Valentine's Day is just weeks away and millions of viewers will be turning to YouTube for ideas around dinners, desserts, and decor as well as inspiration for gifts and ways to treat their other half.

Of course, this offers a massive opportunity for creators to publish the exact content viewers will be looking for. Let's take a look at the top keywords and terms around Valentine’s that users on YouTube have been searching for in the past 30 days.

If your strategy is to upload content about Valentine’s Day then you need to confirm the keywords users are searching for. We did our research using the invaluable 

, and the following are the most searched for Valentine’s keywords and phrases on YouTube right now:

When are Viewers Searching for Valentine's Content on YouTube?

Of course, as a creator, you should also know when people are searching for Valentine’s Day content so you can maximize your video’s viewing potential. As with any tentpole or holiday event, interest is often specifically seasonal.

, interest from viewers in Valentine’s Day starts to peak around the end of December and lasts right through to the beginning of March. No breaking news there of course but a great strategy would be to publish 2 to 4 weeks ahead of February 14th to attract those views and engagements.

Don’t forget that tentpole content is evergreen so if you’ve published any Valentine’s Day clips on YouTube in the past, and you believe the videos are still relevant, 

update your titles and custom thumbnails to see if can leverage the interest in the content

 that always comes this way this time of year.

Finding Opportunities to Create Valentine's Content on YouTube

When viewers are searching for content on YouTube, it’s usually with a specific topic or question in mind. They want an answer for something they’ve gone searching for, and will use a core keyword as a kickoff point for more ideas.

A look at most-searched-for keywords brings up a lot of search intent around Valentine’s Day decor, so let’s take a deeper dive into what viewers are interested in around this category:

Top 10 Valentine's Day Decor Keywords: YouTube

If you want an idea of the type of Valentine’s decor inspo that YouTube viewers love, take a look at this upload, published by IDunnGoddess on January 30th 2016. It has generated over 7.8M views to date:

Top 10 Valentine's Day Treats Keywords on YouTube

Valentine’s Day content about gifts and treats is also a total winner with viewers (and creators and publishers) on YouTube. Here are the top keywords in this category:

MissRemiAshten uploaded this 9:41 minute video a couple of days before Valentine’s Day 2016 which has attracted just under a million views to date:

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Striped heart-shaped gift box, pink heart cookies spelling love, rose petals on wood

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us ❤️ Here are the most searched for keywords on YouTube around this romantic tentpole event.

Top 15 Valentine's Day Keywords on YouTube

In November 2019, YouTube made platform-shaking changes that affected every channel. Suddenly every creator and publisher had to acknowledge whether their library of videos were 'made for kids' or not.

If you are out of the loop, you can quickly catch up by reading our '

11 Things You Need to Know About COPPA and Kid's Content on YouTube

Part of the announcement was confirmation of the type of video content that YouTube considered made for, and consumed by, children under 13. Creators are now asked to indicate whether their channel or videos are subject to the following guidelines:

What is the subject matter of your video?

Whether children are your intended audience for the video

Whether the video includes child actors or models

Whether the video includes characters, celebrities or toys that appeal to children, including animated characters or cartoon figures.

Whether the language of the video is intended for children to understand

Whether the video includes activities that appeal to children

Whether the video includes songs, stories, or poems that appeal to children

The 7 Types of 'Made for Kids' Content on YouTube

Although there are many channels who are publishing content that's not necessarily created directly for a young audience, those videos are being watched by a younger audience. That's a fine line that millions of channels are now struggling with. One thing we do know for sure is the kind of content that very clearly 

 fall within the new guidelines. Let's take a look at each of the seven categories with examples.

#1 What is the Subject Matter of the Video?

While education is a life long pursuit, many of us past of the age of 13 know our colors so wouldn't independently watch a video about that - especially if the learning mode was via the medium of ice cream and soccer balls.

Given that this channel is called 'Kid's Camp' and the topic is learning the names of different colors, this is a perfect example of an educational video made especially for younger children.

#2 Whether Children are Your Intended Audience for the Video

While many of us carry our love of fairy tales and other bedtime stories into adulthood, the vast majority of this content on YouTube is aimed at young children.

This video from the 'Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids' YouTube channel uses simple animation to tell the story of Rapunzel, and is also clearly labelled as kid-focused content.

