The Ultimate Guide to Conducting a YouTube Channel Audit

Why Do You Need YouTube Channel Audit?

We understand that the very concept of channel audit may sound complicated and confusing to you. It seems to require hours of analysis and paid help from specialists. But what if it doesn’t? In fact, you can do it yourself. Before we move on to the YouTube channel audit checklist and other tools for analyzing the performance of your videos, let’s understand the pros of auditing.

Here’s why you should do a YouTube audit today:

• Clear understanding of which videos your audience likes and which ones they don’t
• Analyze the attractiveness of your channel among your competitors
• Properly set future goals for channel promotion
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your content
• Confidence that your channel does not violate YouTube rules and is suitable both for monetization and for future cooperation with advertisers.

How often should you conduct a channel audit? In general, experts recommend doing a full detailed audit at least once a year. What is our opinion? With our clients we audit YouTube channels once every half a year. Why so often? When a creator is just starting their career and doesn’t quite understand in which direction to move most effectively, it’s important to understand which video formats work best, and which ones should be left aside until better times. Important to note: we don’t forbid our creators from shooting formats that produce less significant metrics. We only recommend the path that will help to promote the channel much faster in a short time.

YouTube Channel Audit Checklist

Now when you’re sure why you need a YouTube audit, it’s time for a clear plan of action. Here’s how we recommend you analyze your channel. From the obvious advantages: you can do it yourself without the help of specialists. But if you suddenly experience difficulties, be sure to contact Mediacube services. Together we will quickly understand the weaknesses of your channel and make them strong.

It’s easiest to move in the right direction when you understand what you’re doing it for. So don’t neglect this step (as most people do). Evaluate it sensibly: what do you want to analyze your channel for? Most often, the goals are as follows:

1. Setting a goal for YouTube Channel Audit

• Understand which content elicits more/fewer responses from your audience
• Make sure what type of video might suit a particular type of advertiser
• Figure out what’s preventing your channel from growing
• Understand why viewers aren’t liking and commenting on your channel
• Find the moments when viewers turn off your videos and what metrics are affected
• Make a clear plan for scaling your channel to improve monetization rates

You might find resonance in these reasons and there doesn’t have to be just one reason. More often creators come up with the idea of YouTube channel audit for a set of reasons.

2. Channel’s First Check

Before getting into the maze of customizing your channel, you need to deal with the tip of the iceberg: the visuals and the channel description. With these components, it is the easiest to start a YouTube channel audit. Take a fresh look: how attractive is your channel visually? Usually viewers pay attention to the profile picture and the channel banner. It’s important that they are not too bright or too bland. Try to analyze your competitors’ channels: how they design their channel and how attractive it is. The same goes for the channel description. Speaking of which, don’t forget to make the channel name attractive and memorable. Who knows, it might become a whole brand in the future. Moreover, the lighter and clearer the nickname is, the easier it is for everyone to remember. There is no universal recipe for a great channel description and name. Here, the clearer it is what your channel is about, the better.

3. Analysing Target Audience

It’s very important for YouTube algorithms who are watching your content. The better you know your target audience, the more accurately you understand what kind of content to make for them and what promotion tools will work better and more accurately. Try to describe your typical viewer: what gender they are, how old they are, where they’re from, what they’re into. 

You can do such an audit with the help of YouTube Analytics. This will not only help you better understand what content to shoot, but will also become valuable information for advertisers who clearly understand their consumers and look for them among the audience of creators. Either way, YouTube algorithms are much better at promoting those videos whose creators understand their target audience and hit directly at their interests and pain points.

4. Reviewing Your Content

When a creator tries to find the reason for their failures to get their videos to trend, they try to find some hidden YouTube settings that will immediately bring in millions of subscribers. Maybe we should look deeper? In the course of a YouTube audit you will realize that in fact the reason can be both in the topic of your channel and in the formats of the videos you publish. In fact, not every niche will suit every video format and vice versa. Often we see creators re-shooting popular formats that have absolutely no organic match with the topic of the main content. Honestly? This will scare away any viewer, so it’s best to analyze your competitors and understand what works in your niche.

