You've probably seen a lot of guideposts on how to upload a video to youtube. Videos do get you more traffic and help you boost business if done right. However, check out this scenario:
You've had a YouTube channel for decades with hundreds of videos up there. The quality you publish now is way better than your first uploads. Are those old videos doing anything for your brand any longer? Are they just sitting in your feed, occupying space - should you delete them?
This blog will discuss when and why you should consider deleting your YouTube videos when they become potentially harmful sitting on your channel.
Gauging the Pros and Cons
The best way to know if an old (or an unpopular new video) is doing any good for your business is to weigh the pros and cons of deleting it.
When you consider the overall channel performance in the context of your brand, you will observe that videos with high bounce rates actually take away a lot from a user's experience of your brand. In the long term, high bounce rates will cause YouTube algorithms to rank your video lower in user feeds. This is where deleting a non-performing video is better.
Another benefit that comes from deleting old videos is the relevance of content. A brand evolves over time- and it only makes sense for its digital channels to grow with it, too.
Housing outdated, obsolete videos of bygone trends on your channel work only to confuse your viewers. To maintain a cohesive theme on your channel, deleting irrelevant videos makes total sense.
On the other hand, deleting videos has some consequences that require some effort to deal with. Most of these are technical:
You will be spending a lot of time dealing with the broken links that your deleted video creates. This includes places that you embedded your video, the user-shared links, and practically all the touchpoints in the digital universe where your video has been. That's a lot of broken links. They reflect poorly on your channel and brand - so be thoroughly dedicated to deleting a video when you decide to.
Deleting a video also deletes its impression attributes. Although it wouldn't matter much to your subscribers (since they know your brand), the new users may not be impressed with a lightweight channel with not many viewer engagements to showcase. Always consider the historical "first-impression" value of a video before deleting it.
The Analytics of Removal
By all accounts, it isn't a good decision to remove videos that have high SEO traction with search engines. That being said, removing videos with little to no traffic does help your channel rise in rankings. SEO is all about quality and relevance - and as discussed earlier, high bounce rates are unhealthy.
However, deleting a video results in deletion of all its analytical data as well - and this data ends up abstracted from your channel's bottom line figures, leaving you with gaps to fill. Unless you are prepared to fill these gaps with fresh, viral content, consider delaying the extermination a little longer.
Conclusion
In the end, asking yourself one question is enough: are you proud of that video? If yes, keep it. If not, well, it needs to go.
To minimize video deletion needs, try using InVideo to create high-quality content to upload so that it stands the test of time. It is a fun video creation tool with loads of functionalities for YouTube videos.
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