#3 Whether the Video Includes Child Actors or Models

While this one can be a little trickier (there's a lot of TV and movie content on YouTube that includes child actors for example), children themselves are often the main focus of a video clip and that's what the new COPPA rules are picking up on.

Children like to watch other children pretend play or act out stories that they can either join along with or watch passively. We went with a very clear example of a child in front of the camera with the ubiquitous Ryan of Ryan Toy's Review and other franchises.

Ryan has always been the main focus of any video his channel publishes so this is a slam-dunk example of the use of a child in the content.

#4 Whether the Video Includes Characters, Celebrities or Toys That Appeal to Children including Animated Characters or Cartoon Figures

Kids content on YouTube is one of the top 10 most-popular verticals and we've seen hundreds of thousands of channels launch over the past few years that have leveraged the interest in the topic.

With pretend play, unboxing, and even slime videos using characters, celebrities, or toys that appeal to children generating millions of views, it's easy to see why YouTube has confirmed this type of content falls squarely in the 'made for kids' content category.

#5 Whether the Language of the Video is Intended for Children to Understand

Did you know that some American children are 

Whether that's true or not, we know that the language used in the 'Peppa Pig' videos 

 absolutely intended for children to understand. Think about whether your own videos do if you're unsure whether they should be classed as made specifically for children or not.

#6 Whether the Video Includes Activities That Appeal to Children

Of course we were always going to include 'Baby Shark' as an example somewhere, and it actually perfectly illustrates the concept of including activities that appeal to children.

Repeat after me now - "doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo, Baby shark!"

#7 Whether the Video Includes Songs, Stories or Poems That Appeal to Children

Nursery rhyme videos are the perfect storm of content that appeals to young kids. With their bouncy mix of music and colorful images, it's hard to imagine a genre that appeals to children more.

We're not saying that the longer-form clips of this type of content have been used to entertain kids for hours on end. But we're not saying that they haven't been either. YouTube and the FTC know that babies and toddlers are lapping this kind of stuff up which is why it's being excluded from the new rules around data collection.

Child with pigtails watching a cartoon on a wall-mounted television in living room.

Do you know the 7 very specific types of content that YouTube now considers 'Made for Kids' under the new COPPA rules? We break them down.

The 7 Types of 'Made for Kids' Content on YouTube Under #COPPA

We always welcome a good sneak behind the curtains of YouTube. Luckily for us, a recent video from 

 is absolutely packed with information about how YouTube search and discovery works with regards to content.

The 19:22 minute video takes a deep dive into how YouTube discovers your videos and returns the results to viewers. You can watch the full video here, and read the show notes below:

YouTube’s goal for the homepage is to make it a “one-stop shop” where a viewer can find whatever they want to watch. Many users don’t have a goal in mind when they come in via the home page, so YouTube offers up a variety of results.

YouTube looks at two things to help them do that. One of those things is what it knows about the viewer and the history of what types of videos and channels they've watched before. Plus actions like do they watch long videos or short videos?

The other thing that can really influence the recommendations on the homepage is the performance of the video. When YouTube shows a video on the home page, it’s looking to see if viewers click on it, and how long do they watch, plus how well it is performing on average relative to other videos that it might also be showing to similar viewers.

So, often users come to the home page as casual viewers who are not quite sure what they want to watch. YouTube will offer a diverse set of options, such as videos from your past watch history, videos from channels you subscribe to, and videos that were popular with similar audiences. It presents a variety of content to make sure that people can find at least something that they're going to want to watch.

These options that feature on the watch page try to help the viewer find another video to watch next after the one they're currently watching. It’s different from the homepage because YouTube now has some sense of context for that viewer as they've already started to watch a video.

Unlike the content on the homepage, YouTube will now show videos that are related topically or from the same channel to try to help serve those viewers who want to continue watching the same sort of thing.

But also like the homepage, YouTube will also look at personalization and try to recommend videos that may not be exactly the same topic because one of the things that viewers have told YouTube through their behavior is that sometimes they want to change the channel.

For example, a viewer might be watching a music video or getting updated on their latest vlogger, but then once they watch that content, they want to try something different. And so YouTube again offers up a variety of videos so that no matter what type of user it is, whether they're looking to go deeper or switch contexts, that there're some results there for them.

