Encouraged to Watch the Video Encourage to Watch the Video Again

I've been told that the majority of viewership on YouTube is driven through the suggested videos column on sentinel pages. Information technology's certainly true for the company that I work for, Frederator Networks, which receives 40% or more of its viewership from YouTube suggested videos.  Dominating this section on your own videos and others' has the ability to drive massive viewership and ensure your audience is not whisked away to someone else's videos. In this post we'll take a look at 7 ways you can dominate the suggested videos column on YouTube.

seven Means to Appear in YouTube Suggested Videos

The YouTube suggested videos column is made up of three sets of videos:

1. Suggested videos are the iv videos featured from the creator (algorithmically selected)
2. Related videos are videos that are similar to yours
3. Recommended videos are based on the viewer

To decide which video the algorithm volition place, YouTube uses metrics such as "watch time", relevancy, viewership history, engagements, and more. There are many ways to influence these metrics, and thus boss the suggested videos column. Here's what we do at Frederator Networks to secure our own suggested videos column for our owned and operated channels Cartoon Hangover, Channel Frederator, The Leaderboard and Cinematica; and to drive millions of views from the suggested videos columns throughout all of YouTube.

Nosotros have 7 principal things that direct affect our suggested videos performance. We make "engaging" videos, encourage "date actions", optimize our titles, optimize our metadata, interlink our videos, make great thumbnails and showtime YouTube Sessions.

#i Brand "Engaging" Video Content

At Frederator Networks when we say "engaging" we hateful videos that go on the viewer watching for a long menstruation of time, roughly vii+ minutes or more. An example of this is our '107 Facts' video series, which is specifically designed to generate long lookout man times.

The average lookout fourth dimension for this series is over 9 minutes. This is slap-up for our suggested videos performance because YouTube'southward algorithms, peculiarly the suggested videos algorithm, are highly optimized to promote videos that go on people on the YouTube platform for extended periods of time both on an individual video and viewing session level. There are a plethora of resources out there to assistance you shape the content that will be about engaging to your audience. Be sure to check any implemented learnings against YouTube analytics, which provides superlative of the line metrics in the course of audience retention graphs and average view durations beyond your unabridged aqueduct so you can see what is and what is non working.

#2 Encourage "Engagement Actions"

A second mode to dominate the suggested videos column is to focus on engagement deportment. A study recently released past Philip Zeplin at Novel Concept, suggests that the algorithm (in this example the search results algorithm) may give weight to videos with lots of likes, dislikes, and comments. He does admit that "videos that are generally good enough to receive a high watch time and viewer retention, are also naturally videos that engage people." So take the data he presents for what information technology is: a express window into the black box of the YouTube search algorithm.

Data bated, from a theoretical and historical standpoint, information technology does stand to reason that YouTube's algorithms await favorably upon videos with lots of likes, dislikes and comments as it has in the past. When a viewer has an emotional reaction to a video as expressed in a like, dislike or annotate, it could probable lead to a longer watch session. In YouTube parlance it could look like this:

• You lot sentinel a video and your encephalon releases a ton of chemicals (endorphins, etc.).
• You click "like" and comment about how groovy it was.
• The punch of these chemicals recedes as the video ends and you lot desire more of those chemicals.
• You click on another video.
• And that's how you ended up in that part of YouTube once again… i hour later.

I'd add to this that encouraging these actions could potentially create a heightened emotional experience in the viewer that wasn't necessarily there before. If a call to activity spurs a viewer to engage, it could take a similar effect as the psychological concept that body actions like smile can influence our emotions. Therefore, by giving a telephone call to action to engage with a video nosotros are potentially creating a heightened emotional connectedness for the viewer where there was none before, which could lead to a longer session and more suggested video algorithm beloved for our videos.

In that location'due south another, less theoretical, reason to encourage commenting. At Frederator Networks we encourage commenting heavily because YouTube has stated that it utilizes comments as a class of meta data around a video. Nosotros promote commenting past replying to a lot of comments, but also posting our own comment questions with each video. We typically post a question in the comment section when we release a video that pertains to the property being discussed.  This serves 2 purposes. First, it generates more comments. 2nd, it helps status the algorithm for keywords surrounding that belongings. For example, on SpongeBob we might inquire the question: "Who's Your Favorite SpongeBob Character?". People then reply with the names of the characters from the bear witness, thus telling YouTube this video has a lot to do with that show.

#3 Optimize YouTube Video Titles

A master source of creator entered metadata comes from the title of a video. We utilise our titles to do three things, which accept an affect on the suggested videos algorithm:

Become people to click on our videos – The first step in generating watch time is to get someone to start our videos! Titles (and thumbnails) are the two nearly important components to getting that click in our view.

To tell the algorithm many of our videos are relevant to each other – We indicate this relation to the algorithm by ever including the name of the show, the episode number and the name of the channel in the title. For case, for '107 SpongeBob SquarePants Facts You Should Know (ToonedUp #37) @ChannelFrederator' For this video nosotros manage to secure xviii of 19 of the suggested video spots for our 107 Facts videos.

To effort to secure high ranks for a particular Keyword for our video –  This is really most important for securing placements in the suggested videos column for other people'due south videos. To this twenty-four hours, 107 SpongeBob regularly receives 60,000+ monthly views (~20% of its total monthly views) from suggested videos on other people'due south picket pages and this video was released in August of 2015. I should add together that the bulk of these videos are well-nigh SpongeBob, which demonstrates the importance of "relevancy" to the suggested videos algorithm.

