Climbing the YouTube Search Rankings: Key SEO Strategies Unveiled

YouTube SEO Guide: How to Improve Search Rankings For Your YouTube Videos

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

• The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources
• How to Come Up With SEO Topics?
• The Metadata Process
• Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing
• How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

• On Video (Metadata)
• Recommendations
• Channel
• User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

• The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources
• How to Come Up With SEO Topics?
• The Metadata Process
• Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing
• How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

• On Video (Metadata)
• Recommendations
• Channel
• User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

• The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources
• How to Come Up With SEO Topics?
• The Metadata Process
• Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing
• How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

• On Video (Metadata)
• Recommendations
• Channel
• User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If there exists searches, there exists SEO. YouTube now is the second largest search engine which processes more than 3 billion searches in a single month. Besides making sure that each video you upload to YouTube offers thought-provoking content, you can also optimize the video in accordance with the rules of SEO to stand out from the 500 hours of videos uploaded per minutes.

If you are trying to learn more about the SEO optimization of YouTube videos, you’ve landed on the right page, because in this guide we are going to take you through the process of improving the search rankings for each video you upload to YouTube.

YouTube SEO Guide

Quick Jump Menu:

The guide covers these five aspects of YouTube SEO optimization:

• The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources
• How to Come Up With SEO Topics?
• The Metadata Process
• Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing
• How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

The Basics - Five Main Traffic Sources

Producing a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is simply not enough to guarantee its success. You have to know where the video’s traffic will come from, because over 500 hours of video content are being uploaded each minute, and there are over 50 million content creators on the platform.

That’s the reason why you have to develop a strategy that will attract the traffic to your videos and place them high in the YouTube’s search rankings. Let’s have a look at five traffic sources that will boost the number of views and comments videos are getting.

YouTube Search

A great deal of traffic for your videos can come from the search results, which makes the title of a video one of the most important aspects of SEO optimization on YouTube.

Don’t use long titles, strive to use short and catchy titles that also contain keywords which accurately describe the contents of the video in order to appear higher in the YouTube’s search results.

Suggested Videos

The platform offers video suggestions that cover topics similar to those of the videos you already watched. Once more, the title and the description you provided will play a crucial role in driving more traffic to your videos, so make sure that each video you post on YouTube has an effective title that will spark interest in a potential viewer to take action and actually watch the video.

Suggested videos that appear next to the video

Suggested videos that appear after the video

Suggested videos that appear from links in a video description.

YouTube Advertising

Investing in the promotion of the content you’re posting on your channel can help you to generate more views, but different types of YouTube ads produce different results. Non-skippable ads never count as a view, while a skippable ad that lasts more than ten seconds must be viewed for at least thirty seconds in order to qualify as a view. All other types of YouTube ads require the viewer to click on them and play them so the YouTube Analytics can recognize the action as a view.

Channel Pages, Browse Features, Playlists

Channel Pages - This method of generating traffic includes views created by other channel owners as well as Topic Channels that are automatically created using the platform’s video discovery system. In either case, your videos are discovered through search results or video suggestions.

Browse Features - The homepage of your YouTube channel as well as the subscription feed and all other browse features can be a potential source of views for your videos. The YouTube users who watch a video on your channel can be either signed-in or signed-out, but the YouTube Analytics tool will still recognize their action as a view.

Playlists - Producing content other YouTubers will want to include in their playlists is one of the best ways to attract more traffic and increase the amount of views videos you upload to your YouTube channel are getting.

External Traffic Sources

Even though YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, sharing a link to a video on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or embedding it on your website can significantly increase the number of views the video is getting.

Sources of traffic mentioned above are not equally effective, because the intent to actually watch the video varies greatly for each source. That’s why you’ll be able to achieve the best results if you combine several, if not all sources of traffic described in this guide.

How to Come Up With SEO Topics

Videos are a form of communication, and like with all forms of communication, you must know who you are addressing in order to know what to say. Defining the target audience before you start creating a video will make the SEO optimization process much simpler and much faster.