So, on YouTube, the home page and watch next is how the majority of viewers on YouTube discover new videos.

What Happens When a Creator’s Content Performance Drops

The YouTube team confirmed that one of the most common questions they get asked is about why they see a decrease in the amount of viewership they're getting from either suggested viewers or from the home page.

They also confirmed that suggested traffic has been steadily going up over time, so there's no system-wide issue they have seen where traffic to suggested is dropping. However, what changes constantly about suggested videos are the rankings.

These rankings are updated constantly. __YouTube collects over 80 billion bits of information, or feedback from its audience every day, and it feeds that right back into the system so that it can know which videos are engaging and satisfying the viewers on each suggested list. __

When YouTube confirms the rankings are changing, it means that the viewer’s interests are changing over time, rather than any major changes in the algorithm. Also, rankings are different for every viewer, so YouTube is trying to optimize the results they serve up for each viewer to give them what they're going to want the most.

Creators should understand the reasons behind changes in traffic, and the three main reasons are supply, demand, and personalization:

 is basically how much interest is there out there in whatever a topic you're covering or whatever type of video you're making? And this can change significantly over time of course.

 is how much of a specific type of content is being uploaded by other creators. In the video, YouTube confirmed that there are 500 hours of video being uploaded every minute, and the types of videos that are being uploaded is constantly changing as creators come up with new ideas or more creators start producing videos about a similar topic. So the competitive landscape is changing over time and that can influence how your video performs relative to other videos that the viewer might be interested in watching.

 YouTube rankings are different for every user because the platform is trying to give every user what they want and viewers' tastes change. You can't really optimize your videos for a traffic source or a surface, but you can for your audience.

So if you really want your viewers to continue watching your videos, one strategy is making really consistent content or even a series. That way, if those videos start being watched together, they're topically related and they attract the same type of viewer, so they're very likely going to come up next to each other in watch next.

In the video, the team state that a pattern they are seeing around performance is around thumbnails. Right now the homepage thumbnails are much larger than the ones that appear in suggested. And that can actually lead to different performance depending on where the users are browsing from. The YouTube team has seen examples where a thumbnail works really well on the home page but is less effective in suggested, possibly because it's just harder to see what's going on.

That has a knock-on effect for the viewer because maybe now they don’t understand what the video is about so they scroll by in suggested. Whereas on the home page, when they see that big thumbnail they're more engaged.

One tip from the video is that YouTube encourages creators to look at their thumbnails at different sizes and see what it looks like in the suggested feed, especially on mobile. Do a little mockup and make sure that you've optimized so it'll work at both sizes. That's something you could do if you're not getting as much traffic from suggested.

YouTube homepage menu with categories like Home, Trending, and YouTube Premium options.

Did you know that YouTube collects over 80 billion bits of information about user behavior on the platform every single day? That feedback helps determine how videos get discovered by viewers.

How Do YouTube Videos Actually Get Discovered by Viewers?

, Fortnite is one of the most popular and most influential Battle Royale games in the world. Now, Epic Games has just released its 12.0 update which finally adds an option to mute potentially copyrighted audio clips.

In a Tweet, Epic confirmed that the update will allow gamers to mute licenced emote audio, a feature that will help solve the copyright strikes gamers have been experiencing as they stream or upload Fortnite to YouTube:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">PC Players: In the 12.00 update, we&#39;ve added the ability to mute Licensed Emote Audio. This option is available in the game&#39;s Audio settings. <a href="https://t.co/UHGYAlXKgH">pic.twitter.com/UHGYAlXKgH</a></p>&mdash; Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) <a href="https://twitter.com/FortniteStatus/status/1230163848088428544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2020</a></blockquote>

Fortnite and Copyright Claims: Why Muting Audio is a Big Deal

The ability to mute certain audio clips will be a huge benefit to creators who upload Fortnite gameplay content to YouTube. There have been a number of gamers who have been hit 

 from music publishers for using licensed music from the game, albeit unintentionally.

YouTube’s ContentID system can easily identify any audio files protected by those publishers, triggering a claim against any creator who uses even a few seconds of the track in their content. Many gamers on YouTube have monetized their gameplay content, so to be hit with a copyright strike can be a devastating blow.

