With a plethora of content consumed daily, hashtags have also evolved over the past few years. Whichever social media platform you are using, be it YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter, the correct practice of using hashtags makes all the difference.
If you are a professional YouTube creator and still lack the skill set of making your YouTube videos without the judicious use of hashtags, you are indeed losing a ton of views. To compensate for the lost views and (money), make it right by effectively using hashtags for YouTube videos and allowing it to make your content discoverable. Besides all the excellent content, YouTube SEO is the need of the hour. If YouTube is a platform to measure your efforts, the hashtag is a must-have asset to channel more views and success.
What Are YouTube Hashtags?
You have been using hashtags occasionally, but if you have to define YouTube Hashtags per se, it allows you to find videos on a topic you want to learn more about. Like all other social media platforms, YouTube incorporates hashtags for category tagging and hassle-free search purposes. These are clickable words made of a single or a combination of words preceded by a hash (#-pound sign). YouTube hashtags are the answer for instant and easy access to the topic and preventing the pain of scouring through unrelated topics present on the extensively huge YouTube platform. You can target a specific topic, and by clicking on the relevant hashtag, you can explore relative YouTube videos. YouTube hashtags serve as the best practice for cataloging content, making it easily discoverable for the target audience and effectively reaching more people. To maximize the potential of hashtags on YouTube, you should know when and how to use them.
How Do YouTube Hashtags Work?
The hashtags function is the same for all social media platforms, except YouTube. On Twitter, hashtag showcases the viral topics around a specific region or the world. On Instagram, including multiple hashtags boost visibility for users. For YouTube, using YouTube hashtags is a way for viewers and subscribers to search for related videos. For example, if you are into pilates and love to see more videos as a beginner, the hashtag should be #PilatesBeginners to find content related to the topic. There are two ways on how you can explore YouTube hashtags:
- Click on the hashtag mentioned in the video to find other related videos.
- Type the specific hashtag in the YouTube search bar to see a list of videos incorporating the particular hashtag.
YouTube is not likely a search engine and still serves as a community aiding users to find appropriate and most relevant content for their search query.
How To Add Hashtags On YouTube?
You can insert hashtags in three ways to boost your video’s potential on YouTube. You can add them to your video description, above the title, and in the title.
Hashtags in the video description
Adding hashtags at the end of the video description is a great practice. The video gets optimized with keywords, video summary, links, and hashtags at the bottom of the description. YouTube ensures hashtags are seen above the video titles for easy accessibility of other videos with the same hashtags. Hashtags shown in the title and description get hyperlinked. Also, YouTube allows up to 15 hashtags to enter here.
Hashtags in the title
A successful search query is a fine mix of relevant titles with keywords. When you add keywords in the video title, your intent is more on the hashtags than the relevant keywords. But, don’t overlook the keywords in the stride of focusing on the hashtag. Another thing to note, whenever you insert a hashtag in the title, it is easily clickable from the video page. When clicking on the hashtag, users land to your video page, not the search result of the hashtag.
Hashtags Above the Title
The YouTube hashtags that come above the title, with the first hashtags displayed in the video description, come in this category. Users can directly click the video from the hashtags above the title to watch other related videos.
Benefits Of Using YouTube Hashtags
The placement of YouTube hashtags enhances your video potential and makes it even more discoverable. But precisely, the benefits of rightly placing the hashtags to level up your digital marketing are:
1. Boosts SEO
The optimal usage of hashtags in a video is gold for SEO success, and for marketers, it widens the video reach. Using YouTube hashtags makes your video discoverable, but SEO’s effect is unparalleled, with chances of ranking higher in search results. The YouTube algorithm brings your video with the same hashtag as a related video in the sidebar area. Meaning, your video is getting a chance of being displayed organically.
2. Improves discoverability
With hashtags come the chances of enhanced discoverability. YouTube allows users to watch a video with the tags they have searched for. Hence, hashtags are a valuable and vital asset to serve audiences’ specific needs. You can prime your content discoverability with the insertion of hashtags to come on the search tags.