Let’s say that you want to become a successful beauty vlogger and your aim is to produce makeup tutorials. Your first step should be to determine which market is the most relevant for you. Assuming you’d like to target the Asian market, it becomes obvious that the audience you’ll be addressing will consist of women in need of practical makeup advice and your colleagues who offer similar types of tutorials.

Now that you’ve defined your target audience you can proceed to develop the content strategy. People search videos for many different reasons, but their motivation can be approximately divided into four micro-moments. These are:

I want to know, I want to go, I want to do and I want to buy moments and some or all can be applied to all types of YouTube videos.

I want to know moments refer to YouTube users who want to learn more about a certain topic and often ask how to perform a certain action. In the beauty niche, the search terms may include questions like ‘Is makeup bad for your skin?’ or ‘What is contouring?’.

I want to do moments reflect a certain need the potential viewer of your videos has, and your video should provide a straightforward answer. Most common I want to do search patterns for beauty vloggers are ‘How to apply mascara, eyeliner, etc..’

If you know quite a bit about beauty products, then producing videos that rely on I want to buy moments is a sure way to attract a lot of traffic to your videos. These include product reviews, top ten videos or comparison videos that offer the reasons for and against buying a certain product.

Furthermore, you should try to think of a way to create a makeup video that makes the viewer feel involved, so even if you are just explaining the basic terms or tools in the video, viewers should have the feeling that they are learning something.

After defining your target audience and determining what you have to offer, you can choose the topic based on keywords. Here’s how you can easily come up with keyword ideas for your YouTube videos.

How to find the right keywords ideas?

YouTube Search Suggestions:

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to come up with an SEO friendly topic for a video. The best part is that the keywords you come up with will work without a doubt since all suggestions are based on search terms actual people have already used.

Copy the Keywords From a Video in Your Niche that Already Has a Lot of Views:

Study the competition and find a few channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that cover the same topics as you. These channels probably have a significant number of videos so just sort them out using the ‘Most Popular’ option.

Click on a video that has the most views and that also has a topic that isn’t far removed from what you want to do. When the video is open, look for the keyword around which it is centered, in the title, description or tags and just find a creative way to incorporate it into your video.

Use YouTube’s Traffic Sources and Search Report:

If you would like to find out which keywords YouTubers have used to find your videos this is your best option. Even though the chances are you’ll know most keywords in the report since you already used them for SEO optimization of your videos, you might come up with a few unexpected entries that might be useful.

Look for low-competition keywords, because frequently used keywords are already used by videos featured on channels that have a lot of followers. Low-competition keywords can be particularly helpful if you are trying to grow your channel since they might attract more viewers than the most obvious keyword choices.

YouTube keyword tools:

https://filmora.wondershare.com/vlogger/youtube-keyword-tools.html

The Metadata Process

Now that you’ve found the best keywords for a video you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel, you should do everything in your power to maximize its SEO value. The following YouTube Ranking factors all play a part in the success your video will enjoy:

• On Video (Metadata)
• Recommendations
• Channel
• User Action

As you can see, metadata is directly related to the search rankings performance of your videos. So what is metadata exactly?

Video file name: The SEO optimization of a YouTube video starts even before you upload the file to your channel. When naming a video file, make sure that the name contains a keyword, because the platform’s algorithm will analyze it and use it to determine how high it should be ranked in the search results.

Video title: The title of a YouTube video is added after the upload is complete. So, in order to increase the video’s chances of appearing high in the search results, you should place the keyword at its begging and avoid using titles longer than 70 characters as much as you can.

Description: The more words you use to describe a video, the better. YouTube descriptions can have up to 5000 characters, which gives you quite a lot of room to use the keywords you’ve selected.

Tags: You can hardly use too many tags, as a matter of fact, you should use as many tags as you can think of. Channel name, brand name, related keywords are all great choices for tags, just keep in mind that they can’t be longer than 127 characters.

YouTube tag generator:

http://www.betterwaytoweb.com/tag-generator-for-youtube

Transcript: Chances are that the keyword around which your video is based appears quite a lot in the narration and dialogue. YouTube lets you create transcripts of all your videos in just a few simple clicks, which enables you to take the SEO optimization a step further.