Did you know that while Epic Games has licensed any audio featured in the game itself, those licenses only cover the playing of that song or backing track within the game itself. It doesn’t extend to any streaming or uploads of the game on social video platforms like YouTube.

Gamers who publish video content about Fortnite that feature any audio leave themselves wide open to claims from the original rights holder, and that’s why so many videos have been flagged.

New Fortnite Rickroll Emote: Famous Meme Can be Silenced

In the ever-changing Fortnite eco-system, new features are constantly being introduced, and very recently, players were blessed with a brand new emote inspired by the legendary Rickrolling meme. The in-game character dances along to the Rick Astley banger “

” just like Rick himself, and is available from Fortnite for 500 V-Bucks (around $5).

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I liked a video on YouTube: Watch How This Bear Made The Unlikeliest Of Friends <a href="https://t.co/iQDd9tB0e9">https://t.co/iQDd9tB0e9</a></p>&mdash; Fortnite (@FortniteGame) <a href="https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1228468970208088064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 15, 2020</a></blockquote>

The new emote is one of the first to incorporate such a famous song, and Epic has ensured full licensing rights around its usage within the game. But that didn’t stop the first wave of gamers from getting hit with copyright claims from the start.

The good news is that Epic has released a patch to PC users which allows those gamers to mute the Astley track before publishing or streaming any gameplay content that features it online. The 12.00 patch allows creators to mute the emote, this avoiding potentially revenue-hitting copyright claims.

# How to Mute Copyrighted Music on Fortnite

With the new patch, players should click on the "Licensed Emote Audio" option within their settings, then either confirm the option to mute all copyrighted music, or just mute other players who are using it.

This new setting isn’t just aimed at silencing the new meme-inspired emote though. Epic confirmed that it will give players the ability to mute all licensed audio going forward.

Right now the patch is only available to PC users, but Epic has promised to (Rick) roll-out the feature to consoles soon.

Close-up of PlayStation controller with blurred Fortnite game screen in background

Gamers who upload or stream Fortnite content to YouTube have been having issues with copyright claims over licensed music within the game. Now Epic has a solution that could tackle that tricky issue.

Fortnite to Allow Gamers to Mute Emotes to Avoid Copyright Strikes

If you're reading this blog post then it's a pretty good bet that you're ready to make the leap and start the YouTube channel you've been promising yourself to. While it's a cliche, there really is never a better time to do so than right now. We're making it easy for you with the tips and tricks all the successful YouTubers use.

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

 so you get all the help you'll need on this exciting journey!

How to Create Your YouTube Channel: 10 Amazing Tips

Check out all 20 tips in the following video:

Tip #1 Write a full ‘About’ section for your YouTube channel

First of all it addresses what the viewer is going to get from your channel. Introduce who you are a little bit, and then reinforce what the viewer is going to get with even more good stuff in another paragraph. YouTube does search these channel descriptions, so it also helps with your SEO.

If you're going to be filming outside most of the time, brilliant, you've got all the natural light in the world. However, if you're filming indoors, you probably want to invest in some proper studio lighting, because it will have a massive impact on the quality of your videos. Great lighting can really help with your videos, much more than say a new camera, at least in my opinion.

Tip #3 Go all-in with YouTube Custom Thumbnails

Now for a whistle-stop tour of some thumbnail tips and tricks:

If humans are going to be in the thumbnail, think of the three E's: eyes, excitement, and emotion. Connect the people with the viewer, and they're more likely to click on the thumbnail.

Use colorful backgrounds that help separate the foreground and backgrounds that contrast with competitors, so that you really stand out when people are scrolling through the search results, and their browse feeds, because your thumbnail looks so different to everybody else's.

Oversaturate the colors in your thumbnails, to give them more pop when they are reduced in size. You can also sharpen the thumbnails for exactly the same reasons.

Use the thumbnail to tease a story of the video itself. You want to entice people to click, but not to give them the whole story so they have no reason to click.

If you're doing tutorials, show the viewer the payoff in the thumbnail. They'll still need to watch the video to know how to get there.

Design small. Remember, you will create your thumbnail on a full screen, but all of your viewers will see the thumbnail in a different size.

