What Are Your Best Tagging Tips?

[AwesomeBomber]

I'm curious, ever since I started using YouTube, before even making my channel, I've been intrigued by the different kinds of tags each individual person can come up with. Even if 2 people are making the EXACT same video, with the same general premise, odds are, they'd pick different tags from one another. Maybe, one of them would only tag his/her videos with the logical stuff like: "Gameplay" "Funny Moments" "Cats", Whilst the other would tag it with the most obscure/bizarre tags they could come up with.

That being said, what would you pick? Are there any personal rules/rituals that you abide by when picking the best tags? Maybe you're like me, and occasionally intentionally misspell a word, just slightly, in the hope that someone may have misspelt it in that exact way and happened to hit enter? Reply with what your tips are and hopefully, we can all exchange tips and tricks between each other.

If you would like to share in-depth, name a specific video topic and give us examples of exactly what you would tag said video with, if you had to try and grab the attention of someone using the YouTube Search.

 

[projectorgaming]

Tagging for me is a mixed bag. I've done it one way for a while, and recently I was suggested to do it a different way. Before I used one word tags. So for a walkthrough of bloodborne I would tag it something like this,, " bloodborne, walkthrough, guide, gameplay, game play, walk through, playthrough, weapons, best, tutorial, how-to, beginner" and so on. Recently people suggested I use key phrases instead. Same example would go like this , " bloodborne walkthrough, bloodborne guide, bloodborne gameplay", and so on. I've re-tagged several of my videos using this method and am still waiting to make a determination if using phrases works better. ( I'm a fairly low view channel so it may be a bit before I can come to an honest conclusion.). That being said I try and make sure I get all my title words in the tags, as well as just come up with things people would search for. I typically also mispell words like you if it's something commonly misspelled. Also things like... some people might search for gameplay, while others will put a space between game and play. Same thing with walkthrough or let's play, "letsplay" Also have punctuation to deal with there. I'm not sure how youtube handles all that. If you tag lets play, and someone searches letsplay, does it still get a hit? I doubt anyone knows conclusively. There is so much possible variation though it's hard to nail down everything. I know if searching for something, I will typically type "how do i .....", but someone else may types "what is the best way to...." or "guide to ...." , etc. I'll let you know for sure how my phrase vs individual tags goes if and when I can see a noticeable difference. I also read somewhere (this is all just heresay of course), that as your video gets shared more/ commented on, etc, that the tags become less important, and the search engine utilizes information based on people sharing it, where it was shared to, the content of comments, etc. Now if thats true or not I have no clue.

 

[WatcheroftheDeep]

search for a similar video to yours on youtube... it's out there go find it.

Once on the video page, inspect the code of the page. Search for "keywords". it should look like

<meta name="keywords" content="">

whatever is in the content quotes are the keywords they used.

 

[TheSwedishTraveler]

I would tag everything relevant to the video, to maybe optimise the search for it!

 

[JMAAMusic]

I would suggest you to always use tags relative to your video's content. If, for example, your video talks about a movie (whatever movie it is), you should include tags such as "movie review" or "movie commentary" or the title of the movie, and be sure it's all the most tags possible related to the movie you're talking about.

Normally, not only tags help out positioning your video, but also does the description and title, so be sure to use tags in a non-invasive manner in your description and title accordingly. It's pure SEO stuff.

Just avoid using misleading tags, given that misleading meta might get you even in serious trouble.

 

[AwesomeBomber]

I'm not sure how youtube handles all that. If you tag lets play, and someone searches letsplay, does it still get a hit? I doubt anyone knows conclusively.

I just tested this out, with a video of mine. If you search "Forza Horizon 2 Wheelspin" It'll be the 2nd result, that's also one of the tags that I used for the video. However, when I search "Forza Horizon 2 Wheel Spin" it's the 4th result and that is NOT a tag that I used. It's quite interesting to see actually as, with this information, I'm now probably going to add the tag ending in "Wheel spin" just to see if that makes any difference, in the coming weeks. But overall, it doesn't seem to matter all that much to be extremely specific, the video just has to, as you mentioned, have some sort of interaction on it, be it shares, comments, etc. and a fair amount of views.[DOUBLEPOST=1456745260,1456745066][/DOUBLEPOST]

search for a similar video to yours on youtube... it's out there go find it.

