How To Outrank the Competition in YouTube Search [Reel Web #63]

Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of changes to YouTube including their search algorithm and different things with annotations, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff. On this week’s look at the Reel Web, we’re gonna take a brief overview look at that and tell you what it means for you as content creators and video marketers.

Hey, guys! My name is Tim Schmoyer, and welcome to another week of the Reel Web, where every week we just help you guys know what’s happening in the online video world and kind of summarize news and highlights for you. And this week look around at YouTube. This is a different place than it was just a few weeks ago. If you haven’t noticed, the design looks and feels a lot more like Google +. It’s very white, very clean. Notice the comments below had different thumbs up, thumbs down options as well as different threaded options. Now it’s not just one big long list. Everything’s kind of neatly organized. A lot of big changes happening around. There’s like a guide to the one side. I think it’s over -- I forget. It’s one of these two sizes. On your left side, and you’ll see there you can see different channels. A lot of things happening, and I, from what I’ve seen so far, they all seem to be really positive improvements. Most of those changes and updates you guys can just see clearly by looking around the site.

Let’s talk about one of the other changes that happened to YouTube that might not be so apparent on the outside, and that is their update to their search algorithm, which now favors videos that have more time watched and contributes to viewer’s overall viewing session on YouTube. We’ve already known that that’s kind of like a thing that they’ve been working towards. Now it’s officially announced, but it’s still not very clear exactly how this works. I’ve talked to several people about it, and we here at Reel SEO want to break it down for you the best way that we understand it. But to be honest, the way that YouTube has explained it and talked about it, we still don’t really understand it. We don’t really know how what they’re doing actually makes sense, but as best as I understand it anyway, and I could be totally off here, but this is how I understand it. YouTube takes into account how many minutes people are spending watching your video, and then they’re taking that number of minutes and comparing it to the number of minutes that other people are spending watching other people’s videos. And whichever video has the most number of watched minutes, that video will rank higher than the other video has fewer minutes watched. And along with that they also can take into consideration how your video contributes to that viewers overall session. And if you’re using annotations in your video that link to other videos, thus extending how long someone is staying on YouTube watching it, hat also boosts your video’s rankings in search.

Let me try to give you a practical example from this. And this example’s actually from Kevin Nalte at WillVideoForFood.com. He’s written probably the best article I’ve read about this so far. It’s linked up below. Go check it out. He gives an example of two videos and asks the question which one will rank better in search given that meta data and tags and thumbnails and views and everything all considered equal. Which one will rank better? Video example number one is a two minute video that keeps people watching for about one minute of the video, so thus it has about an audience retention of 50%. Video example number two is a video that is 20 minutes long and keeps people watching for about five minutes and thus has an audience retention of about 25%, half of what the other video had, except for it kept people watching for five minutes instead of one minute. Which video will rank better in search? Well, normally we would think video number one because it kept people for 50% of the duration of the video rather than 25%, but the 25% actually accounted for five minutes of viewing instead of one minute for viewing, and it seems like this new update will now favor the video that is keeping people for five minutes as opposed to one minute, even though that means they only watched a quarter of the video instead of half of the video. So what does this mean for us who are video creators and marketers on YouTube? Basically the same thing we’ve been saying all along, that engagement is key. Audience interaction is so important, and you really need to focus on developing your audience as much as you focus on creating your content. And that’s actually going to be our Creator’s Tip video on Thursday. So if you’re not subscribed, make sure you click that button. Actually, that’s below. The new design they switched that. Now the subscribe button’s down there.

But anyway, along with all these changes, YouTube has also updated the views section in your analytics. It shows you exactly how much total time people are watching your videos overall on your channel and also for each specific video, and it gives you a couple different analytics there, some tools so you can understand how people are engaging with your videos and how much time they’re actually spending on that video. And the new annotations analytics down at the bottom left hand corner of your analytics screen now will show you how many people are actually clicking through on your annotations so you can see how much your video is contributing to people’s other viewing time on YouTube by sending them to other videos that you recommend if they end up watching. So the longer you keep people watching your videos the better, and the more you send people to other videos and keep them watching longer, the better that video will do. So annotations are becoming more and more important for having your video’s rank in search. So if you’re not using them like an outro, maybe, that you’ll see at the end of this video, I recommend that maybe you start trying to experiment with some of that stuff as well.

