How to increase traffic to your Youtube channel? How do you get recommended more by Youtube Suggestion? (38%) What is CTR Click Thru Rate and Watch time?

How to increase traffic to your Youtube channel? How do you increase reach/exposure by Youtube Recommendation? 

So 38% of my traffic is coming from "Youtube recommendation" according to my Youtube Analytics.  I decided to make some changes to see if I can improve that.  So according to Youtube Analytics, to increase the chance of Youtube Suggesting my content, I need to increase my CTR (Click-Thru Rate) and watch time.  But first, let's go thru some of the terms and what it means.

My Youtube Analytics data

What is Youtube suggestion?  Here's an example of "Youtube Recommend on Homepage"

What is CTR Click Thru Rate and Watch time?

Click-through rate (CTR): Definition is
A ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. Clickthrough rate (CTR) can be used to gauge how well your keywords/image/thumbnails and ads are performing.

Watch Time:
The amount of time that a viewer has watched a video. This gives you a sense of what content viewers actually watch (as opposed to videos that they click on and then abandon).

What changes will I be implementing? 

• Improve Watch Time: My previous videos were around 15-20min.  But my avg watch time is 5-6min.  So I decided to shorten my videos to 5-6min and tightening my storyline.  (more post later)
• Improve CTR: I'm testing some different versions of Thumbnails and Title.  (more post on this later) 

Here's my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/abcmsroo

My issue now is- I do see a lift in subscriber count and revenue (I haven't see Youtube Suggest improve or views yet), BUT since I didn't implement AB testing or Multi-variant testing, it's hard to contribute the improvement to which factor.  But through comments and engagement, my audiences approves the new content.