How to Harness YouTube Key Moments to Promote Your Videos
Since Google first rolled them out in 2019, YouTube key moments and chapters are an amazingly effective tool for video creators to promote their content.
For many popular topics, video content takes top spots in Google results, attracting a lot of traffic. Maybe you’ve noticed that many of these videos have key moments – which helps them rank this high.
But how exactly do timestamps, key moments and chapters work on YouTube and in Google? Are they generated automatically – or do you have to add the specific moments manually? And most importantly: How can you harness them to promote your own videos?
Here’s the stitch.
What Are YouTube Key Moments?
To start with, it’s easiest to think of key moments as the “highlights” of your video. They mark points in your timeline that deal with particular topics or respond to particular questions.
Typically, key moments show up as timestamps and a title to describe that section in your video. In Google search results, key moments from videos sometimes also appear in the “people also ask” section. If you can answer a common question well, this can drive even more traffic to your channel.
As you’ll see in the image below, they might even include a relevant bit of transcript.
On YouTube itself, key moments rarely appear in search results – and if they do, usually just one. You’re more likely to see a one-liner from the description. However, they will show up in your video description, and, if you fulfill certain conditions, in your video’s progress bar.
Additionally, the timestamp information helps accessibility, as it’ll be presented to screen readers as markup.
How Do Key Moments Promote Your Video?
Key moments help your videos rank higher in search results, and thus drive traffic to your content. That’s because the extra info helps Google decide if your content is a good fit for certain searches. And which specific parts of it.
Likewise, YouTube key moments also make life easier for your viewers. In an instant, they can see whether your video can give them what they’re looking for. If so, a single click can take them directly to that point or chapter in the video. They will at least know it’s coming.
Because people know what they’re in for when they start watching your video, key moments make for better engagement scores. This includes fewer downvotes, more shares, and more rewatching. YouTube’s algorithm rewards engaging content with higher rankings in the site’s search and recommendations.
Where do the chapters come from?
But how does Google find those key moments?
Basically, there are two ways to getting those juicy timestamps.
The first is to kick the ball into Google’s court. The search engine will try to automatically detect key moments in your video when you upload it, so that it can display them to users. (You can disable this in the settings, though.)
The downside: While this algorithm is constantly improving, it might fail or simply not present your video segments in the way you want it to.
The second way is to manually set key moments. This tells Google and YouTube exactly where and what the most important points in your video are. Manual timestamps will override the auto ones.
Doing this is actually pretty simple. You just have to include timestamps and key moment labels in your video description, formatted in a certain way. In the next section, we’ll show you exactly how to do this.
How to Add Key Moments and Chapters to Your Youtube Video
Here’s how you can set your own key moments on a video. It’s actually pretty simple: You just have to place timestamps in the video description in a certain way. This guide will show you exactly how to do that.
We’re assuming you’re doing this on a video that’s already on your channel, but you can also add chapters during the upload process on YouTube.
Sign into YouTube Studio
Log into your YouTube account and switch to YouTube Studio using the link under your profile picture.
Select Content on the left
To see all your content, choose Content from the left navigation menu. You’ll see all your existing videos, published or not. For this example, we will add key moments and chapters to an existing video, though you could also upload a new one.
Open the description
Hover over a video to see the edit buttons (see image). Now, either click the pencil icon to go to your video’s Details, or click the three-dots to Edit title and description.
Either way lets you edit the description, and that’s all we need.
Add timestamps and descriptions
Identify the different sections of your video. For example: “Introduction”, “Main point 1″, Main point 2” … “Conclusion”. Note when each starts, and give them a short label so that viewers know what to expect.
Now simply add the timestamps and labels in the video description. You can place them anywhere in the description, but there are a few rules to observe:
- Give the timestamp in hour:minute:second format (e. g., 01:13:22). You don’t need the hour part before the 1-hour mark.
- Only one key moment timestamp per line.
- You have to add some text on the same line (ideally <40 characters)
- The first timestamp must be 00:00.
- Timestamps must be in chronological order.
- Chapters need to be at least 10 seconds long.
- You need at least 3 chapters.
Check out your video
Click the video URL to see your video as it will appear on the page. And there you go: Our key moment timestamps are automatically linked, and we can even see the chapters in the video progress bar.
With a bit of luck, your video timestamps can now also appear as Google results.
Final Tip: When choosing labels for your timestamps, keep the keywords you identified for YouTube SEO and your metadata in mind. Going forward, you might also want to structure your videos into smaller, navigable sections from the scripting stage onwards.
The Bottom Line
Overall, it’s worth taking the time and effort to add key moments to your videos.
For one, they’ll help you rank higher in Google results. For another, they’ll improve the viewer experience, give your video metrics a lift, and make your videos more visible on YouTube itself.
Ready to give professional video editing a shot?
Key moments separate a video into segments, similar to how chapters separate a book. Key moments create a more engaging experience by allowing viewers to navigate through Video Chapters.
Video Chapters are the video equivalent of chapters in a book. They separate a YouTube video into labeled sections with a timestamps and allow viewers to easily skip between sections of the video.
YouTube automatically tries to detect the segments in the video and separate the key moments. However, you can also add your own key moments by adding video chapters to the YouTube video’s description.
Automatically added video chapters can be edited within YouTube Studio.
To manually add chapters to your description, follow these guidelines:
- First timestamp: starts with 00:00
- Minimum timestamps required: 3
- Minimum timestamp length: 10 seconds
