YouTube Question View Count just dropped after increasing SEO score

[ResetResto]

Guys, I need some help here. I have had amazing views on a few of my videos that were suggested by Youtube but I realized that my SEO score was terrible, so as per TB recommendations I created better thumbnails and used the keyword explorer to give me the best possible keywords and tags for my videos. My SEO score is now 100% and all requirements and suggestions are met. But right after doing this my views just hit rock bottom as in maybe 10 views in 60 mins. How is this even possible? Appreciate any assistance here.

 

[MattCommand1]

Holy smokes, your channel and videos are doing really well for being only 2 months old. You are doing very well with your long form videos. You should focus on that and not get sidetracked overly distracted with Shorts.

 

[ResetResto]

Holy smokes, your channel and videos are doing really well for being only 2 months old. You are doing very well with your long form videos. You should focus on that and not get sidetracked overly distracted with Shorts.

Thank you for the feedback. I was under the impression the kind of views I was getting was average for the age of my channel. Why do you think my views dropped after doing the SEO? Is it normal or am I just over thinking it?

 

[MattCommand1]

Thank you for the feedback. I was under the impression the kind of views I was getting was average for the age of my channel. Why do you think my views dropped after doing the SEO? Is it normal or am I just over thinking it?

From where I sit, your views are NOT average. They are hugely above average. SEO can be important but it is not the only factor. You can show up but if your thumbnails are bad, for example, lots of people might not click. Or if your title is SEO-friendly but not very enticing or juicy, people won't click either. I am working on creating juicier (attention getting) titles, not just SEO friendly.

To me, your channel is too young to be making hasty judgments. There are lots of stories of videos doing poorly in the first hours and days but they find life weeks and months down the road.

Stanley just wrote a case study why people are overly obsessed with the opening performance of a video. Of course, you do want to monitor things but if you think you did every thing right, then you gotta be patient and see how it plays out.

 

[ResetResto]

Truly appreciate the advise. You have atleast eased my worry around it. If I look at where my views came from in my analytics majority was from Youtube suggested so I guess I had something right in the beginning for the algorithm to pick my content but after changing tags, thumbnails and titles it might have stopped that streak for now. I will leave my changes as is for now and see what happens. Based on the outcome I will report back here for anyone else requiring a similar answer. Once again thank you for your advise.

 

[BraveStar]

If I understood correctly what you're saying, you uploaded videos that did great before you used TubeBuddy to update the SEO and suddenly the video stopped performing well. It sounds to me like you basically confused the algorithm after the changes and it hurt your video's reach.

Think of it this way. If you were walking around a supermarket and found your favorite snack on an isle that said snacks on the sign, then you'd know you need to find the isle with the snacks sign to find your snack. But if the store decided to move the snack to another isle because it turns out the snack is from a Hispanic region and is also popular with Hispanics and thus they put it on the isle with the Hispanic food sign to make it easier to be found by the more likely shopper, you would have a hard time finding it and not understanding why it's not on the snack isle anymore until you realize why it's on the new isle and why it makes sense it's there.

Hope this helps.

 

[ResetResto]

If I understood correctly what you're saying, you uploaded videos that did great before you used TubeBuddy to update the SEO and suddenly the video stopped performing well. It sounds to me like you basically confused the algorithm after the changes and it hurt your video's reach.

Think of it this way. If you were walking around a supermarket and found your favorite snack on an isle that said snacks on the sign, then you'd know you need to find the isle with the snacks sign to find your snack. But if the store decided to move the snack to another isle because it turns out the snack is from a Hispanic region and is also popular with Hispanics and thus they put it on the isle with the Hispanic food sign to make it easier to be found by the more likely shopper, you would have a hard time finding it and not understanding why it's not on the snack isle anymore until you realize why it's on the new isle and why it makes sense it's there.

Hope this helps.

Makes sense what you say. I will give it some time to see if the views pick up again thank you for the reply.

 

[BraveStar]

Makes sense what you say. I will give it some time to see if the views pick up again thank you for the reply.

Also consider doing the SEO before you publish the video to avoid the algorithm getting confused. Plus give it some time for the algorithm to get used to the SEO updates to your channel and videos.

 

[MediaMan]

From where I sit, your views are NOT average. They are hugely above average.

Not sure I agree with that. I don't think there can be a reliable average for a channel that is only 2-3 months old. Hell, my channel is not even a month old and by your standards I'd be way above your "hugely above average". lol...

My SEO score is now 100% and all requirements and suggestions are met. But right after doing this my views just hit rock bottom as in maybe 10 views in 60 mins. How is this even possible?

Anytime you change thumbnails, title, description, etc, you're potentially causing an immediate stop to any organic discovery as your data gets updated in the YT algorithm. I've read where some videos after an update take weeks or months for views to start up again. I personally think for better or worse, get the SEO as good as possible BEFORE publishing. And then stick with it regardless, and if you have to update it, maybe only update at the most a few times a year.

"maybe 10 views in 60 mins" well, that's still 240 views a day which would imop would be fine for a new channel. We have to keep in mind, with shorts you can get 10 views or 10k views in one day. There just doesn't seem to be any stable pattern of discovery (with shorts) that can be replicated in a linear fashion. I definitely think shorts are worthwhile for any channel because it's probably the fastest way to seed your channel content and help train the YT algorithm, but after it's uploaded, move onto the next one. It's pretty much out of your hands if you get 1 view or 1 million views.

And fwiw... I'm seeing a pattern with the majority of channels I research. The ones that have primarily shorts seem to have a lot more views to subs ratio compared to channels with no shorts. So shorts can be great for views, but not so good for subs. Probably makes sense as I would guess the typical user watching shorts has a short attention span.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Ok guys, let me clear a few things up here. For starters, your SEO improvements did not cause a radical drop in views. That is simply not how this system works. As Brave said it can confuse the algorithm if you go around changing the metadata especially on already good performing videos, but you will not see a radical difference unless you do a total 180 and fill your metadata with a bunch of stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with your video. MediaMan is correct as well in that changing thumbnails/updating metadata can cause YouTube to re-index your content. But again, unless you do it all wrong then the results you see shouldn't be terribly radical.
Now, here is what I see:

You have 12 videos on your channel, 4 of which are shorts. You had hits with your first two videos and I don't have an explanation for this... but I actually see that a lot. I don't know why but it seems like when YouTube has no data on your channel they seem to hit it out of the park and then things settle down. So your channel performance looks really typical for someone who knows what they are doing... but who does not have a library of videos to their name. I will say that after those first two videos YouTube probably thinks that you are a 'Trolley Jack' channel, and this is why you get less views with other content. This of course comes back to you just not having that much content.
The discovery process is based entirely around YouTube trying to find the best content for the viewer. They experiment, they take the information that you provide with your video and they look at the viewer habits/demographics associated with your videos and they try to serve it to viewers alongside other competing videos to see which performs the best. Sometimes other people outperform you; that is a natural part of the process. I feel like that is what is happening here. You need to keep pushing, keep making content and continue optimizing your videos. It isn't hurting you... it is only maximizing your chance for these videos to have a 'second life' in search. Get that library of videos to 100 and this is going to be an entirely different conversation, I assure you.