How to Optimize YouTube Tags/Title/Description for More Views

Having amazing material on film is just the first challenge to be conquered. The next, and much bigger, obstacle in your path is getting people to watch them. Just like a blogger needs to work hard to get people to read their blog, so a YouTuber needs to find ways to get their videos viewed.

Discoverability is key to exposure for any piece of web content. After all, if they can't find it, nobody will watch you video, or read your blog, right? A blogger would do this by lacing SEO-search engine optimization into their content. But how should a YouTuber do the same? The answer lies in the optimisation of something known as the YouTube tags. We'll let you know in this article how to easily optimize YouTube tags for more views, and some tips on title and description.

Part 1: What are YouTube tags and why they are so important

YouTube tags are used when uploading YouTube videos. You must specify the type of video you are using. You need to describe your video using keywords, in other words. But you might think why those words need to be added. Can't YouTube figure out what my videos are? Unfortunately, though their algorithm is much more advanced than before, YouTube can not.

As 500 hours of video per minute are uploaded to YouTube, you must know the competition between videos is furious. In this case, to have a higher ranking, it is important to let YouTube algorithm know your video by adding tags related. So the better tags we choose, the higher chance of ranking in top 1, meaning you'll get more views!

Using meta tags on YouTube can wisely broaden your reach and help new people discover your content. But don't be tempted to insert tags that are irrelevant just because you know they're high traffic. As a result, you'll be found out and penalised. As with your description, research your keywords, first place the most important ones and use as many of them as you can.

What are the three YouTube tag types

The YouTube has three different types of tags and each of them has a specific purpose. The tags are-

Specific – The specific types of tags are geared to keywords. Specifically those keywords apply to your video content. The particular video is highlighted in this tag type with the keyword tags. The YouTube often suggests phrases and keywords depending on the content of your video, while typing the keywords in your mind. You can apply the suggestions and also add more common or general versions of the same keywords.

Compound – The compound tags typically use two words more than thans. It is seen many times that users prefer to tag the video title in its entirety. If you use your video title as the compound tag, make sure you don't include the prepositions like, like, like, and, etc. This is because the YouTube allows only 500 title characters and ignores the prepositions. It is always advisable to use all of the 500 characters YouTube has allowed to be ignored automatically without wasting the characters on pre-positionings.

Generic – The generic tags are those which describe the whole video in one or two words. These tags are used in all of your video. These tags are used for all of the videos you post across your channel. It is important to have constant tags of that general nature.

Part 2: How to come up with YouTube tags and optimize them

The more appropriate tags you add, the better. The best part is that YouTube doesn't restrict the number of tags but it's not possible to add everything and adding something irrelevant makes no sense. So, to get more views, your YouTube video tags must be the smart ones. What's needed is educated tagging.

1. Brand-Specific Tags Addition -  Every business wants to see their brand name appear in YouTube and Google search results. Self-referencing your video or tagging a number of variations of your brand name is a smart way to let others know your brand.

2. Using YouTube Auto Suggest – Play in YouTube with the search option and check the suggestions on YouTube when you search. Try to recognize the common videos that are popping up while searching for something relevant to yours. Try to search your YouTube search experience for random keywords.

3. Use the YouTube Keyword Search Tool –  Finally, you may use the suggestion tool for keywords in YouTube. It helps you extract the relevant keywords from your competitors ' videos and create suggestions based on the basic term you provide.

4. Use Specific Tags - You need to specifically narrow down your tags after using tools, such as "learn 3D paper cutting" tags The search volume may not be huge, but such tags can make YouTube well aware of your video vey. Give them a try!

5. Check competitor's Tags - When checking tags from other brands, copying them all isn't suggested. What you need to do is find out what is missing and try to cover the area. Just third-party tools can help you do that, though. The VidIQ is highly used in the market. It does have a free version. For higher views can be found most of all data including tags.