Promoting Videos Using Off-Channel Marketing

One of the greatest advantages YouTube offers is how easy it is to share the links to your videos on social media or anywhere else on the Internet. These off-channel marketing methods can help you drive more traffic to the videos you upload to YouTube:

Embedding the Link: Articles covering topics similar to the topic your video is covering are a perfect place to embed a link to the video featured on your channel. What’s more, you can embed a link in your blog posts, on your website, or on a website of a partner company.

Backlinks: A backlink is a link from some other website to the particular web resource, in this case, your video. You can insert links that offer additional information about the topic and by doing so increase the traffic.

Third-party Website Promotion: Share links to videos you upload to YouTube on websites like Quora or forums such as Filmora.io.

Team up with Other YouTube Creators: Looking for cooperation on Fiverr, or just send them private messages to ask for recommendation/follow. Add your video in their playlist, or in Related Channel, End-screen card, etc.

How to Monitor a Video’s Data?

YouTube Analytics is a tool that will enable you to find out more about the people who are watching your videos. How many of your subscribers have watched a video you added to your channel? How many viewers found a video you uploaded through search results? The answer to these questions can be easily found with this tool.

YouTube Analytics also provides insight into subscriber conversion rates, so you can know exactly which videos attracted the most subscribers. This feature is particularly important if you are still developing your channel since it can help you understand which type of videos inspired a viewer to take action and hit the Subscribe button

Combining the information supplied by the YouTube Analytics with the data Google Analytics can offer will allow you to get to know the viewers of your videos better, which can be useful when planning the topics of the videos you’d like to upload to your YouTube channel in the future. If you’d like to gain access to more advanced statistics, there are a lot of free and paid YouTube analytics tools that enable you to keep track of the number of video comments, rankings, dislikes, likes, video replies or favorites.

Each of these metrics serves as a building block of a successful YouTube channel because uploading a video during a weekend or during the working days may not produce the same results. The YouTube analytics tools can assist you in staying one step ahead of your competition and increasing the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.

A Few Final Thoughts

Just keep these fundamental things into your mind when you’re doing YouTube SEO:

YouTube will do anything they can to keep viewer watch longer

So what’s relevant to the content? YouTube

Always suggest videos from the same creator (so you should use brand, channel name tags)

Evaluated what people watch next and which video they ignore.

Displays video with the similar titles and keywords/tags

So what’s relevant to the viewers? YouTube

Learns your preferences, style, tasted

Considers what content might be interesting to an individual viewer: analyze viewing history, channel subscriptions, search history, viewing choices.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Crafting the Ideal Set of Keywords for Your Youtube Videos

What is YouTube Tag and How to Find Great Tags For Your Videos?

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

There are a huge number of videos uploaded to YouTube every day, and that is why it is so important to make sure your videos are sorted properly by the site using YouTube tags. If you don’t, potential viewers will miss out on the chance to discover and enjoy your videos.

Instead of forcing yourself through a painful brainstorming session, it can be easier to identify the best tags using these techniques that experienced content managers use to populate their tag lists.

In this article, I will show you how to find great tags for your YouTube videos as well as some answers to the frequently asked questions about YouTube Tags.

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool
2. Try YouTube Tag Generators
3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

Part 1: How to Find YouTube Tags [3 Effective Ways]

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool to Get Tags

YouTube’s search engine can be your best ally on the quest for great tags. This tool was created to aid users who are looking for content on the platform, and content creators can benefit from it as well. By typing the general topic of your video, or a few words vaguely related to your video, into the search bar on YouTube you can see suggestions that reflect what viewers are searching for and take some of those suggestions into consideration for your tags. With every new phrase (and even every additional character you type), new options will appear. By playing around with this tool you will gain valuable insight into the searching habits of YouTube viewers.