# iv Optimize YouTube Video Meta Information

Descriptions, Tags and Closed Captions are all important aspects of our meta data. At that place are far smarter people than me in this class of SEO right here on ReelSEO (editor note: cheers Matt!), so I'll go out the best practices to them. That said, many if not all of the principles effectually SEO utilise to the suggested videos algorithm as well. At Frederator Networks our guidelines for these forms of metadata are:

• Your video descriptions should be a minimum of 3 sentences and placed at the top of the description department before everything else such as links.
• Always include a generic iii – 5 sentence clarification of the show and channel at the lesser of the description (use the defaults tool on YouTube!)
• Descriptions & Tags should focus on ane primary keyword
• Limit tags to ten – 12 focusing on the chief keyword*
• Always include the aforementioned 4 – six "generic tags" about the show and channel**

NOTE: *For '107 More than SpongedBob Facts' we used these specific keywords: SpongeBob, SpongeBob SquarePants, facts about SpongeBob, 107 facts about SpongeBob, top SpongeBob facts, 107 facts nigh SpongeBob SquarePants, best spongebob facts, nickelodeon, patrick star, sandy cheeks, squidward tentacles. (**For ToonedUp & Channel Frederator nosotros always include: "Channel Frederator" "ToonedUp" "107 Facts" "Frederator" "Tooned Up" "Cartoon").

#5 Interlink Videos via Annotations, Playlists

A fifth way nosotros utilize the tools available to us to dominate the suggested videos algorithm is through interlinking of our videos in annotations, InVideo programming, playlists, links in descriptions and commenting on older videos with links to our newer videos. I'll be honest and tell you we have 0 data or bear witness, other than anecdotal, that indicates the suggested videos algorithm is directly influenced by whatsoever of these actions. For case, we practice not know if we put two videos in a playlist together whether or non that is a point the suggested videos algorithm picks upwardly on, or how strong that bespeak is if it does.

Still, we do have a lot of data that indicates these actions pb to longer session and view durations. We know the suggested videos algorithm is highly optimized for view and session duration and therefore we can say that these actions at least have an indirect impact on the suggested videos algorithm and are very much worth the minimal time and effort it takes to practice them.

#6 Upload Compelling Custom Thumbnails

In our view, custom thumbnails are generally the unmarried nigh important element in getting someone to really click on our videos (besides our brand!). The more people who click on our videos, the more scout time we're able to rack up.

Now, at that place'due south a pitfall here, which is that if nosotros make a misleading thumbnail (or title), people will click away from our video rapidly, harming our average view duration and harming our suggested video algorithm functioning. This has been confirmed many times over by YouTube, but is laid out quite well in this Computerphile interview with YouTube executive Cristos Goodrow. There are lots of resource available near how to make not bad thumbnails. This article I wrote nigh thumbnails is a great start.

#vii First YouTube Sessions

The concluding key gene across all of YouTube's algorithms, and arguably the ane with the least corporeality of data bachelor about it, is whether or non a video starts a viewing session on YouTube, and how often does a aqueduct offset those viewing sessions.

YouTube features videos and channels that frequently first sessions because they accept information that shows session time and views increase exponentially the more frequently a viewer comes back to YouTube. For example, if someone comes to YouTube once a week, they may sentinel 20 minutes of videos. If they come up twice a week that increases to 50 minutes of videos. 4 visits a calendar week generates 150 minutes watched and then on.** This means that the more videos we post, which cause people to come to YouTube, the more likely information technology is our videos will exist featured in suggested videos.

An extra stride we accept is edifice touchpoints with our audience outside of YouTube. These are our social profiles, media connections for embeds, email lists, websites, connections to other YouTubers and so on. These profiles, connections and lists, even if they're small, help human action every bit a catalysts for starting sessions and thus growing our audience through suggested videos viewership. In addition to this, we communicate our schedule. If our audience knows when they should come back to our channels to encounter a new video, they will come and discover our videos when they are gear up to go live. (**Keep in mind these are not actual figures but an example).

Potential Road Bumps

There can be a few route bumps along the way to dominating the suggested videos cavalcade. Commencement and foremost is the "Up Side by side" feature. This unit is in the first position of the suggested videos column and autoplays (if enabled) when a video ends. This unit of measurement is algorithmically programmed, and is non necessarily another video from the same channel.

The 2nd road bump to dominating suggested videos is the "Recommended" slots in the suggested video column. This placement is highly dependent upon the unique viewer. Keeping our audience watching our videos through annotations, calls to action, etc. is the way nosotros secure these spots for our own videos.

The final road bump is whether or not our videos deed every bit an "Exit Page." An exit folio is essentially the last page a viewer hits before leaving a site. In the YouTube ecosystem, if one of our video pages causes sessions to stop, that video, and potentially other videos from our channel, volition non exist served equally frequently or at all.

CONCLUSION:

Dominating the suggested videos column is non easy. It starts with keen content and is accelerated by bright programming and an engaged audience. What is outlined in this document is merely a part (an extremely important part!) of our overall programming and audience development strategy.

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Source: https://tubularlabs.com/blog/7-expert-tips-youtube-suggested-videos/

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