And when you finish a thumbnail, take an objective look at it and say to yourself, would I click on this thumbnail? If you're not likely to, neither are your viewers.

You are right in that we barely scratch the surface here, so check out our full 

YouTube playlist on custom thumbnails here

, and also check out the thumbnail courses in the 

Don't just record footage, make sure to edit it as well. It may often be the case that you have half of your footage on the cutting room floor that you never use, and that's fine, because you only want the best and tightest footage to put to an audience. You can also use editing to shave off those little pauses at the beginning, in the middle, the end of your talking.

And, also think about pattern interrupts. Have you noticed something different about this part of the video? It's because I'm not using any pattern interrupts. I'm just talking, and it's probably getting a little bit boring for you now, because I'm not doing any of the sound effects, and music's not playing. The camera's not changing, and shifting angles a little bit, and... You see, I've paused here, and I've got it wrong, and I'm not going to edit this out, I'm going to keep it in, because that's where you'd want to edit your wrong stuff out.

Anyway, where was I? Pattern interrupt. It allows you to keep the viewer engaged by changing something in the scene, every five to 10 seconds. Try that the next time you're editing your videos, and instead of a minute-long worth of rambly stuff, you'll get a clean 15-second footage that your audience will enjoy a lot longer.

This is something I have to constantly remind myself because it's so easy to change persona when you press a record button. Remember to be you. There's only one of you in the entire world unless you have an identical twin. Your audience wants to see something different, something that they can't get anywhere else, and they can only get that from you if you are uniquely you.

If you try to imitate somebody else, it won't feel authentic, and your audience will see right through it. When you start to relax and be you on camera, as hard as that can sound to begin with, when you press record, your audience will start to react to you.

Now, it could be that the audience loves you, or the audience hates you. The important thing is, is that they feel something about you. That's what you want from your audience. And you can ignore all of the people who hate you. You don't need to care about them. You need to put all of your love into those who love you back. Embrace your audience.

But, the moment you start to worry about the judgment of your audience, that's when you start to change on camera, and you don't be you anymore. All of the mannerisms, the way you talk, the quirks that you have, embrace them, and share them on YouTube because if you don't, that's going to leave a mark on your ego.

All right, time to get into some keyword research basics. Get into the head of what your typical target audience viewer is likely to search for on YouTube, and create content, and titles, and metadata around those search terms.

The YouTube Search bar itself is a super powerful tool because it auto predicts what people are searching for, depending on the time of year. For example, as I record this at the end of December if I type in just the word star, it brings me back all of the results for 'Star Wars Episode 9: Rise of Skywalker', because that is trending right now. Use it on your own topic, to find out what people are searching for, and again make content around those subjects.

 to find out what keywords have potential on YouTube, those being with high search volume, but low competition. And although tags are no longer important, it's still interesting to look at the metadata that other creators are using, because it represents the detail and level of research that goes into their content. I will still argue that it's much better to give YouTube as much information about your video as possible, rather than none at all. It may give you the marginal edge, versus other videos who are competing with you, who are a similar size.

And once again, that is a fraction of a percentage of the knowledge that we have about keyword research. We have even more information in an hour-plus course on the 

, along with this video and this post on 

Tip #7 Become part of the YouTube community

When you start to make videos on a particular topic, you become part of that YouTube community. Make sure to join it. And by that I mean watch other peoples' content, and post comments, add to the discussion.

People will start to recognize your name in the comments, and by adding value, not just trying to spam your own stuff, people will be interested in you and come to watch your content. And who knows, the video creator themselves might recognize you after a while, and you could potentially do a collaboration.

Try not to think of other video creators in your space as competition, but as collaborators. The nature of video creating on YouTube, forces it into a singular, sometimes lonely experience, and there are millions of video creators who do this, but they're all working towards the same goal, to make an impact on a shared audience. Why not share the creating experience as well? You get to share your audience with somebody else's audience, and vice versa.

Just remember this at the forefront of your communication with others. It's all about the value that you can add, not what you can take out of it. That comes afterwards, and it becomes a far greater reward when you achieve this.

Got some quick YouTube description tips for you now:

The first two lines of your video description are super important because they can be seen when people are going through the search results on a YouTube page. So try to write your description as if you are writing a traditional tweet of 140 characters.

Make it super valuable, full of metadata, and further tease the viewer into the video.

