- According to YouTube,
tags these days aren't very important
and are mostly used for misspellings.
I'm not going to argue with that
but what I will offer you is a musical interlude.
(upbeat music)
Yeah, that's about as long as I spend on tags these days.
What I will also add is that by researching tags
and indeed keywords in a broader spectrum,
it gives you a better understanding
of the language used in your video topic.
I like to call this your keyword universe.
And you can use all of these words and phrases
to better inform your video ideas,
your titles, your thumbnails, your descriptions,
which do still have a matter of importance.
Also, I don't want to say we told you so,
but we did make a video ages ago about this very question
which is still worth watching today.
And here's the thing about tags,
no matter what all of his YouTube educators say about tags
we still fill out that box, even when we're making videos
about why tags are not important anymore.
Now, then, hey folks, I'm Rob,
welcome back to vidIQ.
Educating and indeed entertaining you
on your YouTube journey.
And today's lesson is all about those common questions
you ask as creators
when it comes to getting noticed and discovered on YouTube.
For full transparency,
a lot of what you're going to watch in this video
is my understanding and interpretation
of this fantastic video from a Creator Insider.
I don't want to take credit where credit is not due,
but I always like to add my spin
onto what YouTube is talking about.
One thing that creators always worry about,
especially when they've had a little bit of success
with their YouTube channel, is making one mistake
that completely destroys their channel.
Well, according to YouTube, that's simply not the case.
The truth, according to YouTube,
is that each video is assessed
on how it performs with an audience.
It relies more on video level signals
as opposed to channel level signals.
YouTube go on to say
that if videos were treated on a channel basis,
then it will be much less likely
that any video could potentially go viral on YouTube.
Although, some creators may advocate for that.
Now, having said all of this,
we are only talking about single videos
not impacting the overall performance of a channel.
If you continue to create videos that underperform
then maybe YouTube, at a discovery level,
is going to have to reassess
who your videos should be targeted to
in terms of viewers wanting to watch your content.
Also, you have to appreciate
that larger channels will get more views from their videos
because they have a larger distribution platform.
And I will always say this,
you found original success on YouTube
by experimenting and doing new things, whatever they are,
even if it was your very first video.
So never be afraid to continue experimenting.
Your YouTube channel is not made of glass.
If you make one mistake,
it's not going to shatter all over the floor.
This is one of these standing assumptions or myths
that if you publish a video
and it's not performing very well
then you can just change the thumbnail and the title
and YouTube will automatically
reassess a video from scratch.
But according to YouTube, that's simply not the case.
So to put that into context,
if your video is performing poorly and you tweak it,
it's not automatically going to raise the profile of it.
And vice versa,
if your video is performing well and you tweak it
it's not automatically going to drag it down.
But what it will do
when you change the thumbnail and the title
is reset an audience's expectation
as they encounter it on YouTube.
Now, having said that,
we published this video with the following title.
And to be honest,
we were a little disappointed in its performance.
So to figure out why this was
we did a quick search on YouTube and discovered this video
with a similar title and 1 million views.
So on this occasion, we just admitted defeat
and copied their title.
We're not proud of it,
but 10 months after publishing the original video,
we were willing to try anything.
But believe it or not,
the title change did have an immediate effect
on the video's performance.
Admittedly, nothing incredible,
but a positive upswing nonetheless.
Now let me stress at this point,
I am not suggesting to you
that you go through all of your videos
and change the titles of every single one of them
to the video that ranks highest
for that particular search term.
This is not a hack in any way.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you think
a video should be performing better than it is
and the content is as valuable as it is now
as it was when you first published it,
then maybe you should do some research onto how to tweak it.
As for videos that are already performing well,
well, I wouldn't necessarily think
about tweaking the thumbnail and the title of that video.
I would be simply thinking about making more videos
that are based on that successful piece of content.
I can only go off what YouTube say here,
but according to a study of thousands of channels
they found no correlation between taking a break
and a negative impact on views for the channel.
And again, from a discovery point of view,
YouTube says there is no bias that punishes channels
for taking a break.
Now, having said that, I think this is the one
that I have most unanswered questions about.
YouTube tells us that the algorithms are designed
to serve the right content to the viewer.
So, to put it simply,
if you're publishing three or four videos a week
and then all of a sudden you take a break
and you don't publish any videos for three or four weeks,
what does that mean for your audience?
If you are in a very competitive saturated space,
such as gaming, then YouTube is constantly
going to need to find new content
to serve that hungry gaming audience.
Those viewers watching habits have changed,
so when you return,
you're not necessarily top of their mind.
But of course there are exceptions to this rule
when there is an expectation in a break between content.
Say, if you are an animation channel.
And more importantly, if you create such unique content
that viewers simply can't get from anywhere else
then they're prepared to wait.
MrBeast and Mark Rober being very typical examples of this.
But we do need to tie a bow around this question
by saying this, your mental wellness is far more important
than a YouTube schedule.
Don't create at a pace that's going to burn you out.
And if you need to take a break, do it.
In the long-term, YouTube's not going anywhere.
Funnily enough, we talked about this topic
in a recent video.
One of the reasons why people aren't watching your videos
is because you're not sending positive data back to YouTube,
particularly in terms of click-through rate
and audience retention.
