbnail as well as an engaging video. Ideally, you want
to have 50% of your viewers watching your video all the way through. If you can achieve
this, then YouTube will promote your video via suggested videos.
Another way to get discovered on YouTube is via YouTube Search. This way, YouTube shows
the most relevant results in the YouTube search engine based upon what somebody types into
the YouTube search box. Watch my next video to learn how to get discovered in YouTube
Search. Click the subscribe button to receive more content like this. Thanks for watching
and we'll see you in the next video.