YouTube Rewards Quality of Videos More Than Quantity

YouTube clearly rewards video quality more than video quantity. That reward system differs from what Google does with search.

Google and other major websites reward new content. For example, Google AdSense will often have more clicks and a higher RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) when a site posts new content versus a site that doesn’t.

Likewise, Google search sends more traffic to a site with new content. Traffic declines when a site is inactive.

Pinterest gives higher prominence to an account that posts new Pins on a regular basis than accounts that lie dormant. Medium is another major site that does the same.

But YouTube is different. If a channel publisher doesn’t publish a new video for a while, the prominence of the channel and its videos don’t decline. At least, that’s what the numbers show for my channel.

Why does that matter? It matters because Pinterest, Medium and Google force publishers to produce content on a regular basis or lose valuable traffic or revenue. It means a publisher can’t switch gears and focus on other priorities. The quantity of content is critical, at least daily if not multiple times a day.

But in the case of YouTube, publishers aren’t required to produce new videos to maintain a certain level of views. Instead, they can focus on YouTube video quality and enhancements to them even after publication.

Views Grow on Their Own

YouTube doesn’t so much reward a channel as it does specific videos in a channel.

A breakdown of views for each video by month shows that new videos have a handful of views. But the total views climb over time if the video has even just one positive signal: a high retention rate.

One fairly recent video as an example has no comments, only a couple of likes / dislikes and again only a couple of shares. But it has a 67 percent retention rate, which is a solid number and similar to the other videos in the channel.

The video has been climbing aggressively in total views each month over the previous three months since publication. The lack of likes, shares and comments has had no apparent impact on its growth in views.

The title and description are well optimized, but no more than the others in the channel. Optimization is no more a factor in performance as title and description. Although the video has some competition, it isn’t much, which also helps.

Quality and Quantity Strategy

Some publishers pump out as many quick and cheap videos as possible. They think that quantity will get them to the magic numbers of 100 subscribers and eventually on to 1,000 and more.

But low quality videos bring risks. The risks include low retention rates and more dislikes than likes, both of which can impact rankings in search results.

The high-quantity, low-quality strategy may work, but it also may come at a cost of damaging the credibility and reputation of the publisher. Cheap just isn’t respectable.

A quality strategy suggests:

• Producing fewer and better videos;
• Reviewing the performance of the videos each month;
• Fine tuning the title, description, translation and other features to improve performance;
• Then moving on to producing the next video.