- In this video, I'm talking to Nico from morningfa.me about YouTube analytics and how
we can improve our channels, and our videos to rank them higher on YouTube.
All the more coming up.
Hey there, welcome back to another video of measureschool.com teaching you the data-driven
way of digital marketing.
My name is Julian, and today I'm joined by Nico from morningfa.me, the tool Morningfame,
which is a new YouTube analytics tool that helps us creators here on YouTube to rank
our YouTube videos higher and help us to improve our overall performance of our channels so
we can have a greater impact on our viewers, just like you.
So welcome, Nico.
- Hi, it's a pleasure to be here.
Actually I'm also a total data nerd, I could say, and seeing your channel is like a delight.
- Thank you, and it's really great because to have you here, one, I reached actually
out because I bought a tool just a few weeks ago, and I saw how well you have actually
put the data together, and maybe we can talk a little about first how does YouTube actually
rank videos and what do you think are the basic metrics that a creator, just like myself,
need to look at when we want to a rank video higher on YouTube search results.
- Absolutely, I mean YouTube, you can say, it's a little bit simpler than Google, I would
say.
Comparatively.
And there are few important metrics YouTube looks at, and one metric that is the most
important one according to a study done by Matt Gillen, you can put a link into the description
if you want.
Very interesting is how many people are let to the video from outside onto YouTube.
So YouTube wants a lot of audience on the site, so if your channel is doing so, like
for example, you send some emails out when you publish a new video, and people go into
YouTube.
This is a very important metric for YouTube to know all right, this is a good video, I
will promote it even more in all the different means that YouTube has, by the way, it's not
only YouTube search, like Google search, but also suggested videos, you know those videos
at the side alongside a video you are just watching, and all other, like the home screen
and so on, so proof that YouTube has a lot of ways to promote your videos, and leading
more new viewers to the platform is one important part.
The second most important part is watch time.
Watch time means: similar we talked about that on my channel right, it's similar to
how long people stay on your website.
So in this case, it's about the video how long you people watch the video.
It's quite common that they are bored watching a video in the middle, because they got bored
or something.
You know, the video is not that great, and they don't watch it 'til the end, and YouTube
measures that first and foremost to find out that the people are really, really enjoying
the video.
So something like you would argue maybe some fluff and comments, and subscriptions, all
that stuff that people can engage with your video, they are actually not so important
so, it's more watch time.
So people should really watch to the end.
- That's very interesting, I mean, Google and YouTube is a property of Google right,
it's not our own website and we can't do anything to improve watch time in the sense that, well
we can improve watch time by having a better video, but the data itself is provided by
Google.
We can see that in our YouTube analytics, and then act accordingly and try to improve
that.
Now, this is also a metric that is not easily gained, right?
I can't,
- Absolutely.
- Buy links, like on Google and try to gain my search results through that.
So that's very, very interesting.
So how much data does YouTube actually give you in that regard in the YouTube analytics.
Are you satisfied with what you can see there?
- Yeah, actually it's still overwhelming if you look at YouTube analytics at first.
I mean you guys know there's probably from Google analytics as well, that's certainly
overwhelming but still it's quite condensed to just a few things that are really, really
valuable.
The watch time is very well thought out.
YouTube analytics where you can see where people stop watching the video so you can
go to this position in the video, and look at what were you talking about that in this
video at that point.
Maybe that was boring and you should cut out a scene in the future where you don't do an
excerpt that is not interesting to your viewers.
Anyway, this is very interesting to see, and also of course, traffic sources.
This is very valuable because you can see there where people are coming from, and from
Google analytics, you know, that is Facebook and all the other websites where people are
coming from, but also on YouTube you can see all the internal traffic sources.
So the ways YouTube can promote your video, and that is YouTube search, you can even see
there which search terms they used in order to find your video.
Such as the video, you can see which other videos brought you those views to your video,
and yeah the all the other places, like the home screen, which people see first when they
log into YouTube or open the YouTube app.
- Okay, so that's very interesting now as a creator, as myself, I bought a tool from
your company, Morningfame, and also going to link up the YouTube channel down below,
with Morningfame, I saw that you run additional analysis on the data set that you have available
through YouTube API, right,
- Yeah.
- So what is actually the data that you bring into your tool.
- Yeah, true, if you look at YouTube analytics in raw of what YouTube is providing to you,
usually what you first look at it is of course views, right?
And you can do much more with this data to understand what really resonates with your
audience.
You have to understand, I mean same for web pages of course, right?
- Yeah.
- You want to provide some content that your viewers, your visitors, are really enjoying.
And on YouTube that is not only each individual video, but a more broad apperrong, petong,
that means in particular, the video topic.
And for example, I do a channel where I talk about YouTube SEO, and what I found out is
of course that when I talk about the YouTube algorithm, then people are really enjoying
that.
All my videos about the YouTube algorithm, they are really work, doing great.
