How to Properly Tag in YouTube
The tags you add to your YouTube videos when you upload them -- in other words, short, relevant phrases and keywords -- help users searching for content to find your videos. Effective tagging increases the likelihood users come upon your videos using organic searches, the easiest means of ensuring high traffic over the long term without promotional legwork on your part. Practice effective tagging techniques to maximize YouTube video views.
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Instructions
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Avoid using articles such as "a," "an" or "the," prepositions such as "of" and conjunctions such as "and" in your tags. YouTube's search engine omits extraneous words such as these, so it's pointless to include them in your tags.
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Input not only tags that generally describe your content of your video, but also those you imagine someone who might enjoy your video might input. For example, if you post a video of Dolly Parton performing, use not only tags like "Dolly Parton live" and "Dolly Parton concert," but also "women country music" and "live country music." On the other hand, avoid adding tags that don't relate to your video -- don't tag a Dolly Parton video "Faith Hill concert."
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Capitalize proper nouns, such as the names of cities, people and companies. Doing so makes your tags more specific, increasing the likelihood of the right users visiting your video.
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Limit the total number of tags you use. Rather than include all potential tags that describe your video, choose a small -- a maximum of 10 is a good number to try and stay under -- but diverse group of tags which span a wide range of possible YouTube searches.
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Use short phrases -- rather than individual words -- as tags. By default, phrases are more specific than tags, and a user searching for strings of words is more likely to arrive at videos specifically linked to the chosen search criteria.
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Tips & Warnings
Tagging effectively is an important part of driving users to your content, but it isn't the only component in place. Writing effective titles and descriptions not only aids in increasing your organic search traffic, but can also entice visitors to your videos to watch longer and even seek out others.