Once on the video page, inspect the code of the page. Search for "keywords". it should look like

<meta name="keywords" content="">

whatever is in the content quotes are the keywords they used.

Definitely a good tip, however, if you have Google Chrome, then I'm pretty sure there are Extensions out there that add tags in every video's description again, like how it was before YouTube removed them. Not too sure if those kinds of Extensions are still around, but there definitely used to be a few.[DOUBLEPOST=1456745736][/DOUBLEPOST]

Just avoid using misleading tags, given that misleading meta might get you even in serious trouble.

Agreed, it's pointless really, using misleading tags, thumbnails, or just misleading anyone in general, if you want to be trusted by, not only potential viewers, but other YouTubers too! I have a friend who does that kind of stuff and he's so adamant towards using it that you can't persuade him not to, but, his channel has been removed/hacked 3 times over the course of 2 years and he's had to re-create channels, over and over. He just manages to p**s people off, by using all of these misleading things...

 

[JMAAMusic]

Agreed, it's pointless really, using misleading tags, thumbnails, or just misleading anyone in general, if you want to be trusted by, not only potential viewers, but other YouTubers too! I have a friend who does that kind of stuff and he's so adamant towards using it that you can't persuade him not to, but, his channel has been removed/hacked 3 times over the course of 2 years and he's had to re-create channels, over and over. He just manages to p**s people off, by using all of these misleading things...

One funny fact of this about misleading thumbnails/titles/etc. is that this is part of a community guideline that gets breached every single time by prank channels and so, without YouTube even noticing. SoFloAntonio is a huge infractor in this, given that he's literally the king of spam in YouTube. This guy will not only create misleading clickbait thumbnails and titles (hence the "GONE SEXUAL GONE WRONG" thing he invented around YouTube) but he will even also reupload the same video one week later for just getting fresh views.

One of his thumbnails even is literally his manboob sticking out.

This is part of the Community Guideline of Spam that is present on YouTube. It specifically says in the Community Guidelines page:

Everyone hates spam. Don't create misleading descriptions, tags, titles, or thumbnails in order to increase views. It's not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

 

[subversiveasset]

In my experience, I believe that targeted, long-tail keywords are more effective than shorter, more general keywords.

As AwesomeBomber noted, Youtube prioritizes exact matches in titles, tags, and descriptions. So, an exact match for the search "Game Title Let's Play" would be having a tag for "Game Title Let's Play".

My understanding is that youtube doesn't really "add" keywords together. So, if someone is searching for "Game Title Let's Play", then having one tag for "Game Title" and another tag for "Let's Play" doesn't create an exact match for either keyword. To the contrary, "Game Title" creates an exact match for someone searching for "Game Title" (but this is likely to be a very oversaturated tag, so it's unlikely you'll rank in the first page for this), and "Let's play" creates an exact match for someone searching for "Let's Play" (but seriously...who would only search just for "let's play", and why would they want to see your particular game/LP?) Because exact matches are prioritized, getting popular variants is important in my experience. For example "Game Title Let's Play" vs "Game Title Gameplay" vs "Game Title Walkthrough" vs "Game Title LP". Keep in mind that these variants are OK because they all can describe the same content. Using misleading keywords is ineffective for a number of reasons, so I wouldn't get into the habit of using misleading keywords when there are so many good ones.

In my experience, writing a good, long, human readable description that reinforces your tags is also extremely helpful. (I have heard some information that suggests that youtube relies on a good description more than it does tags, but I have nothing official on this.)

My understanding about the SEO of writing a description is that it borrows a bit of the advice for SEO for blog posts -- so think of your description as a place for a mini-blog about your content. In this case, the idea here is that you want keyword density. So, you want to have exact matches for your keyword included organically in sentences and paragraphs.