This method may not be too precise, but the idea is to quickly gather information and perhaps get some inspiration for more creative or complex tags. Most of the suggestions will be logical, but there can be a few unexpected combinations you’d never think of. Be very careful when translating the findings to your own situation, since the fact that some terms are popular doesn’t mean they are relevant for your video. Another problem is that slightly altered terminology can significantly change the effectiveness of the tag, so you should ideally use the suggested phrases in the exact form as you found them or not at all. If you do make adjustments, you should test the new tag through the same auto-complete tool and see how it fares.

2. Try YouTube Tag Generators

If you’d like to dig a little deeper, there are multiple dedicated tools that can assist you in picking the most suitable YouTube tags for every video you upload. Let’s examine a few of them in greater detail:

#1. Keyword Tool

A very simple and reliable web-based tag generator that provides you with 750 frequently searched keywords that would be suitable for your video. The keyword list is based on YouTube’s search tool in a way similar to what we described in the previous chapter. However, since the analysis is automated with the Keyword Tool, you can get a huge list in just a few seconds. This generator is especially useful when you are looking for long-tail keywords that attract niche audiences.

#2. Rapid Tags

This tool is a bit more sophisticated and includes some analytic features on top of tag generating capacities, allowing you to manage your channel more effectively. It’s completely automated, so you won’t have to do any heavy lifting on your own. Just type the URL of your video into the appropriate field and let Rapid Tags do the rest. You can easily switch between the Generator, Analyzer, Ranker, and Tracker tools, so you can acquire a complete picture of the suitability of each tag and a better understanding of the projected performance of your video.

Want more tools to generate YouTube tags? Check our picks of the best YouTube video tag generators .

#3. BetterWaytoWeb

While this free-to-use tool has a very simple interface and won’t require any background knowledge to use, it still provides valuable information. It can suggest suitable tags for your new video based on the main keyword you provide, speeding up your research considerably. It can also analyze the tags placed on an existing YouTube video, which is important for deducing how other authors working in the same category are optimizing their content.

3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

YouTube content authors can learn a lot by analyzing their top competitors. No matter what your videos are about, there are probably countless other creators that want to attract the same audiences as you. Only a tiny percentage of them will manage to gain significant viewership, and those are the ones you should be researching in detail.

If you are able to locate the most successful videos with content similar to yours you are already halfway to your goal, but one obstacle still remains. You can’t even see your competitor’s tags them when you click on their videos on YouTube. This type of information is not displayed, but some specialized solutions are able to reveal it upon request. Here is one YouTube certified analytic tool capable of doing that:

1. VidIQ

Currently used to manage more than 30,000 YouTube channels, this powerful video marketing suite can also help with tag selection. It can enlarge your tag library by a factor of 10, and provide you with a direct comparison with your chief competitors. In addition to increasing your views, this app can help you monitor your visibility on social networks, and track detailed statistics that describe the performance of your video. In other words, this is a comprehensive package that will help you manage your channel in a professional way.

What’s your YouTube tag strategy?

Part 2: YouTube Tag FAQs

1. What is YouTube Tag?

YouTube tag is a keyword that you added to help Google and YouTube understand your video context, which is an important ranking factor in YouTube searching. Basically, the better you tag your video, the more views you can get. But you should keep in mind that adding excessive tags to your video description is against YouTube policy.

2. How Many Tags Should You Use on YouTube?

Though there is no restriction about the numbers of the YouTube tags, you should keep the total characters of all tags within 400 characters. In most cases, 5-8 tags are appreciated for a YouTube video. It is recommended to add as many relevant tags as you can, such as brand-specific tags, YouTube auto-suggest tags, or tags created with some tag generator.

3. Do Tags on YouTube Get More Views?

The short answer is Yes. Since Google is encouraging people to use tags to help them understand your video content, then it can recommend the videos to relevant users accordingly. With tags, YouTube can categorize your videos and make them discoverable easier. For example, when you search tag #FilmoraSchoolStory in YouTube, you can see all the videos with the tag in the search result. allowing viewers to find your content more easily.