But what if your data is good
and you still feel YouTube isn't rewarding you
with more discoverability?
Well, according to YouTube,
it might be because similar videos on that topic
are performing even better than yours.
This often happens when you're tackling a new story
or a trending topic, and everybody else on YouTube
is trying to do exactly the same thing.
So if your click-through rate
on the latest iPhone 13 leaks is 10%, that's fantastic,
but YouTube's also found this video on the same topic
that has 12% click-through rate.
I will also add this from my personal point of view.
Sometimes it's not enough just to have one video
that performs well.
You sent YouTube some positive signals
in terms of your analytics, great.
Now do it again and again, and again.
Make all of your content, analytically speaking,
impossible to ignore by YouTube recommendation system.
This is another one of those longstanding myths,
slash, assumptions that has some basic logic to it.
I mean, surely if a video is monetized,
it's in YouTube best interest to promote it
in order to earn more ad revenue.
But, and YouTube's credit,
they have been saying this for a very long time,
the recommendation system does not know
which videos are monetized.
By the way, if you are wondering what I mean
when I keep saying you choose recommendation system,
we've done an entire video on this over here.
Having said that, let me throw a curve ball into this.
YouTube can now monetize any video on the platform
even if the channel isn't in the YouTube Partner Program.
So, theoretically speaking,
that means that YouTube could monetize
every single video on the platform, but it obviously isn't.
It's cherry picking those videos that are performing well
from channels that are not in the monetization program.
This is a conspiracy theory, isn't it?
Joking aside, there's no better channel
of debunking this monetization assumption, than our own.
The vidIQ channel hasn't earned a single cent of ad revenue.
And I think within the YouTube growth education space
we've been fairly successful
with nearly a million subscribers and over 60 million views.
Although, you could argue
that maybe the channel could have done even better
if we had monetized our videos.
I have often thought
about monetizing five of our evergreen videos for a month
to see if it would increase discovery and views,
but I've never pulled the trigger.
I don't know. What do you think?
Should I test it? Let us know in the comments.
Now on the flip side of this question,
in my experience,
copyright claims don't negatively impact videos.
This video did indeed get a copyright claim
but it's still pitched it's tent
at the top of the search rankings
along with half a million views.
But don't take this as me suggesting to you
that you should use a copyrighted content on your videos.
If you watch the video, you'll understand why we did that
in that particular example.
And of course you can never monetize any of those videos
with copyright claims.
There are actually two questions rolled into one here.
The first revolves around the state of the video,
be it published, unlisted, private and so on.
According to YouTube,
what matters is how viewers respond to the video
once it's published.
So I assume that to mean that if a video is unlisted
it's not technically in YouTube's recommendation system.
Of course, what you do need to be wary of
is placing a published video
back into a private or unlisted state
if it's recently been published, say in the last 72 hours.
What you're likely to do there
is destroyed the videos early velocity.
And we'll talk about that now with YouTube's next question.
According to YouTube,
it doesn't matter when you publish your video.
It has no known impact
on the long-term performance of the video.
But let's use that a little bit of common sense here.
Viewer, if I publish a video at 3:00 a.m. in the morning
are you going to wake up to watch it?
Nah.
Putting aside time sensitive content,
which you should publish as soon as you can,
I do believe that publishing videos
at a certain time of the day
will impact how your video performs.
If you look at your real time stats over the last 48 hours
when you haven't published a video,
you'll notice a natural cadence to your channel
where views rise and fall throughout the day.
And so, as a result of this,
it makes all the sense in the world
to publish a video when your audience is online,
since typically your video will get most of its views
in its very first hour.
At least until YouTube decides to weave its magic.
This isn't rocket science really, is it?
The common sense approach is to publish your video
as your channels views are trending up for the day.
And it seems to work for us.
This one's pretty easy to answer.
According to YouTube,
changing the location of your channel
does not impact the reach of your content with your viewers,
no matter where they are in the world.
And it's probably not a good idea
to mess around with your channel location,
since you do sign agreements, depending on your country,
when it comes to the YouTube Partner Program.
At a video level, you can set a location
which will override any hashtags
you've included in the video.
But as for if it will help your video,
well, to be honest,
they're probably as useful as hashtags in doing just that.
This is another one where YouTube are basically saying
what you generally assume isn't the case.
YouTube have done lots of studies
that suggest that uploading daily
doesn't necessarily improve the performance of your channel
and indeed individual videos.
But this is a very general answer
and I really do think it depends on the niche that you're in
and your target audience.
Put simply, different audiences,
different demographics have different expectations
and a different amount of patience.
Let's take the vidIQ audience as an example.
I think that you, as an audience, aren't too bothered
about super high quality, professionally filmed,
extremely tightly edited videos that take weeks to make.
You would much rather prefer a steady stream
of really valuable YouTube education content.
Probably not on a daily basis,
but two or three videos a week along with some live streams.
I think if we went daily,
we would see a small uptick in views
but we will completely burn ourselves out doing it.
But on the other hand
I think if we went weekly or biweekly,
we would see a huge reduction in views.
But you know what? I could be completely wrong.
So, your codeword for this video to put in the comments
to confuse everybody who didn't get this far into a video
is simply, more or less videos from vidIQ.