For example, if I were doing a Let's Play on Game Title, I would definitely write, "Welcome to episode x of Game Title Let's Play by [YoutubeChannel]. In this part of the Game Title Walkthrough, we will see [insert relevant plot details, etc.]

[Insert basic summary of what Game Title is about.]

If you liked this video, please check out the rest of [YouTubeChannel]'s Game Title Let's Play Series here: (insert link to playlist.)"

^by doing this, I reinforce my keywords organically..."Game Title Let's Play" is in the description several times, but I also include variants like "game title walkthrough"

 

[JMAAMusic]

In my experience, I believe that targeted, long-tail keywords are more effective than shorter, more general keywords.

As AwesomeBomber noted, Youtube prioritizes exact matches in titles, tags, and descriptions. So, an exact match for the search "Game Title Let's Play" would be having a tag for "Game Title Let's Play".

My understanding is that youtube doesn't really "add" keywords together. So, if someone is searching for "Game Title Let's Play", then having one tag for "Game Title" and another tag for "Let's Play" doesn't create an exact match for either keyword. To the contrary, "Game Title" creates an exact match for someone searching for "Game Title" (but this is likely to be a very oversaturated tag, so it's unlikely you'll rank in the first page for this), and "Let's play" creates an exact match for someone searching for "Let's Play" (but seriously...who would only search just for "let's play", and why would they want to see your particular game/LP?) Because exact matches are prioritized, getting popular variants is important in my experience. For example "Game Title Let's Play" vs "Game Title Gameplay" vs "Game Title Walkthrough" vs "Game Title LP". Keep in mind that these variants are OK because they all can describe the same content. Using misleading keywords is ineffective for a number of reasons, so I wouldn't get into the habit of using misleading keywords when there are so many good ones.

In my experience, writing a good, long, human readable description that reinforces your tags is also extremely helpful. (I have heard some information that suggests that youtube relies on a good description more than it does tags, but I have nothing official on this.)

My understanding about the SEO of writing a description is that it borrows a bit of the advice for SEO for blog posts -- so think of your description as a place for a mini-blog about your content. In this case, the idea here is that you want keyword density. So, you want to have exact matches for your keyword included organically in sentences and paragraphs.

For example, if I were doing a Let's Play on Game Title, I would definitely write, "Welcome to episode x of Game Title Let's Play by [YoutubeChannel]. In this part of the Game Title Walkthrough, we will see [insert relevant plot details, etc.]

[Insert basic summary of what Game Title is about.]

If you liked this video, please check out the rest of [YouTubeChannel]'s Game Title Let's Play Series here: (insert link to playlist.)"

^by doing this, I reinforce my keywords organically..."Game Title Let's Play" is in the description several times, but I also include variants like "game title walkthrough"

The closed captions can also help in SEO stuff, because they're basically still meta text to the video.

 

[AwesomeBomber]

For example, if I were doing a Let's Play on Game Title, I would definitely write, "Welcome to episode x of Game Title Let's Play by [YoutubeChannel]. In this part of the Game Title Walkthrough, we will see [insert relevant plot details, etc.]

[Insert basic summary of what Game Title is about.]

If you liked this video, please check out the rest of [YouTubeChannel]'s Game Title Let's Play Series here: (insert link to playlist.)"

^by doing this, I reinforce my keywords organically..."Game Title Let's Play" is in the description several times, but I also include variants like "game title walkthrough"

I've heard a lot about the importance of a good and packed description, and how tags can also be attributed to it and that it's almost as important for them to be added into the description, but never practised it that much myself. However, I used to, occasionally, add such a thing about a year or so ago and to be perfectly honest, I think it worked.. I just got kind of lazy and viewed making a good description pointless since I, myself, never check other people's description that often, so why would everyone else? But these points that you brought up, which can I just say, were some really good tips! Are definitelly something that I'm going to be testing out, and I'll most likely be keeping track of that this week as well. This week is pretty much going to be my test on YouTube tags lol, I'll be sure to post whatever things more I discover whilst doing this, on this thread!