Retouch YouTube Videos with Filmora

There are lots of filters, overlays and effects pre-programmed in Wondershare Filmora video editor , you can improve YouTube videos without costing any extra fees if you’ve subscribed to Filmora.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

There are a huge number of videos uploaded to YouTube every day, and that is why it is so important to make sure your videos are sorted properly by the site using YouTube tags. If you don’t, potential viewers will miss out on the chance to discover and enjoy your videos.

Instead of forcing yourself through a painful brainstorming session, it can be easier to identify the best tags using these techniques that experienced content managers use to populate their tag lists.

In this article, I will show you how to find great tags for your YouTube videos as well as some answers to the frequently asked questions about YouTube Tags.

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool
2. Try YouTube Tag Generators
3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

Part 1: How to Find YouTube Tags [3 Effective Ways]

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool to Get Tags

YouTube’s search engine can be your best ally on the quest for great tags. This tool was created to aid users who are looking for content on the platform, and content creators can benefit from it as well. By typing the general topic of your video, or a few words vaguely related to your video, into the search bar on YouTube you can see suggestions that reflect what viewers are searching for and take some of those suggestions into consideration for your tags. With every new phrase (and even every additional character you type), new options will appear. By playing around with this tool you will gain valuable insight into the searching habits of YouTube viewers.

This method may not be too precise, but the idea is to quickly gather information and perhaps get some inspiration for more creative or complex tags. Most of the suggestions will be logical, but there can be a few unexpected combinations you’d never think of. Be very careful when translating the findings to your own situation, since the fact that some terms are popular doesn’t mean they are relevant for your video. Another problem is that slightly altered terminology can significantly change the effectiveness of the tag, so you should ideally use the suggested phrases in the exact form as you found them or not at all. If you do make adjustments, you should test the new tag through the same auto-complete tool and see how it fares.

2. Try YouTube Tag Generators

If you’d like to dig a little deeper, there are multiple dedicated tools that can assist you in picking the most suitable YouTube tags for every video you upload. Let’s examine a few of them in greater detail:

#1. Keyword Tool

A very simple and reliable web-based tag generator that provides you with 750 frequently searched keywords that would be suitable for your video. The keyword list is based on YouTube’s search tool in a way similar to what we described in the previous chapter. However, since the analysis is automated with the Keyword Tool, you can get a huge list in just a few seconds. This generator is especially useful when you are looking for long-tail keywords that attract niche audiences.

#2. Rapid Tags

This tool is a bit more sophisticated and includes some analytic features on top of tag generating capacities, allowing you to manage your channel more effectively. It’s completely automated, so you won’t have to do any heavy lifting on your own. Just type the URL of your video into the appropriate field and let Rapid Tags do the rest. You can easily switch between the Generator, Analyzer, Ranker, and Tracker tools, so you can acquire a complete picture of the suitability of each tag and a better understanding of the projected performance of your video.

Want more tools to generate YouTube tags? Check our picks of the best YouTube video tag generators .

#3. BetterWaytoWeb

While this free-to-use tool has a very simple interface and won’t require any background knowledge to use, it still provides valuable information. It can suggest suitable tags for your new video based on the main keyword you provide, speeding up your research considerably. It can also analyze the tags placed on an existing YouTube video, which is important for deducing how other authors working in the same category are optimizing their content.

3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

YouTube content authors can learn a lot by analyzing their top competitors. No matter what your videos are about, there are probably countless other creators that want to attract the same audiences as you. Only a tiny percentage of them will manage to gain significant viewership, and those are the ones you should be researching in detail.

If you are able to locate the most successful videos with content similar to yours you are already halfway to your goal, but one obstacle still remains. You can’t even see your competitor’s tags them when you click on their videos on YouTube. This type of information is not displayed, but some specialized solutions are able to reveal it upon request. Here is one YouTube certified analytic tool capable of doing that:

1. VidIQ

Currently used to manage more than 30,000 YouTube channels, this powerful video marketing suite can also help with tag selection. It can enlarge your tag library by a factor of 10, and provide you with a direct comparison with your chief competitors. In addition to increasing your views, this app can help you monitor your visibility on social networks, and track detailed statistics that describe the performance of your video. In other words, this is a comprehensive package that will help you manage your channel in a professional way.

