How To Get More Watch Time On YouTube ( Just Do This Right Now)

YouTube helps video content creators make money for themselves but oftentimes, many wonder how to get more Watch Time on YouTube. The platform algorithms use Watch Time as one of the many factors in the ranking and suggestion of videos to the audience. Over the years, the platform has grown hugely and is the most visited video-sharing site in the world.

YouTube is being used by many as a steady source of income for influencers, advertisers, marketers, and other business-related persons. Tens of millions of video content is available on the platform this increases the challenge as well as the opportunities to make money.

For YouTubers, the goal is to propel their channels to attain an authority status on the platform. To do that, they need to accumulate Watch Time from the content they create and promote.  This in turn helps them rank higher and increases their revenue off YouTube.

In this article, I will be taking a look at how to get more Watch Time on YouTube.

YouTube Watch Time

Simply put, the Watch Time factor is the total accumulated amount of time the audience has spent watching videos from a channel on YouTube. The platform has over the years reiterated its confirmation that Watch Time is an integral factor of its search and discovery algorithm.

Watch Time examines the total amount of minutes that a channel’s audience has spent watching video content. This starts from the moment the content was first published.

How to get more Watch Time on YouTube

The goal of nearly every content creator on YouTube is to push their content to more audience and increase earnings. A lot of factors contribute to the success of a channel and Watch Time is one of those factors. So if you want to learn how to get more Watch Time on YouTube, follow some of the tips we are about to share below:

Create Quality Content Videos

To get more Watch Time on YouTube, content creators must first master the art of creating and uploading quality content.

It’s not a secret, on YouTube, content is king and if you want to accumulate enough Watch Time, you will be sure to add quality. Creating quality, unique and useful content for your audience will help your quest of attaining more Watch Time.

Quality of content is one bit of the task and the next is the mode of delivery. The delivery of the content has to be tailor-made to fit the physic of your target demographic. This means creating content that is effective, energetic, and visually appealing.

To summarize, content creators need to view themselves in accordance with how their audience will. Get this mix right and you will have your audience sitting to watch your channel contents all through to the end.

Increase Audience Retention

Audience retention differs from Watch Time slightly but an increase in audience retention will lead to an increase in Watch Time as well. Thankfully, many strategies used to boost Audience Retention will help you achieve more Watch Time.

Audience Retention measures the percentage of videos that people watch. Take, for instance, a user stops watching your content after 5 seconds, this will reflect poorly on your Audience Retention as well as Watch Time.

To increase your Audience Retention and hence your Watch Time, implement these simple processes:

• Many YouTube audiences always judge content based on the interaction they have with the content in the first few seconds. This time frame is very short and is around 10-15 seconds. This makes it extremely necessary to grab viewers’ attention within that period.
• Diversity will help you retain your audience. This is because audiences often dislike static videos. Throw in some mixes such as changing the camera angles, visual styles, and music. Mixing things up will keep your content fresh and interesting.
• As with any other business, Planning and scripting your video content ahead of shooting will give you room for improvement. In the end, you upload well-refined content that is cable of retaining attention.

Get more subscribers

Still, on how to get more Watch Time on YouTube, a way to achieve this is to increase your subscribers base. This is one of the fundamental steps in growing a YouTube channel and if you want more Watch Time, you have to actively pursue this.

Getting more subscribers simply ensures that your content is served to as many potential viewers as possible. The more viewers a channel can amass, the more likely it is that the Watch Time on its videos will increase. Growing a channel’s subscriber base can be tricky and it isn’t an easy task.

But, some actions such as optimize the channel, promoting your content on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, etc. it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just enough to get more subscribers. The real task is getting those subscribers to engage your content to help increase Watch Time. We have a detailed article on how to get more subscribers.

For one, more subscribers help create social proof for a channel. It often shows that a channel is popular and when new users see this, chances are they might subscribe. If they do, they will be contributing to your Watch Time by viewing your content.

Use catchy Titles and Thumbnails

Content titles, as well as thumbnails, represent what the audience should expect from viewing content. How can this help increase your Watch Time? Consider the fact that when audiences search YouTube for a specific subject matter, they are greeted with an unending list.

The first interaction an audience will have is with the title as well as the thumbnails and there are lots of them. To increase your Watch Time, your tittles and thumbnails have to stand out from the multitudes. In this regard, it’s important to ensure that the title, thumbnail, and description of your content accurately reflect what’s in the video. This might cause your overall views may go down, but your overall Watch Time will increase.

