Why aren’t my videos getting suggested by YouTube?
What steps can I take to get more traffic from suggested videos?
Watch the video below to learn how to get discovered on YouTube via suggested videos, how suggested videos work, where they appear on YouTube, and how to find the videos from other channels that are recommending your videos.
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What are suggested videos?
This is a personalized collection of videos that an individual viewer may be interested in watching next based upon their prior activity on YouTube. Here’s some insights from the YouTube staff.
YouTube Staff: What is changing constantly is the rankings in suggested and those are updated pretty much constantly. We collect over 80 billion bits of information, feedback from the audience every day, and we feed that right back into the system so that they can know which videos are engaging and satisfying the viewers on each suggested list.
YouTube Staff: When you’re saying the ranking is changing, do you mean you change the algorithm or do you mean viewers’ interest are changing?
YouTube Staff: It’s more about viewers’ interest are changing and different viewers are coming in and viewers’ tastes are changing over time. The other thing to think about with these rankings is that they’re actually different for every viewer. You and I could go and watch the same video today at the same time, and the recommendations in suggested that you see will be different based on your history compared to what I see.
If I’ve been watching a lot of cat videos, then YouTube will recommend more cat videos for me to watch on YouTube.
Where do suggested videos appear on YouTube?
They appear to viewers on the right side of the watch page on the “Up Next”, below the video on the YouTube app, and as a next video in autoplay. You can also see which videos are bringing viewers to your channel via suggested videos by going to traffic sources in YouTube Analytics.
How do suggested videos work?
Let’s see what YouTube has to say about it.
YouTube Staff: In analytics, I know this is something a lot of you want to look into if you’re seeing a decline in your performance. Specifically with suggested, when you’re looking at that in YouTube Analytics, there’s literally a list of the videos that people watch last before they either discovered your video or your channel. That’s really powerful information.
You want to go into traffic sources and click on suggested, and what you’ll see there is a list of videos. That’s basically where your traffic’s coming from on the watch page.
It can show you videos that don’t belong to your channel that your audience is also watching. Most of the time, it’s probably videos that are owned by you, but a lot of the time, you can get an idea of what else your viewers are interested in, what they’re watching. If you see trends are not changing over time, you can understand why your audiences’ interest is either increasing or declining.
Videos can be suggested and recommended from other channels including the one you’re watching. YouTube says that viewers tend to watch a lot more videos based upon recommendations from a variety of different channels. Some of the signals that contribute to recommendations are the videos that people see on the right side of the watch page while they’re watching the current video.
YouTube will show videos that are typically related as well as videos from our viewers’ past watch history.
Here’s how to find channels that recommend your content.
Let me show you Morningfame and how this works.
– Click Login to log in to Morningfame.
– Click “Analytics Report.”
– Click “Algorithm.” Under the heading How do YouTube’s Algorithms Promote You, you’ll see YouTube Search, and you can get the “Top Search Terms,” “Top videos,” Google Search, “Top Videos,” and Suggested Videos.
– Click on “Top Recommending Channels,” and you’ll see that vidIQ with 474,000 subscribers is sending 21 views to this video of mine.
If I click “Show more sending videos from vidIQ,” then it shows other videos from vidIQ that are sending views to my other videos on my channel. If I click on “Show more receiving videos,” I can see that vidIQ has sent 18 views to this video. This happens every 28 days. You can also see that I get suggested views from videos on my own channel.
You can see that this video is sending 492 views to all these videos on my channel.
Click here link to get access to Morningfame.
How can you use this information to get more views from suggested videos?
After you’ve identified the videos and channels that are sending you suggested traffic, create more of those types of videos and link them to each other.
You can do this by putting them into a playlist that link to the playlist from each of the videos on the playlist.
Here are some suggested video tips so you can get more views from suggested videos.
- Make strong calls to action.
Instead of just ending your video, suggest to viewers what they should watch next. Ideally, this would be a similar video to the one that they’ve just watched. - Create a series of videos that are organically connected.
When you think of a video topic, don’t just think about a solo video, but think about a series of videos that takes a deeper dive into your content.
YouTube Staff: Tactically, as a creator, if you have a question like “how do I get more traffic from watch next,” You can’t really optimize your videos for a traffic source or a service, but you can for your audience. If you really want your viewers to continue watching your videos, one strategy I see some creators doing is, of course, making really consistent content or a series.
That way, if those videos start being watched together, they’re topically related, and they attract the same type of viewer, they’re really likely going to come up next to each other in watch next. That’s something I think sometimes we call it co-watch, like videos that are watched together. That’s one of the signals that inform ranking. Series are a really powerful way to keep viewers watching. - Create playlists.
Add a series of videos to a playlist and link to that playlist from the video that they’re just watching. For every video on the playlist, link to that playlist using a card or end screen, so you can binge-watch more of your videos. When people watch more than one video in a playlist, it’ll extend the session time of that particular video.
Increased session time leads to more watch time, which is a big ranking factor on YouTube. - Avoid long endings.
Don’t telegraph the ending in your video by saying something like, “That’s all I have for you.” It will shorten the watch time of that particular video. - Create videos in popular formats.
For example, you should make a list-type video then people know what to expect next in the video.
You can just create a series of bullet points that you want to talk about so people will know what to expect next. - Improve your click-through rate by creating better thumbnails.
If viewers don’t click on your thumbnail when they see it in the search engines or on the right side of the watch page for suggested videos, they’re not going to watch your video. If they don’t watch your video, all that time and effort you put into creating your video will be wasted.
Click here to download my free thumbnail checklist. You will receive 10 ways to make your thumbnail stand out on YouTube. - Create a title that complements your thumbnail.
Your title should include an optimized keyword phrase as well as something compelling for the viewer.
Click here to get my secret formula for writing video titles that get ranked in the search engines. - Create an engaging video.
If you want to get suggested traffic from other channels, you need to have a high click-through rate and high average view duration. This means you need to have a great thumbnail as well as an engaging video. Ideally, you want to have 50% of your viewers watching your video all the way through. If you can achieve this, then YouTube will promote your video via suggested videos.
Another way to get discovered on YouTube is via YouTube Search. YouTube shows the most relevant results in the YouTube search engine based upon what somebody types into the YouTube search box. Click here to watch my next video to learn how to get your videos discovered in YouTube Search.
Get The One Blueprint That Gives You Step-By-Step Instructions On How To Grow A Profitable YouTube Channel. Click here for more info
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