YouTube, like its parent firm Google, uses keywords to assist its algorithm in determining which videos are most relevant to a user’s search. Tags are one of the keyword forms available on YouTube.
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What are YouTube tags?
YouTube video tags are keywords that video makers put to their videos to assist YouTube in understanding the context of their films.
When publishing material to the platform, you must be aware of two sorts of tags:
- Video tags
- Channel tags
Video tags
When uploading your YouTube videos, you may notice a tag field with up to 500 characters.
The keywords in your tags differ somewhat from the keywords in your video title and description. It’s only for the tag area, and it has little to no effect on your YouTube SEO.
In fact, including your tags in your video title or description can lead to YouTube removing your video, so be sure you’re utilizing video tags correctly.
Channel tags
Channel tags assist YouTube in determining the overall sort of material you publish for your channel.
You may add these tags to the settings of your YouTube channel.
If you’re creating baking videos, for example, you should utilize channel tags that relate to the broad subjects of your films, such as “baking cake” or “bakery lessons.”
You add more precise keywords to your tags for each baking video that define what the video is about, such as “snickerdoodle lesson” or “confectionery review.”
Make certain that all tags you add are appropriate.
This blog article will mostly concentrate on YouTube video tags. Adding channel tags, on the other hand, may significantly improve your YouTube SEO.
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Are YouTube video tags important to your YouTube SEO?
Consensus… not really.
Tags, according to Google, have a very little impact in assisting people in finding your movies.
According to one research, utilizing keyword-focused tags might have a little impact on your SEO.
You may be asking why you should put so much work into your YouTube tags.
And to be honest, you shouldn’t.
While it is vital to construct YouTube videos with keywords in mind, you should spend the majority of your efforts on crafting keyword-rich titles and descriptions.
However, if you’re still performing keyword research for your YouTube videos, you might want to take a few minutes to add some tags to your videos. It can’t hurt (as long as you do it properly).
How to find the best tags for YouTube videos?
When conducting keyword research, be certain that the terms you select are relevant to your video.
If you’re producing a cake video, avoid using phrases like “monster trucks” or “dancing lobster” in the title, description, or tags.
Unless you’re cooking a pie with dancing lobsters or monster trucks.
The video in the example below is about creating sugar cookies, and the most of the tags revolve around that theme.
Finding the ideal tags for YouTube videos does not always need spending money, unless you use a keyword research service to identify your keywords.
Tools for YouTube tag research
To begin, you may use YouTube’s search predictions.
When you input a term like “baking cookies,” YouTube may offer searches that are similar to what you just typed.
These suggestions occur for a variety of reasons, one of which is based on popular searches.
Search predictions are a fantastic place to start with your YouTube keywords because they are based on what other people are looking for.
A specialized YouTube keyword tool is another excellent approach to uncover YouTube keywords.
VidIQ and Tube Buddy are two popular keyword tools. These tools are excellent for competition research, particularly how to see YouTube tags.
Both VidIQ and Tube Buddy have features that let you view different keywords and how easy or difficult it will be to rank for them.
But the real magic is in the Chrome extensions.
You can quickly view the tags on any video after installing VidIQ or Tube Buddy in your Chrome web browser. You can also check how each video ranks for the keywords it is targeting.
If you don’t want to install a Chrome extension, you may use one of numerous websites that provide their own keyword research tools.
The aptly named Keyword Tool has its own YouTube setting so you can quickly find the words you need to get your video rankings.
You may try Ahrefs’ YouTube keyword research functionality for a more complete (and paid) service.
The nice thing is that you don’t have to utilize these tools for your video tags. Any keywords you discover may be utilized to spice up the title and description of your movie.
It also doesn’t hurt to add keywords to your script.
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Best practices for using YouTube tags
Make a list of tags
During your study, you will very certainly come across a slew of keywords relevant to your videos.
Make a list of these terms so you can keep track of your discoveries.
A list of YouTube tags might help you determine which tags are essential and which can be skipped.
You may also easily copy and paste your keyword list into your tags if you separate each term you discover with a comma.
The key to utilizing keywords in your video tags is not to overuse them – we’ll discuss that in the following step – so making a list might help you determine what works best for your movie.
Don’t use too many tags
While YouTube permits up to 500 characters in video tags, you do not have to exceed this restriction in order for your video to be successful.
In most cases, five to eight relevant tags are enough to help YouTube comprehend your video.
Again, your video title and description are more important, so you shouldn’t be too concerned with your tags.
The worst thing you can do with your tags is include a collection of broadly related phrases.
As a result, if your video is about baking cinnamon cookies, tags for other sorts of cookies are ignored.
Use tags that correspond to the main theme of your video.
Use competitors to your advantage
Using a service like VidIQ or Tube Buddy, you may view your rivals’ tags.
Don’t just glance at the labels and move on. Make use of them! Add them to your YouTube tag list.
If you notice that the top-ranked videos all utilize the same set of tags, you should add these tags to your video metadata.
If you’re uploading a video on making chocolate chip cookies and see that the top channels are utilizing keywords like “make chocolate chip cookies” or “chocolate chip cookies recipe,” add these terms in your tags.
The nice aspect about competition research is that parsing the top search results just takes a few minutes. A little more work might pay dividends for your channel.
And that’s for what YouTube tags are!
If you want to learn more about YouTube SEO but don’t have the time, our staff can assist you.
Our YouTube SEO professionals would gladly assist your company in growing its YouTube channel.
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