3. Easy Accessibility
No one owns hashtags. These are easily accessible to everyone. They are not restricted to anyone, meaning anyone on YouTube can watch every video by clicking on the hashtag and exploring the content with related videos.
Best Practices For Using YouTube Hashtags
YouTube hashtags have their own rules or practices to make things fair to the creators. These simple yet best practices allow a fundamental change to use hashtags for the growth of your channel ethically.
1. No over tagging
Overtagging is not ideal for long-term success. The perfect practice is using only 3-5 hashtags per video. Limit the hashtags in a single video with 15 hashtags, making them specific. Google itself–the owner of YouTube–has stated that if you use more than 15 hashtags on your video, it’ll ignore all hashtags.
2. Use Only Relevant Hashtags
Relevancy is the key, so use a hashtag that is more likely to resonate with the video content you are putting. It is perfectly doable, with the ideal practice of inserting 3-5 hashtags. Anything more than that is overstuffing the content with unnecessary hashtags. Ensure your prime hashtags fall under the first 3-5 hashtags.
3. Learn from other popular influencers
The world of YouTube or any online community is where you can learn from other influencers to find where you are lacking. They are influencers for a reason and have researched this space deeply on what works and what they could do to boost their views. In honing your skills for YouTube hashtags, you can learn from the popular influencers and implement their practice in your video content.
4. Create branded hashtags of your own
There are more prevalent chances of viewers swinging between related videos, leaving yours with more popular hashtags. But creating branded hashtags or something of your own yet unique leverages them to turn up to your videos with that hashtag. The YouTube branded hashtags analytics can let you track the insights.
5. Search for hashtags before adding
Adding hashtags in an instant is not the strategy that gives foolproof results. Therefore, search for it before inserting any hashtag in the YouTube video content. Not all hashtags offer quality search results, redirecting to spam-rich, irrelevant videos. Try to quickly comb through the hashtags search results before you add them.
6. No hate speech, misleading content, or anything against YouTube guidelines
YouTube is no place for hate speech. Using hashtags intending to harass someone, threatening, humiliating, intimidation get noticed instantly. Avoid using a hashtag that boosts violence or generates hatred against any group or individual. Never ingest offensive terms in the hashtags, as it can make the video fall under age restriction or get erased.
YouTube Hashtags Dos & Don’ts
There are a few community guidelines as YouTube is enormous, and like any other uploaded content has some guidelines, so does the hashtag. Follow these quick, simple instructions to make your hashtag strategy barred from any issues:
- No spaces in a hashtag. When you write a hashtag, it should be #howtopaint, not #how to paint.
- Use upto 15 hashtags, or it might get flagged for over-stuffing.
- Add relevant hashtags that justify the content so presented.
- Usage of words, phrases against YouTube community guidelines can put you in a problem.
Pro Tips: Use These Popular Hashtag Generator For YouTube
Hashtags for Likes – Get instant hashtag suggestions to increase your reach, get more people viewing your videos and in turn, more subscribers. It is a full suite of selections to up your hashtag suggestions.
Tags YouTube: Improve the ranking of your YouTube videos with this YouTube SEO tool to amp up your SEO game strongly by creating and optimizing quality content.
Keyword Tool – The best keyword tool to explore keywords users are typing in the search results. To find the videos you have created with hard work, reach the viewers, and highly relevant keywords can undoubtedly do that.
Rapid tags: Creators need easy and instant tags for their YouTube videos, and with this tool, you can settle down for the most relevant and discoverable tags.
Ksparser: Video tags are essential to help search engines understand your video. This tool makes it easy for instant keywords and tags to rank your video.
Adding hashtags to your videos is a proven way to boost views, likes, shares, comments, and ultimately YouTube subscribers. Long story short – YouTube hashtags are an excellent way to boost your content discoverability. Amplify your content with the most relevant hashtags, widening your content scope to reach a larger audience. Level up your content in the right way by incorporating these tips.
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