How much does your Channel Description count?

SteveP

SteveP

Well-Known Member
Don't laugh, but I've had a toy channel on YouTube since early 2013 (pre- Disney Collector VIRAL article). The channel does fairly well but recently it's taken a massive dive. The worst it's performed since I started.

I upload regularly, some videos take off and get a ton of views and others - not so much.

I noticed a rapid loss in views somewhere in mid-July. Like 100k views per day to less than 10k.

I've played around with my Channel Description to try and gain more attention. I don't remember when exactly but I've messed around a few times. My question is - How much weight does YouTube put on your Channel Description and Channel Keywords (not tags).

I thought at first it had become an overly saturated market but I see newcomers popping up all the time who do well. So it leads me to think YouTube does something with our Channel Descriptions. Can someone validate or discredit my theory?
 
Surprisingly, a lot. I've seen people not have a channel description at all and have awesome content, but not have any subscribers, views or anything of the sorts. But when you put in a channel description, seeing how it's usually the first thing new visitors see on a shared link, that is a deciding factor that helps them decide if they even want to click on the link or not.
 
Thanks GamingDan.

Is your channel description used by Youtube for any algorithm purposes? Does it help with SEO?
 
I think the most important thing about the About section is that the first few lines show up in search. So it's a good idea to make these really catchy.
Nevertheless as a toy channel your audience may be mainly children who probably can't even read. In such a case it could be wiser to concentrate on making thumbnails that are catchy for kids. Also check if your videos are blocked when Restricted Mode is enabled.
 
XXLRay said:
I think the most important thing about the About section is that the first few lines show up in search. So it's a good idea to make these really catchy.
Nevertheless as a toy channel your audience may be mainly children who probably can't even read. In such a case it could be wiser to concentrate on making thumbnails that are catchy for kids. Also check if your videos are blocked when Restricted Mode is enabled.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know most of my viewers probably can't read, that's why I was curious about the SEO aspect of the Channel Description. Did me changing it cause a huge loss in views? Or was it something else? I've racked my brain trying to figure it out.

I just checked my videos on Restricted Mode and they're all there.

Thanks for the tips.
 
Another thing to remember is if you or someone links to your channel from Twitter, then the first few lines of that description will appear automatically in the tweet next to your channel logo. This is done automatically through the Twitter Cards feature that integrates twitter with YouTube. So it helps if the first couple of sentences do a good job of enticing people to check your channel out.
 
XXLRay said:
What does your traffic source report in Analytics tell you? Did a specific source drop significantly?
Click to expand...

Year to date:
Suggested: 65%
Browse: 22%
Search: 5.7%

Last 28 Days:
Suggested: 56%
Browse: 21%
Search 15%

April - May (when I saw a spike)
Suggested: 63%
Browse: 29%
Search 2.1%

April 8-14th (specific week - went from 30k views to over 100k per day)
Suggested: 78%
Browse: 14%
Search: 1.8%

I no longer show up as a suggested video for the one that caused the spike in April. My views really tanked in mid-July and haven't recovered. January through march my views gradually increased, spiked in April, and slowly dropped until July when they fell flat.

edit: a word
 
Generally YouTube mixes the suggested video sections from time to time so this needn't be caused by a change in your description.
 
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