Do you know Youtube is the widely used free video service among US internet users across all generations. It is the most widely used social media platform for information, entertainment and content creation especially among Gen Z and millennials. 85% of teens use Youtube making it the most popular social media platform among teenegers.
Youtube is a social media platform where you can watch and share videos in long format as well as in short format also known as Youtube shorts. With evolving marketing methods digital marketing has also changed so it is essential to stay updated with SEO and PPC service providers who can audit SEO, provide SEO reports and do competition analysis for you.
Like other social media platforms Youtube has also gained momentum in creating content to engage its audience. It is one of the most effective social media marketing platform to promote your brand through videos. By auditing your Youtube videos your videos can perform well. Therefore, leading to brand authority and success. But before understanding how to audit videos you need to understand how to create a Youtube channel.
What is a Youtube channel and how to create it?
Youtube channel is a homepage for personal account. It is available to everyone who joins Youtube as a member. By creating a Youtube channel you can also upload videos on Youtube or watch other content creator videos. You can create a Youtube channel by signing into Youtube and going into the profile section and clicking into create channel. You can click on this text for a detailed explanation.
After creating a Youtube channel, you need to understand basic terminologies of Youtube analytics.This includes:-
1. Watch time - Watch time refers to the total minutes a viewer has spent watching your videos. These are crucial metrics because the Youtube algorithm thinks the video which has more views is more engaging and it increases the ranking of videos on its homepage.
2. Number of views - It refers to the total amount of times a video is watched on Youtube. It indicates the total number of people your Youtube video has reached.
3. Subscriber - Subscriber refers to those who regularly want to engage with content by clicking on subscribe button. Your subscribers are your primary audience so it is essential to increase your subscribers to increase the visibility of your videos in recommendation and in the homepage of Youtube.
4. Engagement - Engagement refers to like, share,comments on your video. These are the important metrics which help you determine whether your audience are relating with your content or not. Creating engaging content is crucial to drive audiences to your channel so that they stick to watching your videos in the long run and will recommend your channel to their acquaintances.
5. Demographics of people - Division of people on the basis of demographics helps you determine the age, gender, location of people who are watching your videos. This will help you to curating content according to your target audience.
6. Source of traffic - Traffic is the important element to determine whether your content is reaching a wide audience or not. Traffic source helps you in determining whether viewers found your channel from recommendation section, search engine result pages, homepage of youtube, etc. This allows you to determine if your video promotion strategy is working effectively or not.
7. Impression and click-through-rate(CTR) - Impression refers to the number of times your video thumbnail is shown to people on youtube and Click Through Rate CTR refers to the number of times people clicked on the thumbnail to watch your videos.
A high CTR means your thumbnail is compelling enough to attract an audience. To promote your Youtube channel you need to have a high CTR and impression.
8. Audience retention - Creating a Youtube channel and posting videos doesn’t determine brand success. customer retention is the key factor to promote Youtube channels. Audience retention refers to the number of people who stick through last to watch your videos. If a person finds your content enough engaging they will watch the video till last and chances are that they will do a Youtube search in the search bar of the homepage to find your other contents.
Now you know the Youtube metrics that help to audit your Youtube channel. The next step is to understand why auditing your Youtube channel is necessary.
Why to audit Youtube channel?
Remember 500 hours of new content are uploaded every minute on Youtube and around 70%of people say they rely on Youtube for more than just entertainment. This means that there is a tough competition and every shopper watches reviews of products and services before buying them. Therefore, it is essential for your brand to stand out and make a lasting impression. Youtube audit help you to leverage your full potential so that you can generate leads and build brand loyalty with them.
A youtube audit gives you the overview of your Youtube channel performance. It reveals how your channel is performing and whether you are able to achieve your objective.
Youtube analytics basically provides you data insight of your channel performance. These insights can help have a strong objective foundation that backs up to your Youtube strategy.
Youtube studio is a free Youtube channel audit tool created by its parent company Youtube. It enables channel owner to analyze Youtube metrics and generate revenue.
Importance of in-depth audit of Youtube channel
A. Performance of KPI - Key Performance Indicator(KPI) are your Youtube metrics that allows you to evaluate the performance of your Youtube video.By analyzing your KPI you can find whether your videos are performing well or not and if it is working according to your strategy.
By effectively measuring your KPI you can track the performance of the content you post on Youtube. The better performance the better visibility. As you know google is a parent company of Youtube. So creating effective Youtube content can also leverage your video to appear on top of search result page.
B. Youtube SEO & keyword research - SEO refers to search engine optimization. It is the process of improving the quality and quantity of a website or page. Whether it is facebook, Youtube or website, it is important to improve the quality of a page or website in order to generate traffic to meet our goal. Creating top quality video is not sufficient if your videos don't appear on the search result page of Youtube. Hence, it is important for your video to appear at top or near to top in search results when something related to your video is searched on Youtube. This is why seo is important.
