YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, then keyword-optimizing your videos on the platform is just equally important every bit keyword-optimizing your blog posts for Google.

Fifty-fifty if you lot've just created the next "Charlie bit my finger" video, you must recall that an algorithm dictates which videos YouTube volition serve to its audience -- and which ones it won't.

One of the best ways to keyword-optimize your videos for YouTube is leveraging tags. Below, we've put together a guide that will explain exactly what YouTube tags are, why they're important, and some best practices to follow.

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Why are YouTube tags important?

YouTube tags function to assistance YouTube grasp your video'southward content and context. This way, YouTube can understand your video's topic and category, and acquaintance it with similar content, which can dilate your video's reach. The rising of semantic search has made YouTube tags less important over time, but they're still a strategic element you tin use to your reward.

Even though YouTube sites the championship, thumbnail, and clarification as existence more of import for video SEO on their platform, studies do betoken that at that place's a slight positive relationship between keyword-optimized tags and ranking (Backlinko). Neglecting to use them isn't a dealbreaker, but they tin can definitely assistance.

They're fifty-fifty more important in cases where your target keyword is commonly misspelled because you can tag the misspellings without including them in your title and clarification.

As a secondary benefit, tags fifty-fifty help you organize and find your ain content if y'all do self-reference tagging (e.g. "Ireland trip 2019").

YouTube Tags Best Practices

To leverage YouTube tags to their fullest potential, check out these tips and tricks.

1. Make your get-go tag your target keyword and guild the rest past importance.

YouTube heavily accounts for your video's start few tags when ranking content in their search results, especially the first tag. Then brand sure your first tag is the exact keyword you lot desire to target.

2. Use some wide keywords that draw the overarching topic your video falls under as other tags.

Using broad keywords as other tags helps YouTube understand your video'southward context. For example, if you're creating a video called "How to Hit a Baseball", you'd want to add "Baseball" as a broad tag to indicate to YouTube that your video'southward overarching topic is about baseball.

3. Utilize some specific keywords that describe the topics yous covered in your video equally other tags.

Using specific keywords that describe the topics you cover in your video as other tags helps YouTube sympathize your video's content. For instance, in the same "How to Hit a Baseball" video, adding "hitting off a tee" or "hitting batting practise" as specific tags would indicate to YouTube the verbal topics your video covers.

4. Continue most of your tags between 2-3 words.

While you should certainly include long-tail keywords and a few broad match variations, YouTube seems to adopt 2-4 discussion phrases (Briggsby).

five. Do not go overboard with tags.

The point of tags is to assist the algorithm empathise what your video is well-nigh so it can surface it to users that are looking for a video similar yours. Using too many keywords tin cause confusion for what your video is actually nearly. Research suggests that the optimal number of tags is between 31 and xl (when used correctly, of form). More that dilutes their power.

graph showing the optimal number of tags as being between 31 to 40

Image Source

vi. Get inspiration from videos that are currently ranking.

If you know what you desire to rank for, take notes from those who are already ranking on the topic. Their keyword tags might give you a good starting point for enquiry and inspiration.

7. Go inspiration from YouTube auto-suggest.

Auto-suggest is a feature to aid users find what they need. YouTube isn't surfacing these suggestions willy-nilly. Chances are, in that location's a reason these keywords are suggested, so don't be agape to get straight to the horse's mouth, and so to speak, to depict inspiration.

youtube auto-suggest results for "sewing a button"

Best YouTube Tag Generators

To find the keywords you can tag in your videos and assistance them rank college in YouTube's search results, here are three of the best YouTube Tag Generators to try.

1. Keywordtool.io

keywordtool.io youtube generator tag results for "baseball"

After plugging your target keyword into its YouTube search bar, Keywordtool.io will provide you with suggested keywords, their search book, how they've trended over the past 12 months, and questions, prepositions, and hashtags that as well include your target keyword.

2. Rapidtags

rapidtags youtube tag generator results for "sewing a button"

Entering a seed keyword into Rapidtags and so hitting the button volition generate a number of related tags for your YouTube video. All-time of all, there's a re-create push for you to easily pull the text without entering it manually.

three. YTube Tool

ytube tool youtube tag generator homepage

This tool helps you extract the tags from a competitor's YouTube video. All you have to do is enter the URL, and the tool volition then return your results.

4. Keyword Keg

keyword keg youtube tag generator homepage

Using Keyword Keg, yous tin can enter your target keyword into the tool and it'll serve up its search book, cost-per-click, contest, on-page difficulty, off-page difficulty, SEO difficulty, CTR scope, keyword power, trends, and suggested keywords. You tin also filter your results by country and language.

5. VidIQ

vidiq youtube tag generator homepage

VidIQ will display your target keyword's related keywords, related score, search volume, search score, competition score, and overall score, which is a combination of a keyword's related score, search score, and competition score.

With these tools and types for generating optimized YouTube tags for SEO, yous're well on your fashion to getting your content found on YouTube. Continue optimizing other elements of the video too and monitoring your channel'south growth.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Originally published November 5, 2020 vii:00:00 AM, updated April 12 2021