5. Analysing Video Performance

In addition to YouTube audits, creators often resort to the issue of metrics when wondering how to monetize YouTube. It’s understandable: if you don’t analyze the performance of each new video, you won’t understand the results of your work. Do not be arrogant thinking that if a few videos are in the trends, then it will always be so and you can forget about YouTube Analytics for years. Even the most popular creators check video stats, always. Thanks to YouTube, you can check how long viewers watch your video and when they decide to turn it off. You can also understand the ratio of likes/comments to views and think about how to engage your audience in interacting with your content. Without analytics, alas, you’re nowhere. But it is the golden key to your publicity.

6. Working with YouTube SEO

Who says YouTube and SEO can’t be related in any way? You probably don’t know that there is a YouTube SEO Audit, which focuses on how often a video comes up in search queries. And how do you even make sure that after a viewer’s search query, your video is the first one offered in the feed? Actually, it’s not that hard. The most important thing is to add keywords to the title of the video, its description and hashtags. Another important but more time-consuming tip is to fully localize your videos: from setting timestamps to creating subtitles for videos in different languages. You may think that going international is something to think about when you have built up a very impressive audience. We can assure you that sometimes you may find new subscribers in all the wrong places. Therefore, localization and SEO will be the right way to find your audience.

7. Following YouTube Rules

No exaggeration: all the previous steps are meaningless if you’re in trouble with step 7. Although YouTube is open to all kinds of creativity, it has its own strict rules in some issues. We wrote a whole big article about YouTube monetization requirements, which we recommend you to read to avoid unpleasant situations. Now to the point: what is the danger of a claim or strike? That your channel will be basically invisible and will not be promoted in trends. Moreover, with frequent serious violations your channel can be blocked. That’s why it is so important to follow the terms and rules of YouTube Content ID. Even if you think your channel is fine, we recommend you check it for any violations in YouTube Analytics.

8. Monetization Basis

No YouTube audit is possible without analyzing monetization metrics. After all, creativity is good, but if it is well paid it is twice as pleasant. One of the final steps of the audit is to check the channel for yellow icons and other restrictions that affect the effectiveness of videos on YouTube. In YouTube Analytics, check the Monetization tab and all the components that should be unrestricted. If there is a warning or yellow icon somewhere, it is recommended to deal with it first so that the post audit plan is not a bargain for nothing. By the way, if suddenly you are scared of monetization issues and you are wondering how to join the YouTube Partner Program, try to consider Mediacube as your partner in channel promotion.

9. Checking on Competitors

Once all the previous YouTube channel audit steps are done and you understand your channel metrics 100% it’s time to look around. Yes, we’re talking about your competitors. Observe those who are in your niche. Analyze their channel visuals, frequency of videos, video title and captions. Basically everything that is in the public domain and accessible without logging into YouTube Analytics. This way you can understand the weaknesses of your channel, as well as get inspired and create something new and unique. Sounds complicated? Want someone to do it quickly and professionally? Then don’t hesitate and join our YouTube MCN Mediacube. For over 10 years, we’ve been helping creators from 150+ countries develop and make money on YouTube from the comfort of their own homes. Why don’t you become one of those creators today?

10. Create After-Audit Plan 

When you’ve done such a complete and detailed YouTube audit it’s no time to rest. It’s time to build a new promotion plan. Don’t be scared, in our opinion this is the most interesting and creative part of the audit. To make this step less intimidating and more planned, we suggest dividing this one big task into 2 subtasks.

Quick Channel Changes

They say it right: you have to start small. So, we suggest you start modernizing your channel with easy and quick changes. Which include:

• SEO
  Add keywords to your channel description, video titles and descriptions, relevant hashtags under your videos.
• Visuals 
  Do a complete overhaul of YouTube thumbnail size, visual appeal of your banner, profile picture and thumbnails in common.
• Сopyright 
  Check your channel for claims or strikes to start long-term promotion.
• Playlists 
  Group your videos into themed playlists to make it even more convenient for viewers to consume your content.

