Numerous features added to YouTube over the past few years have made it increasingly better from the perspectives of both viewers and content creators. From a better set of tools to monitor impressions, views and other metrics, to more relevant video suggestions for audiences, the platform is constantly in a state of improvement.

Recently, YouTube unveiled its chapters function, which allowed video managers to create specific segments throughout each video that highlight what topic(s) are covered in each section. The increasing use of chapters in YouTube content is important for a number of reasons, and it is vital that content creators understand them.

As such, let’s examine the importance of this emerging YouTube feature.

Chapters Can Increase Retention

Particularly with longer videos, users can feel overwhelmed or distracted. Many people increasingly want quick answers: if they cannot find them through you, then they’ll simply look somewhere else. YouTube chapters in your videos make it possible to succinctly outline each and every segment of the video, providing descriptions that can be seen immediately.

By pinging links to each segment in your description and having them also show in the video playback bar, overall watch times can increase when compared to videos without this feature. As such, spending an extra minute or two adding this feature is definitely worth the time of any consistent content creator.

Chapters Can Boost SEO Potential

For those content creators seeking to break into video search results – or general search results – via Google, the use of chapters can be an immensely powerful addition. Google will index and attempt to glean context from every YouTube video, description and chapter within each video, suggesting one or more video results that begin playing at the relevant starting point.

This is obviously a great boost when attempting to elevate SEO potential within one or more niches. Optimizations of your YouTube videos via chapters won’t only result in pinging links through the standard forms of video visibility, but can also achieve you the number one ranking based on the above dynamic.

YouTube Is Beginning to Add Chapters Automatically

Even if your videos currently do not have chapters, they may very well in the near future. YouTube recently announced that it is beginning to automatically add chapters to new videos uploaded based on AI learning and context within each video and channel. This is not universal yet and may not become the case, but it does present a couple of intriguing points.

First is that automatic creation of chapters for your video means that the inherent value of such may be something that requires a bit of tweaking. After all, the chapter creation may not be perfect and therefore could harm your video visibility, so it is necessary to learn about how this feature works.

Secondly, with more creators opting to manually add chapters alongside automatic addition, your videos may be at a disadvantage if you do not embrace the dynamic soon.

These reasons are all good examples of how and why YouTube’s chapter additions are important and valuable changes on the platform. Keep these reasons in mind whenever uploading new content so that you can be as successful within your target audience as possible!