YouTube SEO vs Retention

Do you still believe traditional YouTube SEO is one of the most important factors for growing a channel, or has audience retention become much more important?

Deen bee said:

Do you still believe traditional YouTube SEO is one of the most important factors for growing a channel, or has audience retention become much more important?

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Honestly, yes—but I would like to prioritize retention and viewer satisfaction over traditional SEO now. SEO helps people find your video, but strong retention, clicks, and satisfaction tell YouTube to keep recommending it. so good SEO gets you discovered. Good content gets you promoted

I see viral videos into the millions that are 1 word title, and less than 5 words for a description. What does that tell you?

Deen bee said:

Do you still believe traditional YouTube SEO is one of the most important factors for growing a channel, or has audience retention become much more important?

Click to expand...

I think retention matters more now. SEO can bring viewers in, but keeping them watching is what really helps a channel grow.

Deen bee said:

Do you still believe traditional YouTube SEO is one of the most important factors for growing a channel, or has audience retention become much more important?

Click to expand...

defintely not the "most important", what's more important is retention any day and also other factors like your click through rates and how you place your videos based on trends. See what is trending and create videos on those same topics and stick to similar kind of topics in your channel, so you get returning viewers, youtube favors returning viewers, it just means your channel is providing value and that is why the viewers keep returning to your channel in the first place.

In summary seo helps you with placement yes, but blow ups depend on click through rates, retention, returning viewers.

SEO gets you initial search impressions, but CTR and retention actually push videos into recommendations. SEO gives the algorithm an idea of what your video is about, while good retention tells it to keep promoting it to a wider audience.

Deen bee said:

Do you still believe traditional YouTube SEO is one of the most important factors for growing a channel, or has audience retention become much more important?

Click to expand...

While SEO is good as it good go help push your content ranking upwards for higher views, I prefer retention as it helps with recommendation. The more you have engagement, the more your content is being recommended. So, for me, audience view and retention is more important to grow a channel