Somewhere within the description, try and write a paragraph that includes as many of the keyword phrases as possible for the video, but make sure that it still reads as a proper English sentence.

And if you can, try to add timestamps of your video, because they may end up on Google Search, which gives you another avenue of YouTube views.

Tip #9 Set realistic goals and be patient

If you're this deep into the video, you've probably got a lot of this in abundance, but it does bear repeating because YouTube can be a tough game.

To succeed as a video creator, you are going to need determination and patience. You may take all the advice from many sources, all good, put it into practice, and then you may see very little in return for a very long time. You could be 200 videos, and six months into this, and wonder why am I not gaining views and subscribers? And then, all of a sudden, it happens overnight, and you have a viral moment for your channel.

For a lot of creators on YouTube, overnight success takes weeks, months, sometimes even years. Just remember this, if you're putting in the hard work, and the analytics are telling you good things, as well as your audience, eventually, YouTube will stop ignoring you, and start to distribute your content to more people, but it does sometimes take a little longer than what you might think.

With that in mind, I want you to set goals that are achievable in the next month to three months. Rather than setting your first goal to monetize your content, try and go for something more obtainable, like 50 subscribers, 100 subscribers, 10,000 views. Those sort of step by step targets that you can celebrate on an incremental level until you reach those big goals.

If your first goal is to monetize your content on YouTube, again you're thinking about how you can extract as much as possible from YouTube, as opposed to providing as much value to your audience as possible.

“And that's it”, “thanks for watching,” “hope you enjoyed this video.” All words and phrases you should never use at the end of a video. The moment a viewer can sniff that you're trying to wrap up a video, using trigger words such as that, they will immediately switch off.

You should be keeping the viewer engaged right up to the moment the video ends. Yes, you can have calls to action, to ask people to subscribe to your videos, etc, but never tell the viewer that it's basically time to switch over.

Two smartphones displaying YouTube logo on a laptop keyboard, digital video concept.

Ready for some more awesome advice on how to create a YouTube channel? We've another 10 amazing tips for you!

How to Create a YouTube Channel: 10 More Amazing Tips

Pay attention because this tip is super important. Why? Because YouTube wants you to get as much Watch Time as possible in every single video that you make. For those who've never heard this term before, Watch Time is generally considered the most important metric on YouTube. Basically it is the physical number of minutes and hours your content is watched for by people on YouTube. But why is Watch Time more important than views?

Watch Time: Good for YouTube, Good for Video Creators

Let's take a look at it from this perspective. Views represent clicks, or visits, but they don't tell you for how long somebody is on the YouTube platform or on the mobile app. The more Watch Time YouTube has from its audience, the more ads they can sell to the audience, making more money for YouTube, and more money for the video creator. So it stands to reason that the more Watch Time you can create from your videos, the more YouTube is going to reward you, and share your content with more people. Win win win.

But also bear in mind that you don't have to monetize your content to benefit from this. The search and discovery engine is separate from the monetization engine. Let's do a simple example here. You've got a video with 1,000 views, with an average view duration of one minute. That gives you 1,000 minutes of Watch Time in total. But you've also got a video with 500 views, with five minutes of Watch Time, which gives you a total of 2,500 minutes of Watch Time. Which do you think has the better chance of doing well on YouTube in the long run? Yeah, it's probably video B.

YouTube have stated that when it comes to Watch Time, audience retention is hugely important, but there are a lot of ways to get more Watch Time, and that's what we're gonna explore right now.

Using YouTube Analytics to Confirm Watch Time Stats

Let's look at the numbers first. If you haven't already seen our 

, I recommend you watch that video at some point to help with navigating around these screens more confidently.

With that being said, on the Creator Studio dashboard, click on ‘Analytics’, and then at the top of the graphs, click on the ‘Interest Viewers’ tab. You should now see an average view duration box and if you click on this, it will show you a graph of on average how long your videos are watched for. This is useful from a channel perspective, and as we've already said, more is better.

But this graph doesn't take into account how long each individual video is. So to improve Watch Time, you really want to start by scrutinizing every single second of a single video. To do this, click on the ‘Videos’ link to the left, which lists all of your videos. Then choose a video you want to analyze. Click now on the analytics section, and on the first screen here, you should see this audience retention box.