What’s your YouTube tag strategy?

Part 2: YouTube Tag FAQs

1. What is YouTube Tag?

YouTube tag is a keyword that you added to help Google and YouTube understand your video context, which is an important ranking factor in YouTube searching. Basically, the better you tag your video, the more views you can get. But you should keep in mind that adding excessive tags to your video description is against YouTube policy.

2. How Many Tags Should You Use on YouTube?

Though there is no restriction about the numbers of the YouTube tags, you should keep the total characters of all tags within 400 characters. In most cases, 5-8 tags are appreciated for a YouTube video. It is recommended to add as many relevant tags as you can, such as brand-specific tags, YouTube auto-suggest tags, or tags created with some tag generator.

3. Do Tags on YouTube Get More Views?

The short answer is Yes. Since Google is encouraging people to use tags to help them understand your video content, then it can recommend the videos to relevant users accordingly. With tags, YouTube can categorize your videos and make them discoverable easier. For example, when you search tag #FilmoraSchoolStory in YouTube, you can see all the videos with the tag in the search result. allowing viewers to find your content more easily.

Retouch YouTube Videos with Filmora

There are lots of filters, overlays and effects pre-programmed in Wondershare Filmora video editor , you can improve YouTube videos without costing any extra fees if you’ve subscribed to Filmora.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

There are a huge number of videos uploaded to YouTube every day, and that is why it is so important to make sure your videos are sorted properly by the site using YouTube tags. If you don’t, potential viewers will miss out on the chance to discover and enjoy your videos.

Instead of forcing yourself through a painful brainstorming session, it can be easier to identify the best tags using these techniques that experienced content managers use to populate their tag lists.

In this article, I will show you how to find great tags for your YouTube videos as well as some answers to the frequently asked questions about YouTube Tags.

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool
2. Try YouTube Tag Generators
3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

Part 1: How to Find YouTube Tags [3 Effective Ways]

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool to Get Tags

YouTube’s search engine can be your best ally on the quest for great tags. This tool was created to aid users who are looking for content on the platform, and content creators can benefit from it as well. By typing the general topic of your video, or a few words vaguely related to your video, into the search bar on YouTube you can see suggestions that reflect what viewers are searching for and take some of those suggestions into consideration for your tags. With every new phrase (and even every additional character you type), new options will appear. By playing around with this tool you will gain valuable insight into the searching habits of YouTube viewers.

This method may not be too precise, but the idea is to quickly gather information and perhaps get some inspiration for more creative or complex tags. Most of the suggestions will be logical, but there can be a few unexpected combinations you’d never think of. Be very careful when translating the findings to your own situation, since the fact that some terms are popular doesn’t mean they are relevant for your video. Another problem is that slightly altered terminology can significantly change the effectiveness of the tag, so you should ideally use the suggested phrases in the exact form as you found them or not at all. If you do make adjustments, you should test the new tag through the same auto-complete tool and see how it fares.

2. Try YouTube Tag Generators

If you’d like to dig a little deeper, there are multiple dedicated tools that can assist you in picking the most suitable YouTube tags for every video you upload. Let’s examine a few of them in greater detail:

#1. Keyword Tool

A very simple and reliable web-based tag generator that provides you with 750 frequently searched keywords that would be suitable for your video. The keyword list is based on YouTube’s search tool in a way similar to what we described in the previous chapter. However, since the analysis is automated with the Keyword Tool, you can get a huge list in just a few seconds. This generator is especially useful when you are looking for long-tail keywords that attract niche audiences.

#2. Rapid Tags

This tool is a bit more sophisticated and includes some analytic features on top of tag generating capacities, allowing you to manage your channel more effectively. It’s completely automated, so you won’t have to do any heavy lifting on your own. Just type the URL of your video into the appropriate field and let Rapid Tags do the rest. You can easily switch between the Generator, Analyzer, Ranker, and Tracker tools, so you can acquire a complete picture of the suitability of each tag and a better understanding of the projected performance of your video.

