Keywords in Title/Description/Tags experiment (useful for a starting youtuber)

Good information! How do we get out video to show along other popular videos with the same method?
 
This is a really interesting experiment. I think I do this already but I will definitily focus on this to see if I also see a increase :)
 
Altervoid said:
Hi! I just recently started my own youtube channel and as my videos gained no views at all, I started researching tags and keywords. What I learned is, that you are supposed to use phrases rather than one-word keywords as a starting youtuber, because people can find you better that way. For example, if you write "game" in your tags and search for it, there are millions of videos, but if you write "game location all secrets" for example, there aren't that many videos right? So people can find you better.

Okay, so I changed most of my tags into phrases with this rule in mind. But still no views. I tried to search my vids using the exact same phrase to no avail, not even a single phrase found my video (I tried going to page 27 every time with every phrase), that's strange I thought. So I did an experiment on 3 phrases from 3 different videos (I will refer to phrase as a tag from now on) and fyi I searched all tags in Incognito mode, so search results are valid in general (no cookies or history intervening):

experiment 1:
  • Tag added to the video = can't find vid (not even when filtering "This Week" and going to page 27)
  • Tag added to the Description = video found on page 24
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to the Title = video found on page 8
  • Tag added to the Desc. and Title = video found on page 7 It is probably a bad Tag overall, because page 7 is still bad. So I tried less played game with less videos on YT.
experiment 2:
  • Tag added to the video = video found on page 7
  • Tag added to the Description = video found on page 6
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to the Title = video found on page 3 Nice, but I can do better, so I tried once more.
experiment 3:
  • Tag added to video = video found on page 3
  • Tag added to Description = video found on first page (12th from top)
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to Title = video found on first page (5th from top) 5th from top is a pretty good result I would say!
So what did I learn:
  • Biggest result came from having tag in Title, then Description and then in Keywords
  • Only keywords without the tag in Desc. or Title did almost nothing
  • Position of tag in description does NOT matter
  • You should try to add some tags you feel strong about to the video description BUT do not add all your keywords one after another, that is against Youtube guidelines. Instead work your tags in the text, talk about the video and its content, it really helps.
  • Adding tag to the Title helps a lot, but be careful with it. Title full of tags is no good and do not fall into clickbait. I would say take one tag that describes the video well and add it to the title.
Some more helpful tips I learned (but not tested):
  • Position in Tags does not matter
  • File name of a video you upload matters, so try to name your files with title you will give to the video

Hope this helps you if you're starting just like me or if you're struggling to get some views. Maybe this all is obvious to some of you, but I didn't know it and it would have been helpful for me when I started uploading videos.

Thank you for reading this and good luck to you all!
Click to expand...

A very informative read and no doubt very useful to a lot of people on here, me included! You really did do your homework for this post and I thank you for the time you took in researching and testing different methods of SEO optimization for YouTube videos. There are dozens of video tutorials out there but I have never seen someone go into as much detail as you have!
 
Very good writeup...a very scientific approach![DOUBLEPOST=1520230402,1520229551][/DOUBLEPOST]One follow up question...how long did you wait after changing tags/descriptions before seeing a change in your videos search rankings? I've always wondered how quickly YT updates that info once you change a video.
 
I just tried your experiment on a week old video of mine. Revamped the title, descriptions, and tags for 2-3 phrases (or tags as you called them). Then i checked my rankings on these 2-3 tag phrases and in 24 hours there has been absolutely no change in the search results. These phrases were and still are ranked at 9, 12, 20th.

There must have been other factors at play regarding your result changes. Unless it takes more than 24hrs for YT's search results to update...but I've posted this question a few different places and no one seems to know about this question.
 
Interesting to note about the position in the description. I try to have more detailed descriptions now, about the game, the directors, release dates, all of that, to try to maximize phrases and keywords associated with the game without spamming. I haven't been consistent with it and have only been trying for a couple weeks, but I'm curious if it'll help drive traffic in the long run.
 
T
Altervoid said:
Hi! I just recently started my own youtube channel and as my videos gained no views at all, I started researching tags and keywords. What I learned is, that you are supposed to use phrases rather than one-word keywords as a starting youtuber, because people can find you better that way. For example, if you write "game" in your tags and search for it, there are millions of videos, but if you write "game location all secrets" for example, there aren't that many videos right? So people can find you better.

Okay, so I changed most of my tags into phrases with this rule in mind. But still no views. I tried to search my vids using the exact same phrase to no avail, not even a single phrase found my video (I tried going to page 27 every time with every phrase), that's strange I thought. So I did an experiment on 3 phrases from 3 different videos (I will refer to phrase as a tag from now on) and fyi I searched all tags in Incognito mode, so search results are valid in general (no cookies or history intervening):

experiment 1:
  • Tag added to the video = can't find vid (not even when filtering "This Week" and going to page 27)
  • Tag added to the Description = video found on page 24
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to the Title = video found on page 8
  • Tag added to the Desc. and Title = video found on page 7 It is probably a bad Tag overall, because page 7 is still bad. So I tried less played game with less videos on YT.
experiment 2:
  • Tag added to the video = video found on page 7
  • Tag added to the Description = video found on page 6
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to the Title = video found on page 3 Nice, but I can do better, so I tried once more.
experiment 3:
  • Tag added to video = video found on page 3
  • Tag added to Description = video found on first page (12th from top)
  • Moved Tag to the end of long description, same result
  • Tag added to Title = video found on first page (5th from top) 5th from top is a pretty good result I would say!
So what did I learn:
  • Biggest result came from having tag in Title, then Description and then in Keywords
  • Only keywords without the tag in Desc. or Title did almost nothing
  • Position of tag in description does NOT matter
  • You should try to add some tags you feel strong about to the video description BUT do not add all your keywords one after another, that is against Youtube guidelines. Instead work your tags in the text, talk about the video and its content, it really helps.
  • Adding tag to the Title helps a lot, but be careful with it. Title full of tags is no good and do not fall into clickbait. I would say take one tag that describes the video well and add it to the title.
Some more helpful tips I learned (but not tested):
  • Position in Tags does not matter
  • File name of a video you upload matters, so try to name your files with title you will give to the video

Hope this helps you if you're starting just like me or if you're struggling to get some views. Maybe this all is obvious to some of you, but I didn't know it and it would have been helpful for me when I started uploading videos.

Thank you for reading this and good luck to you all!
Click to expand...
this is great advice:)
 
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