Now, you can make a video an hour long if you want to, but if nobody's watching it after a single minute, that's going to send some pretty negative signals to YouTube. Audience retention is all about keeping that viewer interested throughout the entirety of your video. Keeping them informed, interested, intrigued, and entertained. And you want to try and get that audience retention to as close to 100% as possible. Generally speaking, that's very difficult to do. So a general benchmark is somewhere around about 50%. And this box will tell you all that, the total length of the video, and the average view duration converted into a percentage.

To really drill down into this data, you can click on the ‘See More’ button, and then watch the video to see where there are peaks and dips in your content. There's always loads of useful stuff you can glean from audience retention graphs, like why Audience increase or decreased at a certain point in the video.

Let's talk about how important video intros are. You are always going to have a sharp drop off in viewership as soon as the video starts. For some viewers, the content is just not going to click, and they will turn off instantly. And then there's gonna be another group of viewers who may stick around more maybe 15 or 30 seconds to try and determine whether this video delivers in some way from the thumbnail and the title. That's why there needs to be some sort of hook or payoff. A way to entice a viewer to invest a few more minutes into the video, and hopefully keep them engaged for the entirety of the video. You can look back at pretty much any video on vidIQ, and you'll see me trying to entertain, inform, or intrigue you in those first 15 seconds before you see the vidIQ splash screen. That is my attempt to get you to watch longer, and I think it works, generally speaking.

On educational videos, creators will give you the final result at the beginning of the video, and then the rest of the video is about how to get there. For compilations or stories, there may be an epic part of the video that's used at the very beginning intro, and you don't actually see that part until maybe four or five minutes into the actual video. It's kind of like teasing a story before you watch the beginning of it. So if you've not tried this before, experiment with a dedicated intro to your video, and try to keep it to 15 seconds or less. Oh, and your branded intro or bumper should be no longer than five seconds.

How to Keep the YouTube Viewer’s Attention with Pattern Interrupts

Because as you well know, the average audience attention span of a YouTube viewer can be pretty short. So how do you fix that? You do something called pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is a change of pace, tone, and style - think of pattern interrupts as attention reset buttons. You still know what the videos about, but there's something new to look at on the screen

I try to have a pattern interrupt at least once every ten seconds, but other video creators do pattern interrupts every two or three seconds. Now, there is one huge drawback to the video creator when you use pattern interrupts, and that's editing. It adds hours to the process. So try not to go overboard, and start to watch video creators who operate in your space on YouTube with a critical eye to see if they adopt pattern interrupt strategies, and how often they do it. You should start to notice that the best video creators in your space adopt a certain style and tone through pattern interrupts that you should be at least aware of if you're not trying to follow in some way. Also, consider using B-roll in your video to keep the YouTube viewer watching and entertained. And if you’re going to try and cover many topics in a single video, at least tell the viewer in the title or the video intro, or do another dedicated video on that topic. Stay focused, edit ruthlessly.

Don’t Create Long Videos for the Sake of it

The most important currency on YouTube is time. You want as much Watch Time as possible, but your viewer wants to spend their time on YouTube as efficiently as possible. Just because YouTube states that Watch Time is one of its most important ranking factors, doesn't mean you should make longer videos to get more Watch Time. You're pandering too much to an algorithm, and doing a disservice to your audience.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

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Watch Time is one of YouTube's most important ranking metrics - but what is it and how do you increase Watch Time on your own YouTube videos and Channel?

YouTube Watch Time: The Secret Sauce to More YouTube Views and Subscribers

Welcome to the start of your future. Welcome to a world of self-discovery, creativity, influence, impact, stress (sometimes), fulfillment, and maybe even a career.

It's never too late to start a YouTube channel, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to grow. This video will help guide you through the reasons, the mindset, the strategies and the basic analytics of growing a YouTube channel from absolutely nothing.

 - Should I start a YouTube channel in 2019?

 - How to grow a channel with 0 views and 0 subscribers

 - How to grow your channel with a YouTube strategy

 - How to grow your channel by generating ideas

 - How to grow your channel by understanding analytics

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Want to start and grow a YouTube channel in 2019? This is your complete starter guide!

Carla Marshall

Posts Written By Carla Marshall

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