Want more tools to generate YouTube tags? Check our picks of the best YouTube video tag generators .

#3. BetterWaytoWeb

While this free-to-use tool has a very simple interface and won’t require any background knowledge to use, it still provides valuable information. It can suggest suitable tags for your new video based on the main keyword you provide, speeding up your research considerably. It can also analyze the tags placed on an existing YouTube video, which is important for deducing how other authors working in the same category are optimizing their content.

3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

YouTube content authors can learn a lot by analyzing their top competitors. No matter what your videos are about, there are probably countless other creators that want to attract the same audiences as you. Only a tiny percentage of them will manage to gain significant viewership, and those are the ones you should be researching in detail.

If you are able to locate the most successful videos with content similar to yours you are already halfway to your goal, but one obstacle still remains. You can’t even see your competitor’s tags them when you click on their videos on YouTube. This type of information is not displayed, but some specialized solutions are able to reveal it upon request. Here is one YouTube certified analytic tool capable of doing that:

1. VidIQ

Currently used to manage more than 30,000 YouTube channels, this powerful video marketing suite can also help with tag selection. It can enlarge your tag library by a factor of 10, and provide you with a direct comparison with your chief competitors. In addition to increasing your views, this app can help you monitor your visibility on social networks, and track detailed statistics that describe the performance of your video. In other words, this is a comprehensive package that will help you manage your channel in a professional way.

What’s your YouTube tag strategy?

Part 2: YouTube Tag FAQs

1. What is YouTube Tag?

YouTube tag is a keyword that you added to help Google and YouTube understand your video context, which is an important ranking factor in YouTube searching. Basically, the better you tag your video, the more views you can get. But you should keep in mind that adding excessive tags to your video description is against YouTube policy.

2. How Many Tags Should You Use on YouTube?

Though there is no restriction about the numbers of the YouTube tags, you should keep the total characters of all tags within 400 characters. In most cases, 5-8 tags are appreciated for a YouTube video. It is recommended to add as many relevant tags as you can, such as brand-specific tags, YouTube auto-suggest tags, or tags created with some tag generator.

3. Do Tags on YouTube Get More Views?

The short answer is Yes. Since Google is encouraging people to use tags to help them understand your video content, then it can recommend the videos to relevant users accordingly. With tags, YouTube can categorize your videos and make them discoverable easier. For example, when you search tag #FilmoraSchoolStory in YouTube, you can see all the videos with the tag in the search result. allowing viewers to find your content more easily.

Retouch YouTube Videos with Filmora

There are lots of filters, overlays and effects pre-programmed in Wondershare Filmora video editor , you can improve YouTube videos without costing any extra fees if you’ve subscribed to Filmora.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

There are a huge number of videos uploaded to YouTube every day, and that is why it is so important to make sure your videos are sorted properly by the site using YouTube tags. If you don’t, potential viewers will miss out on the chance to discover and enjoy your videos.

Instead of forcing yourself through a painful brainstorming session, it can be easier to identify the best tags using these techniques that experienced content managers use to populate their tag lists.

In this article, I will show you how to find great tags for your YouTube videos as well as some answers to the frequently asked questions about YouTube Tags.

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool
2. Try YouTube Tag Generators
3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

Part 1: How to Find YouTube Tags [3 Effective Ways]

1. Use YouTube’s Auto-Suggest Tool to Get Tags

YouTube’s search engine can be your best ally on the quest for great tags. This tool was created to aid users who are looking for content on the platform, and content creators can benefit from it as well. By typing the general topic of your video, or a few words vaguely related to your video, into the search bar on YouTube you can see suggestions that reflect what viewers are searching for and take some of those suggestions into consideration for your tags. With every new phrase (and even every additional character you type), new options will appear. By playing around with this tool you will gain valuable insight into the searching habits of YouTube viewers.