Long-term Channel Changes

Used all YouTube channel audit tools and made a quality YouTube SEO audit? Maybe you even went through all the steps in Quick Channel Changes and don’t know what to do next? Well, you have done a great job. Now it’s time to breathe new life into your channel. But be warned: all the steps below are not done in 1 hour. It may take days of quality analysis and good work. What you’ll need to do:

• Think about new topics
  Go through the channels of competitors in your niche or remember all your creative ideas that come to your mind from time to time. This way you’ll find fresh ideas for YouTube channel that will update your content.
• Create a new content plan 
  Try to clearly spell out how many videos and what formats should be released on your channel per week/month. You can even do a YouTube audit of your competitors’ channels and see how often they publish videos.
• Do cross-platform promotion 
  Publish links to new videos on Instagram Stories, Twitter or Facebook. This way, your audience from different social networks will be able to quickly watch your videos.
• Make improvements 
  Add subtitles, localization of content, and start and end screens.
• Organize collaborations with other creators 
  Find those YouTubers who have similar audiences and offer them collaborations. This way you will create hype news, share experiences and subscribers together.
• Test new visuals 
  If old visuals work well it doesn’t mean you have to use them for years. Try experimenting and maybe it will pay off.

Best Tools to Make Channel Audit

Even though we’ve covered how you can conduct YouTube audits on your own, we didn’t mention that the process can be made much easier. How? By using the YouTube channel audit tool from our list. Let us share our favorites.

1. VidIQ

Probably the most popular tool with a clear interface and a number of handy features. Among them:

• In-depth engagement analytics
• Professional keyword research tools
• Competitor analysis
• Recommendations for optimizing titles and descriptions

Definitely recommend using to understand your channel metrics.

2. TubeBuddy

Another naming you’re sure to have heard. It is a powerful browser extension that contains YouTube tips in it. Features include:

• A/B testing of thumbnails
• Hashtag analysis and optimization
• Comparative analysis with niche competitors
• Mass video editing capability

Sounds impressive. It seems like a good time for you to test this YouTube audit tool.

3. HypeAuditor

We don’t see this tool audit in recommendations very often, but we feel it’s our duty to tell you about it. Among its advantages is a detailed audience analysis with the identification of fake and inactive subscribers, assessment of the degree of engagement of subscribers, analysis of advertising opportunities and estimated reach, as well as a detailed report on the growth of channel performance over a period of time.

Quite a worthy analog to the 2 programs above, which you can test today.

4. SPEAKRJ Stats

Another cool tool for aspiring YouTubers. With it you can get detailed statistics of your channel, analyze metrics, content effectiveness, recommendations for improving the quality of content, as well as tips on working with comments. In our opinion, the number of functions is just right for those who are just getting acquainted with the concept of YouTube audit.

5. Genelify

Last but not least, a tool to work with your channel analytics. What can it do for you? It offers a set of tools and tips for increasing engagement, analyzing metadata, as well as a detailed study of your target audience and their needs and interests. We recommend paying attention to this tool for audit.

Conclusion

We hope that now such a task as conducting a YouTube audit does not seem so difficult and impossible for you. Anyway, you should not neglect such an analysis. It is better to give it some time and effort and at least once every half a year do something to optimize your channel. And when you think about YouTube monetization and withdrawal of funds, be sure to download the MC Pay app. Thanks to our work with 150+ countries and 10+ popular withdrawal methods, we help and make more than 5+ thousand creators around the world happy. Why don’t you become one of them?

By Veronica Kovalenko

Veronica Kovalenko

Writer at Mediacube. Journalist with 5+ years of experience in fintech, fashion journalism, marketing, and SEO optimization. She has been working at Mediacube for a year and keeps up to date with updates in the world of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and covers them in the Blog. Her articles count includes more than 400+ expert SEO articles on the topic of business development through marketing.