So I'm of course doing more videos about the algorithms, explain how it works internally.
And maybe some nuggets where I explain how to improve your own videos to better get promoted
by YouTube.
So extracting which video topics works well with your audience.
What my audience enjoys watching.
That is really valuable and you usually don't see that by just looking at the views.
You also have to take into the account, do they watch those videos to the end?
Do they engage by giving thumbs up and commenting?
Because that's of course the tip of the iceberg, not all people will write a comment, but if
they do, that's really a sign that they really enjoyed the video, right?
So taking all that into consideration, you can further analyze which video topics work
well with your audience and do more of those.
And that actually, I built into the software, looking at all the different metrics at the
same time to see which topics were effective.
- Maybe can you tell us a little bit more about what your tool, how you get people to
get that point of actually taking action.
What do you do in the tool, giving them different visualizations, giving them different tips,
how did you think about this when you thought about, because on this channel we also tell
people about the data that they can gather, but then they also need to take the next step
of implementing this, taking action upon the data, changing something in their business
so, how did you think about this when you built your tool.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean besides choosing the proper video topic to do more of, there's also one interesting
part, you know, you don't have that too much on websites, but on YouTube, the thumbnail,
the picture you see before you watch the video, this one is really important.
You can compare that to a magazine cover, right?
You're buying the magazine because at the grocery store, you see the magazine cover
and it's looking nice, so you buy it.
And the same is for the thumbnail for the video, and improving this thumbnail, to make
it really intriguing that the viewers click on this video, is really important.
First of all, because people are then more intrigued to watch the video, and second of
course, because the YouTube algorithm also tracks the click-through rate.
We don't have, unfortunately, access to this information, but anyway, it is important for
the YouTube SEO.
And the thumbnail, is very crucial to this process, because if your thumbnail can stick
out between all the other videos that the viewer sees for example, on the YouTube search
result page, then they will rather click your video instead of the other videos.
- [Julian] Right.
- So, I built a neat report where you can see for your video that you just published,
24 hours after you publish a new video, you see five other thumbnails of videos that rank
alongside your video, along with your own thumbnail, and you can compare.
Does your thumbnail stick out?
Is it visually more attractive than other thumbnails, because if you can achieve that,
yeah, then you win the click instead of the other videos.
And improving that will boost your overall success of your video.
- Absolutely.
But yeah, that's really, really interesting.
I think that what we can do for this video, is maybe, I will publish this video, and then
24 hours or 48 hours later, I will get an email from your tool, telling me what I've
done well on this video, and maybe I can link up a screenshot down below so people can see
what data is actually on this report, and you can learn from this, maybe even from your
Google analytics reports, or what you tell your client, because this is what really matters
for us YouTubers to take the next action to improve our channel.
And maybe that will give you ideas later on for your analytics and how you display and
visualize data later on as well.
- Absolutely, and I think one big issue you usually have into conveying whether you did
a good job or not, right?
Is whether the new videos you published on a channel are getting better and better; more
successful, more successful.
And that is one interesting effect.
In the long run, your video may accumulate thousands of views, and that is of course
a success, but you want to know your results immediately.
And that is also the reason why Morningfame sends you 24 hours after you publish a new
video.
This report that you will be linking up, because then you can see how the views of that video
grew.
And it's quite interesting to see.
I'm studying this view increase in the first 24 hours for countless channels, and it's
usually the case that you can already tell after 24 hours that if this video will be
a big success or not.
- Yeah.
- And so, this is a good way to measure whether you are improving over time.
And also something you can show to your boss.
- But I don't have a boss, but, that's great to hear.
I think that in the end we can really learn from what the tool, even if you're not a YouTuber,
you can learn from how Nico has built these visualizations, how he has packed information
into a short email that was really actionable to me, and that's why we got talking.
Because I was like, wow, this is a great report for me, and maybe you can build a report for
the stuff that you are doing for your website or for your business that you are doing analytics.
All right, great information.
Thank you, Nico, for this valuable insight.
Where can people find more out about you, and find your channel and so on.
- Absolutely, you can go to my main website that is morningfa.me.
Morning F-A dot M-E.
Quite complicated, but anyway, you'll find the link in the description or check out my
channel called Morningfame, where I talk about YouTube SEO quite a lot, and you can learn
a little bit more about how to optimize your videos.
- We also did a video for your channel, so I'm gonna also link that up right here so
you can head over what I have said on his channel, because we were talking a little
bit about what are the similarities between website SEO, and YouTube SEO, and how we could
maybe transfer the learning over.
So if you're interested in that, check out that video as well.
All right, now you heard Nico, if you have anymore questions, and if you want to give
Google a good signal to rank us higher, tell YouTube to rank us higher, then leave the
comment down below, and if you haven't yet, consider subscribing to this channel because
we're bringing new videos every week.
Now my name is Julian, 'til next time.