This method may not be too precise, but the idea is to quickly gather information and perhaps get some inspiration for more creative or complex tags. Most of the suggestions will be logical, but there can be a few unexpected combinations you’d never think of. Be very careful when translating the findings to your own situation, since the fact that some terms are popular doesn’t mean they are relevant for your video. Another problem is that slightly altered terminology can significantly change the effectiveness of the tag, so you should ideally use the suggested phrases in the exact form as you found them or not at all. If you do make adjustments, you should test the new tag through the same auto-complete tool and see how it fares.

2. Try YouTube Tag Generators

If you’d like to dig a little deeper, there are multiple dedicated tools that can assist you in picking the most suitable YouTube tags for every video you upload. Let’s examine a few of them in greater detail:

#1. Keyword Tool

A very simple and reliable web-based tag generator that provides you with 750 frequently searched keywords that would be suitable for your video. The keyword list is based on YouTube’s search tool in a way similar to what we described in the previous chapter. However, since the analysis is automated with the Keyword Tool, you can get a huge list in just a few seconds. This generator is especially useful when you are looking for long-tail keywords that attract niche audiences.

#2. Rapid Tags

This tool is a bit more sophisticated and includes some analytic features on top of tag generating capacities, allowing you to manage your channel more effectively. It’s completely automated, so you won’t have to do any heavy lifting on your own. Just type the URL of your video into the appropriate field and let Rapid Tags do the rest. You can easily switch between the Generator, Analyzer, Ranker, and Tracker tools, so you can acquire a complete picture of the suitability of each tag and a better understanding of the projected performance of your video.

Want more tools to generate YouTube tags? Check our picks of the best YouTube video tag generators .

#3. BetterWaytoWeb

While this free-to-use tool has a very simple interface and won’t require any background knowledge to use, it still provides valuable information. It can suggest suitable tags for your new video based on the main keyword you provide, speeding up your research considerably. It can also analyze the tags placed on an existing YouTube video, which is important for deducing how other authors working in the same category are optimizing their content.

3. Study Your YouTube Rivals’ Tags

YouTube content authors can learn a lot by analyzing their top competitors. No matter what your videos are about, there are probably countless other creators that want to attract the same audiences as you. Only a tiny percentage of them will manage to gain significant viewership, and those are the ones you should be researching in detail.

If you are able to locate the most successful videos with content similar to yours you are already halfway to your goal, but one obstacle still remains. You can’t even see your competitor’s tags them when you click on their videos on YouTube. This type of information is not displayed, but some specialized solutions are able to reveal it upon request. Here is one YouTube certified analytic tool capable of doing that:

1. VidIQ

Currently used to manage more than 30,000 YouTube channels, this powerful video marketing suite can also help with tag selection. It can enlarge your tag library by a factor of 10, and provide you with a direct comparison with your chief competitors. In addition to increasing your views, this app can help you monitor your visibility on social networks, and track detailed statistics that describe the performance of your video. In other words, this is a comprehensive package that will help you manage your channel in a professional way.

What’s your YouTube tag strategy?

Part 2: YouTube Tag FAQs

1. What is YouTube Tag?

YouTube tag is a keyword that you added to help Google and YouTube understand your video context, which is an important ranking factor in YouTube searching. Basically, the better you tag your video, the more views you can get. But you should keep in mind that adding excessive tags to your video description is against YouTube policy.

2. How Many Tags Should You Use on YouTube?

Though there is no restriction about the numbers of the YouTube tags, you should keep the total characters of all tags within 400 characters. In most cases, 5-8 tags are appreciated for a YouTube video. It is recommended to add as many relevant tags as you can, such as brand-specific tags, YouTube auto-suggest tags, or tags created with some tag generator.

3. Do Tags on YouTube Get More Views?

The short answer is Yes. Since Google is encouraging people to use tags to help them understand your video content, then it can recommend the videos to relevant users accordingly. With tags, YouTube can categorize your videos and make them discoverable easier. For example, when you search tag #FilmoraSchoolStory in YouTube, you can see all the videos with the tag in the search result. allowing viewers to find your content more easily.

Retouch YouTube Videos with Filmora

There are lots of filters, overlays and effects pre-programmed in Wondershare Filmora video editor , you can improve YouTube videos without costing any extra fees if you’ve subscribed to Filmora.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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