Why Watch Time Is The Key To Growing Your YouTube Channel

If you have a YouTube channel, then chances are you’re spending a good amount of time creating content for it. That’s all well and good, but unless you supply the types of videos that your audience or potential audience wants to see, then the channel probably isn’t doing as well as you thought you expected. One of the untapped secrets behind growing your channel is increasing the watch time.

What Is Watch Time

Watch time is the amount of time that someone spends actually watching your videos. The longer they watch, the more YouTube believes the viewer is interested in your content. As a result, you’ll be rewarded with more search traffic, since it then considers your site to have high value for your audience.

So how do you increase the watch time? One easy way is to make longer videos. It sounds simple, but the fact of the matter is that even if all of your viewers watch a shorter video to the end (which YouTube really likes, by the way), there’s still less watch time accrued than with a longer video. Providing that the content is what the viewer wants the first place, longer videos equals longer watch times.

But There’s A Trick

Now there is one essential trick to this. The first 10 to 30 seconds of a video is critical to getting someone to commit to watching it past that. If they get bored right away, they’re off to something else and your watch time just suffered for it. in order to make sure that this doesn’t happen, be sure to cut off anything extraneous from the front of a video. That means an overly long title sequence, a music intro, or any dead time. Get right to the point and keep the viewer in the game for the long haul.

Another way to grow your channel is to include target keywords in your titles and descriptions, then make sure to mention those keywords in your video. The YouTube algorithm will use those keywords to better understand what your video is about. When you do get engagement, it will then rank higher in the search results.

There are a few more tricks to increasing your YouTube engagement and growth of your channel that you can read in Social Media Promotion For Musicians.

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