Another significant program that YouTube is currently piloting is the ability for us to use annotations to offsite websites, specifically our own websites that you have verified on your Google webmaster tools and on your YouTube account as an associated website. You will, hopefully, sometime in the near future, be able to link directly to your website with annotations. Now, YouTube cautions the use of this because they say that any time you send people away from YouTube, their viewing session lowers and thereby, as we just talked about, that could affect your video’s search rankings in search and other things in sending people away from the platform. So they say to use it cautiously, but I know that it’s a tool that a lot of us will definitely welcome.

Another update to annotations that we’ve actually talked about a couple of weeks ago and it’s now been confirmed that YouTube is getting rid of the store tab and instead replacing it with merchant annotations that lets you link to iTunes, District Lines, Café Press, and Shopify if you have a customs cart there, and other places that you can now link offsite to sell your products in other places where people are already used to buying things from you rather than doing that here on YouTube. So if you’re merchants, you’re probably going to welcome that change.

Another significant update to YouTube, the video creator marketplace is now open, and if you’re not familiar, what that is is essentially a place where creators, possibly like yourself, to connect with advertisers, also possibly like yourself, and where you can find like-minded creators and advertisers and come together. And advertisers invite people who create content that they can advertise against and form relationships. And creators can also make themselves available for advertisers to find them. If you feel like you have an audience that can work well with certain advertisers in a certain niche, all YouTube does is put you in touch. You guys work out all the terms and agreements on your own, but if that is something that you’re interested in, the link and more information about that is linked up below. You can go apply, check it out, read more information. If you’re an advertiser or creator and you’d like to find more information about how you can connect and start working with the other party on YouTube.

And finally, I want to give you guys a heads up on the direction that YouTube seems to be taking. This is based off of a Forbes article. They did an interview with a YouTube product manager, and he talked about the next big thing that’s coming up on YouTube, the direction. The strategy that they’re taking actually revolves around duration. They have over 72 hours of video uploaded to the site every single minute, and that is just a massive library to try to keep it organized and help good stuff surface and filter out the bad stuff, and all of that. So they’re turning to their users sometime in the future to figure out how to curate that, and just like they figured out a business model that helps them monetize creators like us to make money here on YouTube. It sounds like they figured out or are a least exploring a business model that also lets them offer monetization incentives for top curators on YouTube as well. And I expect that as this curation model goes forward, the curation community on YouTube will probably be significant to the overall health and vitality of this site, as the actual content creators themselves. Unfortunately we don’t really have any specifics of what this would look like or how it will work or function or how monetization will be a part of all this or any of that, but if it’s coming, I actually welcome that, as long as it’s done well.

As I mentioned already, for our Creators Tip video on Thursday, we want to talk about this idea of audience development and how we need to focus on that just as much as we focus on our content. So I want to give you guys some tips, strategies, ideas for how to develop that, but in the meantime I want to hear from you guys in the comments below about ideas, tips, and strategies you have for developing your own audiences. And I want to take a bunch of your comments and feature them in that Creator’s Tip video on Thursday, along with your channel and everything. I’ll give you full credit for your comments. So, comment below. Let me know what ideas and suggestions you have for audience development and we’ll look forward to have that video for you guys on Thursday. And until then, make sure you subscribe to get that video and all the other awesome stuff we’re making here for you guys at ReelSEO.com. Make sure you check out the website for all the other awesome stuff we’re publishing for you guys all throughout the week, and I will see you guys again on Thursday for our Creator’s Tip video. Thanks for hanging out. Bye.