Old Videos on Channel Killing Retention Stats... Delete or Keep?

JMGD

Member
Hi all,

I started my channel in 2010, but only started getting serious about YouTube in 2014.

A couple of my older videos are quite long (~15 mins) and attract some of the highest views stats on the channel, but the retention rates are awful...

Most of my videos are in the 50-70% retention range, but these old ones deliver around 15-20% retention. Being longer videos, 15-20% still delivers the same average watch time as 70% of a much shorter video (as my newer ones are).

I've read some advice suggesting that these old videos are hurting my channel's overall standing in YouTube, as they significantly reduce the average retention rate.

Any thoughts or insights on this would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

James
 
Here's my thoughts:

If you're proud of the videos, keep em'.

If you're not proud of the old videos or they're awful quality or whatever reason you don't like them, delete them.

:)
 
If you want them up and they give you good nostalgia and memories, then you can keep them up if you want.

If you don't even really care if they're gone or not, you probably shouldn't keep them up if you don't want to.
 
Personally I keep all of my videos. I don't like the idea of removing them because I like to look back on what I've done and where I've come from. However, of course, as the above poster said, if you don't like them or are not proud of them then remove them or make them private.

I've only ever deleted one video which was a video of my sisters wedding, it was before I started using the channel for 'YouTubing', so when I did properly start I felt I should probably remove it. Of course, I kept a copy so I could still share it for her. Other than that, I've only ever removed videos if they've got messed up somehow and just reuploaded them after fixing.

But yeah, do what you want to do. Don't worry about what other people think of them too much, if you like them, keep them up! :)
 
Total watch time is really what youtube looks for, which doesn't just encompass your videos, but how long someome is engaged. So if someone watched a annotation,card, or even the end where it switches to random videos. as long as they don't stop it continues to count towards your watch time. I would say just go back and optimize the basics with them if they aren't getting much traffic "Tags, title, and description"

But a better idea is to make new videos to cover what the old videos did, but a way that is more pleasing to you and your views, and just link the old videos to the new videos with annotation that say something along the line "Updated video" or soemthing better than that but I think you get the drift.
 
If you love your older videos, you should keep them, but if you think that those videos are no longer a QUALITY videos, you should delete them. Its not about the retention rate, its about the videos that you love. You can post newer videos that are improved version of those videos, in this way you can gain back the retention.
 
Total watch time is really what youtube looks for, which doesn't just encompass your videos, but how long someome is engaged. So if someone watched a annotation,card, or even the end where it switches to random videos. as long as they don't stop it continues to count towards your watch time. I would say just go back and optimize the basics with them if they aren't getting much traffic "Tags, title, and description"

But a better idea is to make new videos to cover what the old videos did, but a way that is more pleasing to you and your views, and just link the old videos to the new videos with annotation that say something along the line "Updated video" or soemthing better than that but I think you get the drift.

This is a great idea and something I was thinking of doing today. I can't believe I didn't capitalize off of my biggest video earlier but hey, better late than never right?
 
This is a great idea and something I was thinking of doing today. I can't believe I didn't capitalize off of my biggest video earlier but hey, better late than never right?
Correct! The only failure there is in life is when you don't learn from an experience and how to better it ^.^
 
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