According to the Orange County SEO company, metatags in your YouTube channel plays the same role as they do in a blog post. There are two ways to add tags to the videos. 

• You can randomly add tags that often make sense. 
• You can use a logical process to add tags to your youtube videos

Without further ado, let me explain the process of adding tags to your youtube videos. But let’s cover some basics first. 

Youtube tags 

In simple words, youtube tags are the phrases and words which describe what a video is all about. These tags help people find your content easily. 

Importance of Youtube tags

This common misperception prevails that YouTube tags do not play a significant role, but here is what Youtube says:

The title of your video, description, a thumbnail are all essential pieces of your metadata that can help in the discovery of your data. These all aspects of videos help your viewers decide which videos to watch. In case your video is misspelled, then tags can be helpful. Rest, tags play a very minimal role in the discovery of your video. 

According to studies, there is a positive relationship between the ranking of video and usage of keywords in tags. The same study also reveals that ⅓ of the highly ranked videos use targeted keywords in meta tags, which implies keyword tags are less critical than descriptions and titles. 

Of course, correlation ≠ causation, and you might be thinking if you should add tags at all? And the answer is, YES! Just make sure you do not spend a huge time on it. 

How to add tags to the YouTube videos

Before getting deeper into the nitty-gritty details of adding tags, you need to understand that the process of adding keywords is pretty simple. Adding tags to each video can cost you not more than 10 minutes, in my opinion any longer is just a waste of time. 

So here is the simple three-step process:

Identify your primary keywords 

Orange County SEO company reveals that there is a positive relationship between the presence of primary keywords in the meta tags and the ranking of a video. As we know, correlation ≠ causation it’s is good to take these results with a pinch of salt. 

Some believe that the search engine pays attention to the first video tag. So make sure the first tag is one of the keywords that you have decided to go with. It is because we want to rank for that keyword. 

Add relevant, common keywords from the top-ranking videos

Install any browser extensions to search for the target keyword on Youtube. TubeBuddy is the most recommended one. Browse at least five top-ranking videos in your specific niche and see what tags have been included. Often they are the first few videos. 

Once you browse them, you will notice the top 5 videos will have almost similar tags, and you can use the same. 

Add relevant keywords with search volume

To find the relevant keywords with great search volume, go to the keyword explorers and identify the search engine to YouTube. 

Paste all the tags that you have found before and hit search to see the search volume. You will find the monthly search volume of each keyword, and now you can sort them in descending order to finding the one that is most relevant to the niche. Choose the descriptive keywords with have high search volume and low competition. 

Best practices

Below is a list of general advice while tagging all videos 

Don’t go overboard with tags

Although there are no limits on how much tags you add, it is good to keep it up to 500 characters. But here is the thing, just because you can add 500 characters does not mean you always should, there is a sweet spot around 300 characters. 

Add relevant tags and do not go overboard and stuff keywords. 

Don’t mislead people 

Using tags that can mislead people goes against YouTube spam policy. In doing so, your video can be taken down. Thus what constitutes a misleading tag? 

• Irrelevant keywords (writing iPhone apps for a vide about Andriod apps)
• Competitors names 
• Celebrities name 

Bottom line: Always use relevant tags 

Never add tags to the description of the video

Adding excessive tags won’t benefit you in the long run. Secondly, it also misleads people. Never place the list of tags in the description of the video

Never overthink

If a tag looks relevant, then you can add it. If it doesn’t, please do not. Use your common sense. 

Final thoughts 

While it is good to add tags to your videos, but it is not something worth spending a lot of time. YouTube itself admits that they do not play a very significant role as compared to your video title, description, and thumbnail. Invest time in that thing, which matters the most. 

Looking to know more about YouTube SEO? Contact an Orange County SEO company like Drive Traffic Media.