Conducting in-depth keyword research to identify the right keyword which is relevant to your brand is important. After finding relevant keywords use them in your youtube video title and description. Use channel audit tool to analyze if those keywords are helpful in your Youtube video search engine optimization(SEO) or not. You can also outsource social media marketing company who can optimize your YouTube videos to appear on top in search results.
C. CTAs of channel - CTA refers to the number of actions taken by an audience on YouTube. This include:- new subscribes to your channel, number of people visited your website, change in number of likes, comments, dislikes subscribes to newsletter and ebooks total number of changes in follower on your social media Analyzing CTAs of your YouTube channel helps you to understand how your videos are performing and if you are able to generate organic traffic that can increase your brand visibility on YouTube.
D. Metadata of video - Metadata is the collection of words and phrases that are used to describe content of your video.They are used at various places such as, description or snippet in description box of video, in video title and in HTML tag that is used to tell YouTube algorithm about video.
Having relevant titles tags and meta descriptions allows users to allocate your videos which increases the credibility of your brand and promotes its features and benefits. According to YouTube, metadata helps the site index your content, which is vital to increasing views, both from search and from the suggested videos feature. Therefore, It is crucial to optimize metadata that can increase the visibility of your videos.
E. Rates of card click - Cards are used in side panels that encourage the audience to watch another video, Subscribe channel or click through to a different website. Card click through rates tells which actions the viewer prefers to take while watching video. It helps in determining which card engages the most of the audience, potentially boosting watch minutes, subscriber growth and website traffic. Monitoring card click helps you understand timing, placement, and duration of cards in future videos.
F. Engagement of playlist - Playlist is a perfect tool to curate videos of similar themes from your channel and other channels. It helps in organizing your channel content in such a way that it encourages the audience to watch similar content.You can also increase the views on less-watched videos by including them into popular playlists.
It is important to use the right keyword in title to increase visibility of your YouTube channel and only include relevant videos in each playlist to keep your content characteristic consistent. Playlist engagement is also an important factor in contributing to the visibility of your YouTube channel in brand promotion. You can analyze playlist engagement by using two YouTube playlist metrics that are, views per playlist start and average time in playlist. Views per playlist start is the average number of videos your playlist gathers and average time in playlist tells the average amount of time that viewers watched your playlist videos.
G. Compete with competitors - Whether you are in offline business or online business one thing that is going to remain constant is your competitors.
In YouTube business tracking your audience is not enough. Tracking your competitors' activities such as post frequency, content tonality, Video formats, channel aesthetics, etc. can help you determine the strength and weakness of your competitors. This way, your YouTube marketing strategy will have the best possible implication.Tracking your competitor actions is crucial to stay one step ahead in capturing market visibility. For in depth competition analysis you can outsource social media companies in this field.
H. Aesthetics of channel - Aesthetic refers to the beauty of your channel which includes logo, banner, and overall visual aesthetics. Checking your channel aesthetics to ascertain that your channel profile aligns with your brand slogan and objective is important. If your channel description is not aligned with your brand objective then it creates confusion among the audience about credibility and authenticity about the brand.
I. Performance of video - You can evaluate the performance of your videos by analyzing engagement such as likes, dislikes,shares and comments. If your video is frequently shared it means more people like it or find it relateable therefore it increases watch minutes of video. These metrics help you identify well performing videos on your channel. They give you an idea of what kind of topic, style create interest and generate engagement.
You can identify which videos are not performing well to get the sense of topic and style you should avoid. You can fine tune the existing videos as well.
YouTube business
We all know that online marketing is different from offline marketing. Hence an effective content creation strategy is necessary to meet your goals because competition is too vast.
Since, ads are one of the most crucial marketing strategies to create brand awareness it also is a very expensive and time consuming process. In such a scenario YouTube business becomes an effective tool to promote your brand. It allows you to advertise your products and services to your targeted audience. You can also Outsource go to market strategy to find your target audience for your business.
YouTube algorithm shows YouTube ads mostly on those channels where videos are shown similar to your product and services. By repeatedly showing your ad in YouTube to relevant audiences it creates awareness and promotes your brand. It also has a variety of ad formats such as skippable ads, non- skippable ads, masthead ads, video discovery ads and bumper ads. You can choose the relevant ad format based on the ad budget and the business objective.
Conclusion
An in-depth YouTube audit helps you identify which video on your YouTube channel generates the desired results. You can utilize your better-performing videos in upcoming videos to create similar results. Remember, YouTube is more than an entertainment platform. As it is a search engine, so keep a basic search optimization strategy in mind if you want to stand out. Follow the listed metrics and steps for an effective YouTube channel audit, which can promote your brand success in the long run.
Suppose you find difficulty in search engine optimization to increase the business online presence and growth of your YouTube channel. In that case, you can hire a digital marketing agency that provides white label SEO services, SEO audits, SEO reports, video SEO, email marketing, and web development services to ease your digital marketing strategy and improve brand awareness.
References:
. Why you should audit your YouTube channel
. How to audit your YouTube channel for brand success