HOW TO ADD TAGS AND A DESCRIPTION TO YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEOS
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Adding Tags To Your Videos
Tags aren’t as important as title and thumbnail…but they do help YouTube know what your video is about..
Here’s how I use video tags for my videos:
- My first tag is my exact target keyword or keyword phrase.
- I also include a few variations of that word or phrase.
- Finally, I make a few of my tags other topics that my video covers.
Targeted tags not only help you rank for your target keyword, but also get you to show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube
1. TubeBuddy Tag Explorer, Sorter and Suggested Tags
TubeBuddy is a great tool for optimizing your tags for YouTube SEO. It has a wealth of tag research tools for finding the best tags for your videos.
These quick tutorials takes you through how to use the best ones:
TubeBuddy Tag Explorer - Quick Guide
TubeBuddy Tag Sorter - Quick Guide
TubeBuddy Tag Sorter - Quick Guide
If you don't have TubeBuddy, you can get it for free here
In this example of one of my videos, you can see how popular different tags are and how your video is ranking for them.
The light blue number alongside the "Kartra" tag is the rating for that keyword. You are looking for a higher value that shows a popular keyword with low competition.
The numbers in green show where you rank in YouTube search for that keyword phrase. So you see this video ranks #1 for "Kartra Marketing Campaigns".
2. Learn From Your Competitors
Don’t be afraid to use the same tags that your competitors use. In fact, it’s a YouTube marketing best practice that has worked for years.
When your video’s tags match a video that someone’s watching, you have a good chance of showing up in the "Suggested Video" section.
Again TubeBuddy can help you with this. Here, we did a search for the keyword "sales funnels". At no.1 is this video from Russell Brunson. With the video playing and the TubeBuddy plugin installed, you get to see the tags that are added to this video. If you make a video on the same or similar topics, you should aim to apply these tags for maximum results.
Search vs Suggested Videos
YouTube explains in their discovery and search algorithm the following:
"Videos are ranked based on a variety of factors including how well the title, description, and video content match the viewer’s query. Beyond that, we look at which videos have driven the most engagement for a query, and make sure it’s easy for viewers to find those."
So yes, keywords matter from both "on-page" and “in-video” perspectives. Matching search intent is critical, especially when you are a new channel.
However, if you want to grow, you need to also start to appear in YouTube suggestions. The key ingredients for achieving this are watch time and high video engagement.
YouTube wants you to keep viewers on their platform for as long as possible. That’s because more watch time = more ads shown = more money in the bank for Google.
They also want you to drive engagement to your videos, through comments and shares, likes and dislikes and they’ll reward you with visibility in suggested search.
Don't Forget Your Free Tools to Help You Grow Your YouTube Channel
Adding A DescriptionTo Your Videos
Your video’s description serves a number of purposes. Primarily it is to help YouTube understand more about your video when ranking.
However, it is also a place to put links to affiliate products, free downloads etc. This is the first step in monetizing your YouTube channel
1. Optimizing Your Description For Better Ranking
Your video description helps YouTube and Google understand the context and positioning of your video. The better they understand your video, the higher you’ll rank, both in YouTube and Google searches. More often than not, you will also show up in the Suggested Video sidebar.
Here are the basic guidelines for the description:
- Include your keyword in the first 25 words
- Make the description at least 250 words
- Include your keyword 2-4 times
This will help to optimize the description which tells Google and YouTube what your video is about.
Here is that example of a description for a Brian Dean video that’s optimized around the keyword “On-page SEO”. You can see the target keyword three times, including in the opening sentence.
2. Adding Links To You Description - Monetization Step 1
Your description is also a great place to put links. These would normally fall into the following categories:
- Affiliate links to products you recommend or review in the video.
- Links to download any free guides mentioned in the video. (to build your email list)
- Links to blog posts or web pages where viewers can learn more about the content in the video.
- Links to other videos in your playlist that relate to the video being viewed.
Just remember, that YouTube rewards you for keeping people on the platform, so be sure to use option 4. as often as possible to increase your ranking.
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