You are now reading Part 2 of the series and we’ll be going over the last two important factors when maximizing your YouTube.com videos. This is important because we all know how important YouTube is when building brand awareness and this can be huge for someone starting out in the industry. The next two I’ll be discussing are very important and many people don’t take these seriously, but they need to be considered so you can maximize the return on your videos. Let’s jump right in and your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Inner Linking
YouTube allows bloggers to flourish and has a system in place to create playlists and channels. It’s a good practice for bloggers to create videos within the same niche and around the same topic so you can inner-link them all. However, you have to make sure you know what you are doing so it’s important to educate yourself about the entire process. For example, from my experience, there are two cool ways you can internally link videos.
First, you can link by adding text within the video and have the user click through to another video. This is very simple to do and YouTube provides you with the complete interface to get all this done. Next, you can direct people to your personal channel, which will have all your other videos listed. However, if you have multiple channels, then it’s important to send them to relevant channels with related videos. I like creating multiple channels around “1†topic and send people to a corresponding channel if I feel it will provide them with additional information.
Average Time Watched
I was watching a video by Brian Dean from Backlinko.com and he mentioned something very interesting about YouTube videos in reference to ranking them. For example, it’s one thing to have views, but a completely different element is average time watched. The longer a video is watched, the better because this means you are providing more value than your competitors. Many people often use manipulative software to increase the views and time watched, but YouTube has a sophisticated algorithm in place to make sure the views are quality. For example,
First, how many times a person comes back and watches the video is a great way to show you provide value. I have gone back and watched a video 1-3 times when I really enjoyed it. Secondly, the commands of stop, pause, and play all have a very important part because this is natural human behavior. Think about how many times you pause and rewind to go over some information you missed the first time around when you are watching a video. This is all natural human behavior and YouTube is aware of this so use it within their algorithm. Third, interacting with videos while watching and some of these include reading comments, clicking on text, and advertisements within the video at different times.
Wrapping it up…
YouTube is a video sharing platform that has been growing each year and is huge for bloggers looking to expand their brand. I’ll admit I don’t use it as much as I should be, however, I do have some videos that have not only converted into profits, but also send relevant people to my blog. The easy part is uploading your video and the MOST difficult is getting started with research, creating, and editing. The good news about this process is that once you have created a video, then, going forward, you won’t have as much trouble as before. You’ll get use to creating videos just like you have with writing content for your blog.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Average time matters
- Link content
- Find the right video creation tool
- Tweak and test because some videos will work better than others to promote content and products. This applies to anything, like split testing landing pages.