For those who don’t know what YouTube watch time is, it is time a user spent streaming your video from the official YouTube website. Your YouTube Watch Time is a much better method for determining which video captivates users than YouTube views; this is because YouTube views count those who click on your video as a view, while YouTube Watchtime measures the time that a user spent on a video.
One primary reason why YouTube Watchtime should be essential to everyone who wants their video to rank well on YouTube is that YouTube uses this feature to rank videos on their platform. In the past, YouTube rank videos based on your number of views, now it is not the case. The consequence of this is that your YouTube videos should captivate your video streamers such that they will want to watch the video till the end. Thus your YouTube videos must be well optimized for YouTube watch time, but how do you do that? Here are things you can do to increase your YouTube watch time. Don’t forget to see the safest websites you can buy YouTube views from as well.
1. Create Quality Content
No trick can substitute for quality YouTube content. Ensure that your video is not like one of those mediocre videos on YouTube. Don’t just add videos because you want to increase the content of your library; this will only add to the mind-blowing stat that every minute, over 300 videos go into YouTube. YouTube may be excited about this stat, but it’s only quality content that will excite viewers.
As you can deduce from the stat, the competition for watch time on YouTube is fierce, and you won’t get any meaningful YouTube watch time if your contents aren’t epic.
You must have had the common phrase “content is king.” This phrase doesn’t just apply to written words. It applies to videos as well. When making your next YouTube content, you should have it in mind that your content shouldn’t be what you want to post but what your viewers want to watch and how they want to watch their videos.
Design your content in a way that interests your target audience.
If you’re the type that focuses on marketing but put little time into ensuring that you have top-notch content, then you may notice that the number of views on your video is high, but your YouTube watch time is low.
Ensure that your audience derives value from watching your video, and they find your content valuable, it increases your chances of getting likes and shares, thus leading to even more watch time.
Ask yourself this question “What would make viewers watch my video till the end?” Answer it in your heart, and do what it takes to make a captivating video. You must have unique content to boost your watch time, which will in-turn help to improve your ranking in your niche.
2. Maximize the first 15 seconds.
An average YouTube viewer wants to be blown away within the first 15 seconds, and you have to ensure that you do just that. Irrespective of your video content, the first 15 seconds will determine if you’ll have a good watch time or not.
The first few secs of your video should be engaging, informative, and entertaining to your viewers in a way that will make them abandon any other video to watch yours.
Avoid boring your viewers will long and boring introductions; instead, you can talk about what they stand to gain from watching your video to the end. Every video in your channel should maintain the same tone for the sake of consistency. Your watch time will be high if your viewers love it within the first few seconds.
3. Use Titles and Thumbnails that relate to the content of your video.
The first thing any viewer that searches for your video will see is the thumbnail and your video title. As such, you should endeavor to use thumbnails and titles that will compel a page visitor to click on your video. When they do this, it will increase both your YouTube watch time and your views.
The titles and thumbnails need to entice them enough to click to watch your YouTube videos. However, while trying to attract YouTube viewers to click on your video, make sure that you’re not deceitfully doing that. Deceiving people to watch your videos can lead to a disastrous result because they may leave you with bad comments and dislikes. A user may also report you to YouTube for misleading content, which can make them suspend your account on the platform.
Ensure that the thumbnail you’re going to be using respond to viewers from desktop and mobile devices; this is important, especially with the fact that people use mobile phones to view over one billion videos on YouTube daily.
4. Monitor your Analytics
Always check the Audience Retention report on your YouTube uploads. The report will help you to notice any positive or negative trend so that you can make the necessary correction.
If you want to access the Audience Retention report, here’s how to go about it;
- Log in to your YouTube account
- You will see your account on the top right corner of the page
- Tap on Creator Studio
- Select Analytics then Audience Retention
If you want to check your Audience Retention for each of the videos you uploaded, then tap on the title of the video and play it to see how each part is performing.
5. Use Long-Tail keyword for creating contents
You should target using long-tail YouTube keywords if you want viewers to view your videos instead of your competitor’s own. You can use YouTube itself to identify the perfect long-tail keywords for your YouTube video. For example, if you type twitter marketing in the YouTube search space, you will get some quality long-tail keywords that you can use for your upload.
If you use the long-tail keyword, you will get more views because the keyword “Twitter marketing” will have more competition than the long tail keyword.