Before we jump into how to add chapters on YouTube videos, let’s talk about why to add chapters on YouTube videos.
Chapters in YouTube videos act as a sort of table of contents. They give viewers and overview of what you’ll be sharing in your video and they make it easy for viewers to jump to the point in your video that’s of most interest to them. They also make it easy for viewers to rewatch a section of your video.
In short, YouTube chapters are good for your YouTube watch time. Chapters will be mentioned any time you hear advice on how to boost watch time.
Thinking about your viewer’s experience, chapters are valuable but that’s not the only reason—or even the main reason—you should add chapters on YouTube videos.
Chapters are a huge optimization opportunity. Every YouTube creator should be optimizing their YouTube videos, and adding chapters just gives the YouTube algorithm more information it can use to understand your video so it can recommend it to viewers.
The SEO Value of YouTube Chapters
But don’t just take it from us. YouTube itself says that ”chapters help viewers better navigate and enjoy your videos” and confirmed that chapters are a signal it uses to help viewers find your content.
And if that wasn’t enough, YouTube chapters can help your video appear on the first page of Google as a Video Snippet, otherwise known as a Suggested Clip (see the example below).
Getting a Video Snippet on Google is a huge win and can drive a ton of views on your video. Video Snippets are most often seen with tutorial or how-to content but any video (with chapters) has the potential to reach this top spot. Unlike other video search results on Google, a Featured Snippet will skip to a specific point in the video where the answer to the user’s search query appears.
Also, if Google decides your content is valuable to viewers, it may pull out some key points to further entice the user to click through. And your chapters on YouTube are what helps Google parse this information.
So, that’s enough about why, let’s talk about how.
How to Add Chapters to a YouTube Video
There are two ways to add chapters to your video: automatically or manually.
To add chapters on YouTube manually, all you need to do is create a list of timestamps for your video, add a title, and drop them into your video description.
Add your timestamps near the top of your video, where they’re easy for viewers to find. But don’t put your YouTube chapters at the top of your description; use the first 200 characters of your description for more important optimization work.
How to Format Chapters on YouTube
Starting at 0:00, enter the time code for your YouTube video chapter, then a hyphen, then a title. You don’t have to say when the chapter ends. Only where the next one begins. For instance, if you’re publishing a video about how to make a vegan chocolate cake, you could have a list that looks something like this:
0:00 – Introducing the best vegan chocolate cake
1:00 – Why this is the best vegan chocolate cake
2:19 – Ingredients
4:23 – Baking your vegan chocolate cake
5:41 – My secret (vegan) frosting trick
7:01 – Taste test: is this really the best vegan chocolate cake?
Save your video and you’ll see your chapters appear splitting up your video timeline. The time codes will also be automatically turned into clickable links in your description.
How to Add Chapters on YouTube Automatically
YouTube can add YouTube chapters automatically. Just select this option when uploading or editing your video in YouTube Studio. YouTube will do its best to analyze your video and identify chapters but automatic chapters are imperfect to say the least.
You can edit the automatic chapters by manually adding timestamps to the description or by editing the video in YouTube Studio and clicking the Chapters available option… but at that point, it would have probably been easier to just write out the time codes and titles.
How to Add Chapters on YouTube with TubeBuddy
If you have a TubeBuddy Pro, Star, or Legend license, the whole process of adding and editing chapters becomes even easier with Chapter Editor. Find out more info from this video:
Chapter Editor allows you to create and edit your chapters. This and the whole suite of TubeBuddy YouTube optimization tools helps you become a lot more productive during the time-consuming but super important video upload and optimization stage.
You can add chapters to your video without switching between the video and description box, and you can easily edit existing chapters if you have a paid TubeBuddy license check out the Chapter Editor tool today.
Adding chapters to your YouTube videos improves the user experience by making it easier to find what they’re interested in… and being interested is what keeps them watching (hello, watch time). Chapters have SEO value both on and off YouTube (hello featured Video Snippets). So if you’re not adding them, particularly on how-to videos, you should definitely start.
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