Learn Which Youtube Tags To Use When Uploading Videos

Are you using tags in Youtube, when uploading videos to your channel? What is a Youtube tag, do you even know? If you have answered No to either of these questions you could be losing out on 100's or even 1,000's of video views or subscribers.

For quite some time I was uploading videos to my Youtube channel and totally ignoring the Tags section. I just thought "I'll ignore that bit for now", I just wanted my video out there on the world wide web. And after I uploaded my video I would always carry out a little search to see if my video would pop up in the list. Of course it would do, but took me a while to scroll through all the other videos, until I found mine. But hey, my video was there to be watched and I felt pleased with myself. It wasn't until a few months later, I read about using tags and how they were important in making your videos more visible, when people searched for their topics of interest. And so, I went back to my channel and searched for the Tag section in one of my first ever videos "Bushcraft - Self Supporting Tarp Setups - Speed Test" and as it was about a bushcraft tarp, I cleverly entered "bushcraft" and "tarp" into the tag section. "Excellent" I thought, this is going to get more views now. And yes the views did increase a little. However, as I started to do this with more of my videos, I then realized that if I added more tags, possibly the views may increase too. You have to remember I was only a Youtube novice and learning new things all the time. So back I went to my video and decided to add more tags. I watched my video again and tried to think of all the different tags I could use that were relevant to my video.

And this is what I came up with. As you can see I had expanded on just "bushcraft" and "tarp". Instead of just 2 Tags in my list, I now had 31. And not just one word tags either, I was using 2 and 3 word tags. And the great thing is, Youtube will suggest relevant tags you could use, as you are typing your own into the list. There is a limit as to how many tags you can enter, but just keep adding until you cant fit anymore in.

And it is very important that your Tags are relevant to your video. For example if your video is about "A Model Steam Engine" and you include separate tags in your list like this : "Model" "Steam" "Engine" You can see what is going to happen. When anybody submits a search for videos relating to a model, your video will be listed. Not really targeted to the content of your video. The same goes for if a search for "engine" is submitted. All the videos relating to car engines, motorbike engines, aircraft engines etc. are going to be listed, of which there will be thousands. And your video is going to be ranked well down the list. So if we change those Tags to the following : "Model Steam Engine" "Steam Engine" "Steam Engine Model" You will rank higher in the list and your video will have more chance of being seen, watched, liked and ultimately result in more subscribers. That is of course if your video is of good quality, containing interesting content.

But how do we know that this list of tags is really what people are searching for when looking for a video that relates to their chosen topic of interest. When somebody wants to watch a video about a model steam engine, is that what they actually type into the search box ? They may just be typing "Working Model Train", but you haven't got "Model Train" or even "Train" in your list. They're not going to find your video then are they ?

So what can we do then ? Well, we can call on our old friend Google and their fantastic research tool that tests how good search words are and how frequently they are be used. It is of course The Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which allows you to type in any keyword or phrase, like "Youtube Tags" and Google will return a list of keywords relating to your search.

Not only are you presented with a concise list of keywords, they are even ranked into different scoring categories : Competition Global Monthly Searches Local Monthly Searches Clicking on the tops of your chosen column will re-list them in order from smallest to largest or visa versa

If you look at two of the columns "Competition" and "Global Monthly Searches" you will notice that a keyword can be ranked as High, Medium or Low along with a figure relating to the number of searches submitted for that particular word or phrase. Your immediate thought would be to go with the higher ranking keyword, that has the highest number of searches. Big Mistake ! The fact that it has been searched for a huge amount of times is good, that means its a popular search. But, the competition category has ranked the keyword as High, which means that a lot of people have used this keyword. So if you were to add this High ranking keyword as one of your Tags, you would be competing with a whole more other people, resulting in a low position on the list when displayed on Youtube. The trick is, to find keywords that rank Low, but still have a reasonable amount of searches submitted for them. This way you are still choosing a keyword that is a popular search, but not many people are using that keyword as a tag. Which means you are more likely to be listed higher in the videos displayed on Youtube, for that particular keyword.

Now, there is one last trick up your sleeve that you can implement to your video upload settings. And this is all about the description you give to your video, which is going to reflect what you have already accomplished so far, with your carefully chosen tags.

In this example, I have chosen my bushcraft video "How To Make A Kydex Knife Sheath" and I have included all the tags that I feel are relevant, whilst ranking appropriately on the Google Keyword Tool. One of my chosen keyword phrases is "how to make a kydex sheath" which ranks as low, so I don't have much competition, but still gets 1,600 searches globally each month, which I'm happy with.

I now include that key phrase in the title of my video description. So when somebody submits a search on Google for "how to make a kydex sheath", not only will my video be ranked quite highly, but the words in the key phrase will be highlighted in bold lettering, showing they have matched the relevant search. This stands out on the screen and the user is more likely to click on your video, because the words they typed in are glaring at them on the screen.

It wouldn't do any harm to also include a few of your keywords in the descriptive text of your video. Use the same keywords as your title, but in a different context. Try to create a descriptive sentence about your video, around the keywords or phrases you have added as tags.