- Most YouTube creators,
when they're trying to grow their channel,
they focus primarily on search.
Which is great, but,
when you look at the overall traffic
to all of YouTube's different discovery systems,
the better question is where is there the best opportunity?
We already know that 70% of all of the watch time
across the entire YouTube platform
is driven by YouTube's recommendation system,
which is just getting better and better and better
all the time.
And we know from working with our clients on YouTube,
that whenever we see explosive growth happening
on the platform,
like 90 some percent of that traffic,
is coming from homepage and suggested, not from search.
When I say explosive growth, I mean like,
we work with one guy who started with us
with a quarter million subscribers, within three months,
he had 750,000 subscribers,
grew by almost a half million subscribers
in only three months,
and most of that traffic came from homepage.
So which traffic source should you target?
And when and why?
Let's look at some of the pros and cons
of all of them here today.
(futuristic whoosh)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer,
welcome here to Video Creators.
We are all about helping those of you who
are more established creators
grow with more advanced tactics and techniques
and strategies, for reaching more people,
growing your audience,
and growing the business around your audience as well.
And to do that as an established creator,
at some point you gotta transition
from just focusing 100% on search
to focusing on homepage and suggested,
and other recommendation options that YouTube has available.
When we took all of our clients' channel data
and assimilated it together,
what we saw is that of the channels that are growing,
over 30% of their traffic is coming from homepage.
Over 30% of their traffic is coming from suggested videos.
And just over 10% of their traffic is coming from search.
Which is good because, as I've already indicated,
when we see explosive growth happening,
it comes when YouTube is just
putting your videos in front of the right people for you.
They're not even searching for it!
They're not even looking for you!
They just see you on their homepage or suggested video,
they're intrigued by your title and thumbnail,
they click, they get into it.
They enjoy the content and they want to watch more.
Let's break down each of these traffic sources
and talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages
of each of them, starting with search.
Now, one of the biggest advantages of search is that,
that viewer is on a mission.
There are making an effort to consume
a very specific value, a very specific type of content.
And if you can make that specific type of content
and put it in front of them when they're searching for it,
you can get some traffic from it that way.
But, the downside is,
that those people are usually looking for
something very specific.
And then when you look at your audience retention
and your average view durations and things
from those people,
you will see that those view durations
tend to be among the shortest of all the traffic sources.
Maybe they click on your video,
but then they're scrubbing ahead
looking for just like that 10 second thing
that they really need, and then they're out.
When it comes to homepage traffic,
that actually becomes a pro.
It becomes an advantage.
It's someone who is looking to have a viewing session.
They're not typing in looking for something in particular.
They're just like, "Hey, I wanna kill some time.
What has YouTube got?"
And they just look at whatever is on their homepage,
and so you'll see, the average view duration
from those viewers tends to be significantly longer
than the amount of watch time that you're getting
from someone in search.
The disadvantage to homepage traffic, though,
is that they tend to surface content
that has been published more recently,
content that is newer and more fresh.
And so you can get a big spike of traffic from the homepage.
And it might last a day, a couple of days,
maybe even a couple of weeks.
And then it tends to dissipate and go away.
Because that homepage is being refreshed all the time
and more recent videos and content are getting pushed there.
Now that's not true if you can get someone
to watch several of your videos in a row on your channel,
especially as a first time viewer,
which is one of the reasons why
on of the best call to actions you can give
at the end of your videos,
isn't to subscribe, smash any like buttons or comment
or anything like that.
It's to click and watch another video.
When it comes to traffic from suggested videos,
one of the main pros, the main advantages here,
is that YouTube is just putting your video
in front of someone who's not even looking for it.
They're paying attention to like,
this person seems to be in this type of mood.
They're watching this type of content right now.
The disadvantages of traffic from suggested content ...
I really can't think of any, actually.
I mean, you're getting the longer average view durations
from someone who's more in a browsing viewing session
as opposed to someone who's just quickly
trying to search for something
and get what they want and leave,
you can get a lot of spinoff traffic
from people who've found a video on the homepage,
watched it, and then your video is the next one
that is suggested.
But you can also be the spinoff video
that someone watches after doing a search query.
They watch someone else's video from search,
and then yours pops up next, so,
with suggested, you're kind of like,
tapping into almost all those other traffic sources,
but as like the second or third maybe video
that they were watching in that session.
In case you haven't noticed it yet,
in your YouTube Analytics,
YouTube actually shows you what other videos
your audience is interested in.
Go to your YouTube Analytics,
click on the audience tab,
and there you can see some of the other videos
that your audience has been watching.
Now, don't just replicate and imitate,
do these exact same videos.
These are here to give you ideas.
These are not videos that should determine
the future direction of your channel.
Say, "Oh, my audience is watching these videos.
I guess I should do those videos."
That's not what we're saying.
It's just giving you an idea of like,
here's where the overlap is,
and maybe this will spark some ideas for you.
If you go to an advanced mode of your YouTube Analytics,
you can select the video on your channel
and then go to the traffic sources,
and under suggested you can see
what other videos are actually
sending suggested traffic to your video,
and you can see what videos came right before this one
in the viewing session, and sometimes,
those will give you an idea too.
Go watch some of those videos and be like,
"Oh, that video is missing this key piece of information
which is why my video comes next."
And then that'll give you an idea of like,
here's the next natural video they should watch
after watching that person's video, then mine,
and now you know, like, okay,
how about I make this third video here?
When we work one on one with our clients,
we encourage them not to get wrapped up
in the whole keyword matching game
and just targeting search traffic,
and with like, trying to get,
whatever's got the most amount of traffic volume
with the least amount of competition, and,
that game is just, it just doesn't work as well,
as just focusing on how do I create content
that my most ideal viewer, my target audience,
will click and watch and let YouTube just
put that in front of the right person at the right time.
If that's not happening on your channel,
you can click right here,
and go to a short playlist we put together
of a lot of different strategies
on how to boost the traffic
to your suggested and your homepage for your channel
so you get more views, more watch time,
and see the explosive growth
that some of our clients have had.
So click right there and I'll see you in that next video.