4 Effective Ways to Boost the Click-Through Rate of Your YouTube Videos

YouTube is undoubtedly the most popular video-sharing platform on the internet. Even though this platform was founded in 2005, it started witnessing a growth in the number of users in the 2010s. Making videos for YouTube has become a popular career option for people of all ages, as it lets you earn revenue from your videos.

2020 has been a great year for YouTubers. Most of the content creators on the platform saw a significant boost in the number of views on their videos as people have been watching YouTube videos at home during the lockdown. But if you struggle to get enough views on your YouTube videos, you must improve your YouTube click-through rate (CTR).

What Is YouTube Click-Through Rate?

The YouTube click-through rate, also called the impressions click-through rate, helps you measure how often viewers watch a video after coming across a registered impression on YouTube. As you may realize, some views do not count towards impressions as they come from external websites or end screens. So, the impressions CTR does not tell the actual view count but only a subset of your YouTube channel’s total views.

The impressions click-through rate varies based on the content type, intended audience, and where the impression was displayed on YouTube. The thumbnails of the videos are always competing again other videos on the YouTube homepage, in “Up Next” suggestions, in search results, and more. Most channels and videos on YouTube have an impression CTR between 2-10%.

If a video gets a lot of impressions, it is natural for the CTR to be lower. On the other hand, the videos, where most of the impressions are from sources like your channel page, are most likely to have a higher CTR. It is recommended to compare CTRs between videos over the long term and remember that the traffic sources will affect their CTRs.

How Can You Improve Your YouTube CTR?

YouTube warns people against using clickbait thumbnails or titles to increase the CTR. So, you should refrain from using those tactics. Since clickbait videos tend to have a low average view duration, YouTube does not usually recommend such videos. Instead, you need to perform the following measures to improve the impressions and CTR of your YouTube videos.

1. Use YouTube analytics to identify the error:

To grow your YouTube audience base, you need to get higher impressions and CTR, giving your channel more views and watch time. You can find all the information regarding impressions, CTR, and views on your YouTube Analytics. Just visit the YouTube Studio page and click on the analytics to discover the necessary data.

• If you have shallow impressions, low CTR, and low views from impressions, it suggests you may have a poor title, poor thumbnail, poor hook or poor content.
• If you have low CTR with high impressions and still getting massive views, it suggests that you may have good content with broad appeal.
• You may have good content with a considerably narrow appeal if you have high CTR but low impressions and views.
• If you manage to get high impressions, high CTR, and massive views from impressions, it is when you have the perfect video for your YouTube audience.

You can use the analytics data to understand where your efforts are going wrong and make amendments to improve your YouTube performance.

2. Create better titles and thumbnails:

As you may have already realized, your title and thumbnail make a huge difference in the performance of your video. If you think your video is great and deserves more traction than it is getting, then you may need to do something different with your video title and thumbnail.

Ideally, the title and thumbnail of the video should be justified in the opening seconds. That way, you will most likely get a better average view duration, which can further improve your impressions. Moreover, when your thumbnail and title are interesting, users are more likely to click on your video and improve your CTR.

3. Have a clearly defined target audience:

To boost the CTR of your YouTube videos, you need to clarify who you are creating the content for. Take a break from video-making until you can define your target audience. While figuring out your target audience, be as specific as possible. It means you need to know the gender, average age, race, geographical location, and other important data about your general audience.

When you know the basic story of your audience, it becomes easier for you to resonate with them. When you have a clearly defined target audience, you get a basic idea about their dreams, hopes, fears, obstacles, goals, and other crucial things about the people. That knowledge can help you craft content that genuinely resonates with them, boosting your chances of getting a higher CTR for videos.

4. Look for patterns in your audience retention graphs:

Apart from paying attention to your impressions, CTR and views, you also need to analyze the audience retention graphs on your channel. This measure will give you enough insights into what causes people to leave your videos midway or what holds their attention.

You can find the audience retention data in the engagement tabs of YouTube Analytics. 4 types of moments are generally highlighted in the audience retention data –

• Intro: This tells you what percentage of your audience watched your video after the first 30 seconds. This allows you to understand how well your video hooked the viewers.
• Continuous segments are the specific moments in the video where almost no one drops off while watching the video.
• Spikes: These are the moments in the video that was re-watched or the users skipped.
• Dips: These are the moments in the video, either skipped or when the users stopped watching the video completely.

As you may realize, these data can be quite useful in isolating the areas which were not working in your favor. You can then modify your content accordingly to boost the retention rate, which will help YouTube recognize your content as useful to the audience, improving the impression and CTR in the process. 

In conclusion,

With these aforementioned tips, you can certainly improve your YouTube CTR. However, before you start your journey as a YouTuber, try to learn about the technicalities. The quality of your content will play a big part in the success of your YouTube channel. However, knowing technical terms such as impressions, CTR, and watch time makes it easier for you to pursue a career as a YouTuber.