If your title is well crafted and your thumbnails well designed, then you increase your chances of attracting more audience to your channel. The more interactions audience has with your content, the more they are recommended to other viewers searching for the same content.

Use Long-Tail YouTube Keywords

Long-tail Keywords can benefit channels in many ways and one of them is how to get more Watch Time on YouTube. It’s able to target a much wider range of audience who will in turn watch your content to help increase your Watch Time.

Creating long-tail keywords for content usage is not difficult and can be done via different means. A quick way is to utilize YouTube’s suggestion feature. Simply type in a keyword relating to the content you want to create in the YouTube search bar. The platform will automatically suggest the type of content relating to the keyword that audiences are interested in. this is usually in form of a list of long-tail keyword ideas that creators can make use of to style their own content.

And since your contents match what your audience is searching for, you get to increase your Watch Time as your content is being viewed.

Playlists are awesome; use them

Video playlist is one of the ways YouTubers can work around the challenge of how to get more Watch Time on YouTube. Playlists are a way of gently urging viewers to further watch your content.

It helps create more of a gradual viewing experience which has the potential of increasing a channel’s Watch Time on YouTube. Content creators can design several video playlists to encapsulate all their videos. The simple trick is to ensure that the playlist is organized in sequences and is of relevance to each other.

By leveraging the effectiveness of Playlists, channels can gain viewership by attracting more audiences to their content in a viewing session. This helps improve channel visibility and increases YouTube Watch Time.

Utilize Subtitles to improve accessibility and SEO

This has proven to be one of the most effective answers to the question of how to get more Watch Time on YouTube. A subtitle sometimes called closed captions readily makes content available to a larger audience.

This is appealing to viewers with special needs such as deaf or hearing problems, audiences watching with sound off. And at other times to audience who don’t speak the same language as you do. Another plus to this is that it helps channels improve their search engine optimization ranking.

Thankfully, utilizing this isn’t hard at all. Simply create subtitles or upload a transcript file for your contents. Many YouTubers prefer to use the latter option since they can save the file for future use. To create subtitles, follow the steps below:

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Subtitles.
• Click the video you’d like to edit.
• Select Add Language and select your language.
• Under subtitles, select Add.
• Enter your captions as the video plays.

If you chose to upload a transcript, then you can do this by following these steps:

• Sign in to YouTube Studio.
• From the left menu, select Videos.
• Click on the title or thumbnail of a video.
• Select more options.
• Click Upload subtitles/cc.
• Choose between “with timing” or “Without timing”. Select Continue.
• Upload your file.
• Select Save.

Keep in mind that uploading a transcript requires you to save your captions as a plain text file (.txt) before uploading it to YouTube. YouTube recommends a few formatting tips to ease the process:

• Use a blank line to force the start of a new caption.
• Use square brackets to designate background sounds like [music] or [applause].
• Add >>to identify speakers or change of speaker.

Post at the Right Time 

Ok, this sounds off right? The truth is just like your regular bus rush hours, YouTube also has peak periods. And one way to help increase Watch Time is to give your video the maximum opportunity of showing up in search results. After all, more views = more Watch Time!

Many pro YouTubers will recommend posting around mid-noon during the week. This increases your video’s chance of been indexed before peak viewing hours in the evening. If you prefer weekends, then consider posting earlier, especially when Internet traffic generally is higher.

leverage YouTube analytics

Certainly, the most important tool a YouTuber cannot afford to neglect is the YouTube analytics data. This set of data provide details of what exactly is working and what isn’t. if you intend to increase your watch time, then you will need to make adequate reference to this analytics data.

YouTube analytics provides insight into the micro and macro views of your content as well as your channel. Creators can see viewership in days, times, etc. You also can see data on the videos themselves.

One data set that should keep your interest is the drop-off times. Review this particular metric carefully before returning to see the content around these timestamps to assess what might not be working. Utilize the information contained to revise those contents and to serve as improvements to future contents.

Conclusion

YouTube is currently the second most visited platform in the world. Over 500 hours of video are uploaded on its platform every minute. So naturally, you’ll expect the competition to be tough and fierce.

Thankfully, newcomers on the platform can utilize some of the techniques mentioned in this piece to help them on their quest on how to get more Watch Time on YouTube. Keep in mind that you aren’t always going to hit success instantly with these strategies and many will require a few attempts. But when it does work, the success rate is always amazing and totally worth it.

More so, avid YouTubers will tell how important the Watch Time factor is to the success of any YouTube channel.  As you continue to find ways to improve on your Watch Time, keep uploading quality content and always learn from the content that end up not doing well.