What Are YouTube Tags & Why Are They Important?

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Therefore, keyword optimization of your videos on the platform is just as important as keyword optimization of your blog posts for Google.

Even if you’ve just made the next “Charlie Bit My Finger” video, remember that an algorithm dictates which videos YouTube makes available to the audience – and which not.

One of the best ways to keyword-optimize your videos for YouTube is to use tags. Below, we’ve put together a guide that explains exactly what YouTube tags are, why they’re important, and what best practices to follow. We’ll also show you three YouTube tag generators that can help you identify the keywords that will help your videos appear at the top of the platform’s search results.

Why are YouTube tags important?

YouTube tags are important as they help YouTube capture the content and context of your video. This allows YouTube to understand the subject and category of your video and associate it with similar content, increasing the reach of your video.

YouTube tags best practices

Read these tips and tricks to get the most out of YouTube tags.

1. Make your first day your target keyword and rank the rest by importance.

YouTube takes the first few tags of your video into consideration when ranking content in search results, especially the first day. So make sure that your first day is exactly the keyword that you want to target.

2. Use some general keywords that describe the high-level topic your video falls under as other tags.

By using common keywords rather than other tags, YouTube can better understand the context of your video. For example, if you’re creating a video titled “How to Beat a Baseball,” you might want to add “Baseball” as a wide tag to indicate to YouTube that the overarching topic of your video is Baseball.

3. Use certain keywords that describe the topics covered in your video as other tags.

By using certain keywords that describe the topics you cover in your video as other tags, YouTube can better understand the content of your video. For example, in the same “How to Hit a Baseball” video, if you add the addition of “Teeing Off” or “Hitting Hitting Practice” as specific tags, YouTube will show the exact topics your video covers.

Best YouTube Tag Generators

Here are three of the best YouTube tag generators you can try to identify the keywords to tag on your videos and rank them higher in YouTube search results.

1. Keyword keg

Keyword Keg lets you put your target keyword in the tool and it will get the search volume, cost per click, competition, on-page difficulty, off-page difficulty, SEO difficulty, CTR range , Keyword Performance, etc. Trends and Suggested Keywords. You can also filter your results by country and language.

2. Keywordtool.io

After you have inserted your target keyword into the YouTube search bar, Keywordtool.io will provide you with suggestions for keywords, their search volume, the development over the last 12 months as well as questions, prepositions and hashtags that also contain your target keyword.

3. VidIQ

VidIQ shows the associated keywords, the associated result, the search volume, the search result, the competition result and the overall result of your target keyword. This is a combination of the associated result, the search result and the competition result of a keyword.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for completeness.