YouTube heavily accounts for your video’s first few tags when ranking content in their search results, especially the first tag. Make your first tag your target keyword and order the rest by importance. To leverage YouTube tags to their fullest potential, check out these tips and tricks. They're even more important in cases where your target keyword is commonly misspelled because you can tag the misspellings without including them in your title and description.Īs a secondary benefit, tags even help you organize and find your own content if you do self-reference tagging (e.g. Neglecting to use them isn't a dealbreaker, but they can definitely help. The rise of semantic search has made YouTube tags less important over time, but they're still a strategic element you can use to your advantage.Įven though YouTube sites the title, thumbnail, and description as being more important for video SEO on their platform, studies do indicate that there's a slight positive relationship between keyword-optimized tags and ranking ( Backlinko). This way, YouTube can understand your video’s topic and category, and associate it with similar content, which can amplify your video’s reach. YouTube tags function to help YouTube grasp your video’s content and context. They let your viewers, and YouTube, know what your videos are about and can help them rank higher in the platform’s search results. YouTube Tags are words and phrases you can include in your YouTube videos’ description.