Why YouTube Suddenly STOPPED Showing My Videos

Introduction

There are countless people telling you that YouTube is as simple as uploading one video per week or per month and that it's a sure thing you'll keep getting views day after day. However, once you start uploading your own videos, you'll notice that regardless of how many hours of work you spend on each video, most of them will go totally flat, and YouTube will not recommend your videos. In this article, I will show you how I went from getting one or two views per day to generating continuous views even months after my videos were published.

Starting a YouTube channel can be pretty overwhelming. You need to learn about scripting, recording, editing, doing SEO, and more, all at once, only to see little to no progress at all. If you want to see your graphs go from flat to beautiful, make sure to read this article till the end as I reveal to you the four steps I apply to my videos.

Beginning of My Journey

I started this channel back in February and decided to take it very seriously. I invested in a professional camera and set up a studio. I began uploading my videos and almost immediately noticed a weird pattern: my videos received impressions and views for the first two or three days and then suddenly stopped. Initially, I thought this was normal due to the lack of quality in my videos, but with time, I realized something even stranger. Other channels with seemingly bad quality videos were getting recommended and receiving hundreds of views per day. This led me to a deep dive into my channel analytics.

Step 1: Fixing the Intro

While analyzing my data, I discovered my retention graphs were terrible. Despite spending hours editing, I was losing my audience in the first few seconds. So, I decided to make my intros as short as possible, directly showing viewers what they wanted to see. This change drastically improved my retention graphs. Another trick was to introduce a new item on the screen every one to two seconds to keep the audience visually engaged.

Step 2: Making Content Relatable

The reason you’re reading this is because you and I share the same problem - YouTube not recommending our content. If I started talking about ways to spend $ 1,000 now, you’d lose interest and probably leave because it's not relevant to you. Making content relatable ensures viewers stay engaged. For example, I shared my analytics graphs to show I've been in the same position as you. This relatability increased my average view duration significantly.

Step 3: Optimizing Thumbnails and Titles

Having people watch your video for a long time is great, but people first need to click on your video. Things changed for me when I started studying thumbnails on YouTube’s homepage that made me want to click. I found three key conditions:

The video promises fast results.
There’s something on the thumbnail that sparks curiosity.
Avoid having the same information in the title and thumbnail. They should work together to attract clicks.

Applying these principles improved my click-through rate.

Step 4: Pre-publish Research

Even with all the adjustments, my impressions were dropping off a cliff after the third day. I then discovered the importance of pre-publish research. I search for keywords related to my topic to see the competition. If there are recent videos, I either give my content a twist or abandon the idea. This crucial step ensures my videos get recommended by YouTube. Ignoring competition can lead to poor performance, as evidenced by my analytics.

Conclusion

By making these strategic changes, I've significantly improved my video's performance on YouTube. Remember, it's not just about the content but also how you present and prepare it. For more insights on whether your channel might be Shadow Banned, make sure to watch the linked video.