YouTube channel audits are a necessary part of any content producer’s process, and analyzing new data needs to be ongoing. YouTube channel audit best practices focus on regularly reviewing performance data, considering content from the audience’s perspective, prioritizing retention, and standardizing production.
Why Audit Your Channel
Auditing a YouTube channel is important to every creator, no matter where they are in their process.
New creators benefit from catching early missteps that prevent growth or lead them down false paths, chasing spikes in interest rather than a reliable following.
Established creators can take insights from an audit that help them apply structure to complex channels and a large number of videos, helping them find new ways to improve efficiency.
Follow the Numbers
First, look at your numbers. Before you go looking at your favorite videos or the ones that got a flood of views, think broadly. Begin by auditing your entire channel.
Study:
- Traffic sources
- Returning viewer numbers
- Overall watch time trends
- Impressions versus click-through rate
This background is important context. Without it, analyzing specific videos, or even clusters of them, can be pointless.
That video that you think of as a success and want to start modeling all your content on might have pulled all its views from subscribers, meaning weak discoverability and a bad template to build a channel around. Best YouTube channel audit practices involve reading patterns, not outliers.
See It From Your Audience’s Perspective
When you’re learning how to audit your YouTube channel, it can be helpful to get some perspective and step into your viewers’ shoes. This is part of a growth mindset that recognizes it’s important for new viewers to find and be engaged with your content.
Review your videos and establish if:
- Thumbnails and titles clearly reflect each video’s focus and are recognizable as part of your channel
- Topics of videos reinforce and build on each other, rather than compete
- A first-time visitor can understand the channel and content within ten seconds
Brands need to be consistent and cumulative. Each video should be aligned with your channel’s identity and, in some way, in communication with your other content.
Checking Retention
Clicks can give you a rush, especially when you’re starting out, but they’re not necessarily anything more than a flash in the pan. What matters for long term growth (and, in turn, a future for your channel) is retention.
High retention signals to YouTube that audiences are finding your content useful, which in turn will amplify its reach. When you’re auditing your channel, pull your highest retention and lowest retention videos, and mark where viewers dropped off. Then, look at the first thirty to sixty seconds of these videos.
One of the reasons why one of the best tools for YouTube channel audits is hiring a professional is moments like this, when numbers meet analysis. In order to understand what your high retention videos have that the others don’t, you need to be able to see the structural differences between them. Exactly what is keeping your audience from clicking away might not be clear, but it’s important to figure out what they have in common.
Standardize Production
If you’ve only made a handful of videos, you may not realize how much time can be wasted in production. Consistency isn’t only important for your audience; it’s important for saving you time and money and making sure everything you put into the world is something you want your brand associated with.
Check:
- Script quality
- Visual focus, framing, and lighting
- Audio clarity and balance
- Captions
- Editing
An effective YouTube audit will reveal missteps in production like hissing audio or lagging pace. Every step of production you standardize not only shaves minutes (which quickly add up to hours) off your turnarounds, it also ensures that all your videos are up to snuff.
The smallest drop in quality can drive a viewer away, and you never know if the one video you release where the voiceover is subpar is the first video a potential subscriber sees.
Check, Then Check Again
Building a successful channel is all about systemizing, including audits. Once you know how to extract data, compare metrics, and find new aspects to standardize, auditing your channel gets easier. Even if you know what to look for, however, it doesn’t mean you’ll find it.
grouphugs is a master of YouTube channel audits, knowing exactly what matters and how to fix it. We focus on details that won’t just raise the quality of your content, but will put you on track for consistent growth.
