How do I audit my own YouTube channel?

Start with a sheet. List your recent long-form videos in rows, and for each one note impressions, impressions click-through rate, average view duration, average percentage viewed, the main traffic source and subscribers gained. All of these are in YouTube Studio under each video's analytics or in the Advanced mode table. Looking at one video at a time hides patterns; looking at twenty side by side shows them.

Then read the patterns in order. If click-through is consistently low compared with your own better videos, your titles and thumbnails are the first job. If click-through is fine but viewers leave quickly, open the retention graphs and note the moment of the biggest drop in each video; if it is always the first thirty seconds, your openings are failing to confirm the title's promise. If one or two topics bring most of your subscribers, that is your niche, whether you planned it or not.

Next, check consistency and the basics. How regularly did you upload over the last three months? Do your videos have chapters, captions and descriptions whose first lines say what the video is? Does your channel page explain in one sentence what the channel is for? Look at your thumbnails together on the channel page and ask whether a stranger could tell what the channel is about.

Write down the three changes that would affect the most videos, and make them on the next five uploads before judging. The common mistake is changing everything at once, which makes it impossible to know what worked.