So, wanna know how to create YouTube Playlist and optimize it?
Let’s see in detail how to create a playlist on youtube in the blog post.
Table of Contents
What is YouTube Playlist?
YouTube playlist is a group or collection of videos on the same topic bundled together on YouTube. When viewers started watching the playlist, the next video in the playlist should automatically start playing one after another.
Why YouTube Playlist is Super Important?
Here are the 3 main reasons
Increase the Channel Watch Time
When your playlist started ranking on the YouTube SERP, then you unlock the potential to increase your channel watch time. If you impressed viewers with your first video then they just continue watching the rest of the video in the playlist. So, the first video in the playlist is super important!
Nothing but a Videos With Lot Of Goodies
No big difference between videos and playlist when comes to SEO. You can see the playlist on YouTube SERP as well as suggested videos.
So instead of ranking videos try to rank playlist for the target keyword to improve the audience retention rate and increase the views.
Take Advantage of Clubbing Other Channel Videos
When you create YouTube playlist, you’re not just restricted to create a playlist only from your channel videos. You can pick any videos on YouTube and club it along with your videos to deliver the best video series to your viewers.
Let’s say you have 50+ tutorial videos for Java. Assume you don’t have video content for java introduction and installation set up needs to be done on the computer.
In this case, you can leverage someone else videos for these two and add your remaining videos after that.
Without further ado let’s move on to how to create YouTube playlist.
How To Create YouTube Playlist?
Let’s see how to create YouTube playlist step by step
Step 1 Go to YouTube Studio
Login to your Gmail and go to YouTube studio App
Step 2 Select Playlist
On the YouTube studio app left panel, you can find the Playlist option. Click on that Playlist option. It’ll take you to the YouTube playlist section.
Step 3 Create YouTube Playlist
On the YouTube playlist page, you’ll see an option “New Playlist” at the top right corner of the page. Click on it, you’ll see a textbox prompt you to enter a Playlist name.
Give a keyword-optimized playlist name and click on the create button.
P:S If you want your viewers to access your playlist then you should select the status as “Public”. Private and Unlisted are not indexed by the YouTube search engine.
Step 4 Optimize YouTube Playlist with Description
As soon as you click on the create button, the YouTube playlist is created on your channel.
Before uploading videos complete the YouTube playlist description. Click on the edit icon in the description to update YouTube playlist description.
First 120 characters will be visible on the YouTube search results, so make sure that it’s optimized for keywords.
Add a couple of paragraphs(2-3 lines) describing what they are going to get by watching your playlist.
Then put a table of content and list all your videos titles in the same order as you are adding videos to Playlist that will optimize your playlist further.
Step 5 Add Videos to YouTube Playlist
You have an empty playlist ready. What’s next? It’s time to add videos to your playlist.
So, how do you add videos to YouTube playlist? Are you seeing the three dots between the playlist title and description?
Just click on it and it lists the below options
- Add videos
- Collaborate
- Playlist settings
- Delete Playlist
Select “Add videos”.
Step 6 Pick Videos To Make YouTube Playlist
As soon as you click on the add videos, it’ll open a pop up on the screen as shown below
You can add videos to Playlist in 3 different ways
- Video search
- By URL
- Picking a video from your channel
Videos Search – It acts as a normal youtube search where you can type a search query and pick videos from the search results. Click on the videos to select it for Playlist.
By URL
Click on the URL tab and enter the YouTube video URL in the text box. Once your video is listed on the preview, click “Add videos” to add it to playlist.
Your YouTube videos
It list videos from your channel and you can select videos to add it to Playlist.
Once you finalize the videos for playlist finally click on the “Add videos” and your brand new playlist is ready.
Advanced Ordering of YouTube Playlist
Sometimes videos of similar topics are clubbed together in the form of playlists for views. Ordering is not important for those playlists. All you need to think about is getting more views and watch time.
So, how could you do that? If you sort the playlist by it’s watch time(high to low) then there is a probability that viewers tend to watch the complete playlist if they are impressed with the first set of videos.
YouTube doesn’t have this advanced ordering feature but this plugin helps to achieve that. Just install it on your favorite browser.
- Go to the YouTube Playlist page.
- Select the Playlist that you want to sort by watch time.
- On the top left, you’ll find a button “Action”. Just click on it, you’ll find “Video Ordering” drop-down options as shown below
- Select the option “Avg View duration(watch time)” from the drop-down to sort the videos by watch time.
Alternatively, you can sort the videos by other options such as Most popular, published date, likes, comment etc.,
Clean Up YouTube Playlist
One more awesome feature of this plugin is cleaning up the videos on the YouTube playlist regularly. When you add videos from other channels you may not sure that all the videos are always available.
The channel owner may delete or move the video status to private which you don’t have any control.
In this case, you can clean up your YouTube playlist in a few seconds. Let me show you how to do that.
- Go to the YouTube Playlist page.
- Select the Playlist that you want to clean up.
- Select the same “Action” button on the top left, select “Private + deleted videos” from the “Remove videos” dropdown.
How to Sort YouTube Playlist?
When you create YouTube playlist, videos can be added to the playlist in random order. If you want to sort it by the title or any other logic you have to do it manually.
- Let’s see how to sort YouTube Playlist.
- Go to the YouTube playlist page.
- Click on the “Edit Playlist” across the playlist that you want to sort.
It’ll take you to the playlist edit page.
Hover the mouse over the video that you want to move up or down. You’ll find three dots. Click on the three dots and it’ll list the below options
Select the option “Move to top” to move to the top of Playlist and “Move to bottom” move the video to the bottom of the playlist.
On the left side of the video thumbnails, you can find two parallel lines. Hover the mouse to drag and drop the videos anywhere you want in the playlist.
How To Set YouTube Playlist Thumbnail?
By default, YouTube set the first video of the YouTube playlist as thumbnail for the playlist.
But still, you can change the thumbnail and set any videos in the playlist as playlist thumbnail.
- Go to the YouTube Playlist page.
- Click on the “Edit Playlist” across the playlist that you want to change YouTube playlist thumbnail.
Hover the mouse over the video that you want to set as thumbnail and click on the three vertical dots option next to the video title.
Select the option “Set as playlist thumbnail” and the thumbnail will be changed instantly.
How To Delete YouTube Playlist?
New Youtubers misunderstood that deleting YouTube playlist delete the YouTube videos as well. It’s not the case. When you delete the playlist, you are just deleting the playlist not the videos associated with the playlist.
Go to the playlist page. Above the playlist description, you can find three horizontal dots. Click on it and select “Delete playlist” to delete YouTube playlist.
Recommended Articles
Frequently Asked Questions
You can add 5000 videos to a playlist.
You can see the created playlist here.
Yes, you can create a playlist from any videos on YouTube.
This simple playlist exporter tool export playlist metadata information such as title, URL, channel name, view count, likes, dislikes in the Google sheets.
I hope you learned how to create YouTube playlist and manage it. Please do let me know if you have any questions.
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