- All right then, let's kick this one off with a question.
For a typical YouTube channel, where do you think
most of your views come from?
When you start to understand that,
you start to understand YouTube,
and you can grow your channel much faster,
so let us know in the comments below,
and we'll give you the answer
right after this intro.
- [Man] VidIQ - [Woman] VidIQ
- [Man 2] Vidiq.com.
- If you said external links,
I'm afraid you are wrong.
If you said in notifications, you're wrong as well.
If you said interactive cards and end screens,
you're doubly wrong.
If you said browse features
on your channel page or playlist,
you're almost certainly wrong as well.
Now, if you said YouTube search,
for some channels, you might be right.
But by far and away, the most popular way
that viewers find your content
is through suggested videos.
Hello everybody, it is so good to see
all of you right now and all of you in the VidIQ community.
My name is Rob.
If this is your first time here,
we are the YouTube tool and channel
that aims to help you get more views in less time
by educating you on your YouTube journey.
Some of the tools you see in this video today
do come from our VidIQ Chrome extension.
It is free to download, and guess what?
There's a link in the description.
Let's clarify what suggested videos are first.
Down the right hand side of a desktop YouTube layout,
or underneath a video on a mobile device,
you'll find all of these videos
that are suggested to you
as you watch somebody's content.
If you watch any of these videos,
that will count as a suggested video view for that channel,
so this is prime real estate on YouTube,
and the idea is to get as many of your videos
appearing as suggested videos
to really increase the size of your channel.
So, where can you find out
all of the analytics for this?
It's pretty simple.
Go to YouTube Classic Analytics,
traffic sources, and this will list
where every single view, or indeed,
watch time comes from.
And there's something really interesting
on this channel in particular.
Most of the views come from YouTube search,
but the vast majority of watch time,
almost 50%, comes from suggested videos,
and look at the average view duration as well.
So what this tells us is that YouTube is much better
at suggesting recommended content to a viewer
already watching something
than what it can do with search.
Now yes, specific analytics on this
will vary from channel to channel,
but if you're doing it right,
you can expect between 40 and 60%
of your entire channel traffic
to come from suggested videos.
If you weren't aware of these general YouTube statistics,
give me a #wow and a shocked emoji
in the comments below.
Now, if this is all news to you
and you've heard it before,
let's give it the VidIQ deep dive treatment.
So, now we have an understanding of
where our views are coming from,
but can we get more specific than this?
And the answer is yes.
By simply clicking on suggested videos on traffic sources,
this will list all of the videos
that are pushing traffic to my channel.
Once more, on each of these videos,
if I hover over it, it will give me a thumbnail preview,
and super importantly, the channel name
of the video that's pushing content to my channel.
And why is it important to know
who's pushing traffic your way?
Because those are your cluster channels.
(siren wailing)
All right then, a new jargon alert.
Let's get to the bottom of what a cluster channel is.
By now, I'm sure you're aware
you're not the only person
creating content on a particular topic.
There's always going to be people competing
for that same general space on YouTube.
What this allows YouTube to do
is identify particular topics, particular niches,
and connect that content together,
because viewers don't usually want to see one opinion
or one tutorial on a video,
they want to see something that really
fits with their interests and their passions,
and it may take them a couple of videos to find it,
and that's why YouTube is recommending
this similar content.
It knows what the viewer wants,
it knows their preferences,
so it's suggesting what it thinks
the viewer wants to watch next,
and all of those videos that are appearing
as similar content are cluster channels.
Here's an exercise for you to try, then.
Go to your traffic sources, suggested videos,
and scroll over each of the videos
in the top suggested list,
and make a note of all of the channels
that are your cluster channels.
And while you go through this exercise,
keep a keen eye on the titles of these videos as well,
because they'll have very familiar titles and keywords
that no doubt you've been using as well.
Now, it could be that some of the videos in this list
are your own videos, so essentially,
YouTube is suggesting your own content
with your own content,
which creates an awesome feedback loop.
And if the same cluster channel keeps cropping up,
you've got a very strong connection with them
in the YouTube universe.
Once you have this list of cluster channels,
you'll want to keep an eye on them,
and this is where VidIQ can really help you out.
So, what you can do is go to the home page
of these cluster channels
and get the channel ID from the URL.
It'll either be the username of the channel
or some random characters.
Then you can click on the VidIQ competitors button,
and add this channel ID.
And what this list does is show you
all the videos that are currently trending
for that cluster channel.
Effectively, what's working for them
may work for you because you're already connected
in the YouTube universe.
Try and think of this as your subscribers list
for the content you produce on YouTube.
There's stuff you watch for entertainment,
but to get ideas for your own content,
you want to be following these cluster channels
as much as possible.
The next VidIQ tool you'll want to use is channel audit,
which we've recently upgraded to include
cluster channel information.
The content to double down on section
includes two panels all about your cluster channels.
First of all, we have the competitor's list.
You've just added some videos to that list.
This gives you all of the videos
that are working well for those channels now.
It's a good place to generate ideas for you.
And below that panel, we have the top suggest views section,
which we saw in great detail earlier on,
minus your own videos, because we want to see
what channels are sending views your way.
If you click on the view more section,
you can see a complete list
of either your competitors or top suggested view videos.
We've also got the most viewed tool,
which allows you to find
potential cluster channels of the future.
This shows you what videos are trending
on very specific topics from very specific channels.
For example, if we did a search for the new iPhone
and we filter it down by channel subscriber size,
less than 10000 subscribers,
it shows you which videos from channels are performing well
in a similar genre and size to you.
Now, you may not have heard of these channels yet
because they are still relatively small,
but they're being very successful
with the content they're producing,
and as we've said before, what's working for them
could work for you and create more
potential suggested video views.
So, there you have it, three super powerful VidIQ tools
to maximize suggested views,
the best and quickest way
to grow your channel on YouTube.
We have full tutorials on all of these tools
in our video cards and in the video description.
Check them out right now.
So now you know where your
biggest source of traffic comes from, suggested videos
and how they're generated, cluster channels.
Keep those two things in mind at all times
when considering what to produce next.
If you want to know more about
the inner workings of YouTube,
we've got a really interesting
secret formula video over here.
And if you want to know more about
VidIQ tools that can help educate you
on your YouTube journey,
we've got a huge playlist of
many of our tools down there.
We'll see you on either of those videos right now.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.