YouTube Tags Bonues Tips

You can read some tips here when tags are optimised. Singular and plural tags can be used both. Occasionally remember to add some erroneous tags because users tend to mistype some terms, so it's better to cover tags of this kind. More information on the misspelled words can be obtained. Read more tips below.

• Build on what you learned in your keyword research and use high traffic keywords as tags
• Use as many tags as possible, but without being spammy
• Build related playlists using particular tags
• Be generic; 'big', 'funny' and 'sweet' are fine, but 'luscious', 'delightful' and 'splendid' don't make the best tags
• Put the most important tags first
• Mix single word tags with 'long tail' tags, e.g. 'how to'

Part 3: How to Tag YouTube and Add Title, Description

For a New Video

• Step 1. The first thing you need to do is to sign into your YouTube account.
• Step 2. Then click the Upload button that’s found on the top right corner of the window.
• Step 3. Then select the video that you want to upload. You will be asked to add a title, description, and tags.

• Step 4. After uploading, you can still edit the YouTube title, description, and tags.

For a Published Video

There are times when you want to change the title, description or a tag of an already published video. The good news is that YouTube allows you to reedit them whenever you want to.

• Step 1. Log into your YouTube account
• Step 2. Left click the account name found at the top right-hand corner of the screen. Then you will have a dropdown menu. Select Video Manager to show a list of your uploaded videos.

• Step 3. Click the Edit button that’s found right next to the video that you want to modify. In the Video Information, you can now change the title, description or any of the tags. Click on the Save Changes button when you are done.

Part 4: How to Improve YouTube Video Title and Description

YouTube's metadata is where viewers as well as the platform themselves can find out what your video is about. It helps people search for your video, helps YouTube categorize it correctly and can broaden the reach of your content when it's done well. There are three main parts of YouTube meta: tags, title, and description. Here's how each of these three elements can be used to create powerful metadata for your video:

1. Title

YouTube names play a major role in the search rankings. Which means you have to think about what people will most likely want to see your video typing into the search bar, as well as the words which describe your video accurately.

For example, calling your video' Fluffy climbs a tree' isn't the best idea if you have a clip of your cat Fluffy climbing a tree. No one knows who Fluffy is; for all the YouTube community knows it could be your cat, puppy, daughter or feather duster and no one will be looking for it.

A better title would be' cat climbs a tree,' but that's something you could improve. How about' funny cat climbs a tree,' capturing all those people who are looking for funny cat videos. Or, better yet,' funny Persian cat climbs a tree,' capturing those people who love Persian cats as well.

You can see how organically such can happen to build awesome YouTube titles, but it's also worth doing your homework. We've collected a handful of YouTube Keyword tools to help you improve your YouTube meta so check out the suggestions from there and work forward.

Best practices

• Research your keywords and include high traffic keywords at the start of the title
• Keep titles under 70 characters
• Branding, episode number and other non-essential info should be at the end of the title
• Review your YouTube titles from time to time and update with new keywords as search trends change
• Avoid clickbait titles or misleading titles as this will affect your view time and subsequently your ranking in search

2. Description

Your description is a much longer piece of YouTube meta so with your YouTube keywords here, you can really go to town. You have up to 5,000 characters to fill in, and we strongly advise you are aiming to use each. This is really a golden opportunity not only to get people motivated to watch all of your video, but also to be correctly indexed using well-researched keywords from YouTube.

You might have noticed that only a small part of the description actually appears on the search page itself; to be precise, 120 characters of it. This does not affect indexing, but it does mean that you need to carefully plan your description on YouTube to really hook people into clicking from the first or two sentences.

Best practices

• Make the first sentence or two compelling and captivating to get people to click
• Research the best YouTube keywords to use to ensure your video is correctly indexed
• At the end of your YouTube description, include a call to action to direct viewers on what to do next (subscribe, click through to website, look at a product, watch more videos etc.)
• If your video is long, consider placing time codes in your description to help users jump to their areas of interest
• Add links to products showcased, your social channels or website as you wish
• Don't forget to credit any music you've used here