How To Properly Tag YouTube Videos To Get Views.
which is why it can be SUPER disappointing when your content ends up underperforming and not ranking well at all.
So If you want to climb those YouTube rankings then nailing the use of tags should be one of your key focuses.
But how strategic should you get with them?
YouTube tags are a great way for you to add relevant keywords to your videos.
to help your audience better understand what your video is all about, but also to help people find it in the first place.
Keywords aren’t just reserved for written word copy, and neither is SEO.
YouTube is, as I said, the world’s second-largest search engine, if you count it as a search engine and therefore search engine optimisation is still relevant.
Keywords play a GIANT role when it comes to video marketing, and you’ll find this is true across a wide array of video hosting platforms.
Tags aren’t the only thing that will make your video climb the YouTube rankings though, you need to consider your title, your description, your thumbnail and a whole other host of user experiences.
But you still need tags to form any part of your optimisation strategy, and when it comes to YouTube, adding them to your video is pretty simple.
When you’re uploading a video, simply click on the ‘more options’ button in the uploader and you’ll be given the option to add in up to 500 characters worth of tags.
And not to worry if you’ve already uploaded a video, you can still go back and edit your tags in afterwards To be honest, this is a good practice anyway, especially for underperforming videos.
Make it a regular thing you check up on and optimise for success.
So, what makes a good YouTube tag?
ell here are my three top tips for selecting and sourcing YouTube tag
Number 1 – Don’t let first be your wors
Whilst its possible to add multiple tags, it is recommended that your first tag should be an exact match keyword for the thing you want to rank for…
such as ‘social media scheduling tools’
on a video about social media scheduling tools… This is because YouTube will give the most priority to that tag when it comes to video search results so you’ll want to think very carefully about that one.
If you could summarise your video in just one word, what would that word be?
Other than the word ‘amazing’ obviously, it’s probably a safe bet that it’ll be a great first choice tag.
Number 2 – think broad beans, but replace beans with keywords…
Make sure that your tags are specific to your video content and that’s really important and these would be tags based on focused keywords.
In fact, two to three of your tags should be totally focused.
But you should also remember to include broad keywords too Whilst they are less specific, broad terms tend to have a higher search volume.
But, as a result, can be harder to rank for.
This is where you’ve got to get clever and continually optimise what you’re doing, because appearing for some broad search terms will land you with some hefty view counts.
This is as simple as making sure that if your video is about the specific wonders of mint chocolate ice cream, that if your video is about the specific wonders of mint chocolate ice cream,
That you also include keywords for just plain old ‘ice cream’ too But don’t go stuffing your video full of as many tags as you can,
Because that’s called keyword stuffing, and it will do more harm than good and the YouTube Gods will punish you for it.
Your best bet, and I suggest you get your notebook out and write this down is to use 5-8 well researched and relevant tags as opposed to 20 generic ones.
Number 3 – Add common, relevant keywords from top performing videos
It’s safe to say those that are sitting in top position for the keywords and phrases that you want to appear for have done something right with their optimisation.
So don’t let that put you off, instead grab a hold of that data and use it to further your efforts.
You can use tools such as VidIQ to see your competitors top performing tags.
Use this data, collected from 3 or 5 high performing videos, and consider implementing them into your tags.
But only if they’re relevant my final bit of advice, from me to you, is just because you have the option to use 500 characters for your tags doesn’t mean you should.
In fact it’s been found that the sweet spot is between 200-300 characters.
So there you go, they were three of the things I recommend to help you boost your tagging game when it comes to YouTube.
But remember there are loads of other elements of your YouTube videos and channel that you should consider optimsing for future success.