Tagging is no longer just a schoolyard game of ‘who’s it’… It has taken on a brand new meaning in the digital marketing world of Twitter, YouTube and Blogging. Assigning Tags to your posts and more specifically, to your videos will help to classify your content, drive traffic and supercharge your SEO efforts.
Tag is not a game. It’s serious business!
Here are a few Tagging Tips for YouTube that will help your audience find your videos online, and give you the best return on your video campaigns.
- Form Identifying Phrases
Try to stay away from broad one-word terms like ‘web’ or ‘software’, instead choose longer relevant phrases that are more descriptive of your product/service or content and subject matter. An example might be to use the complete phrase “How to Bank online” instead of simply tagging “bank” and “online”. Using phrases will better identify your video from the millions of other similar videos being uploaded every year.
- Be Brand Specific
Google will reward you for this by featuring your videos at the top of the Search results when your company/brand is being searched. Don’t be afraid to put your brand name, product name or a CEO/Executive’s name in the title, description and tags of your video. Anytime someone searches for your company by name, your video(s) will be the first to pop up and leave the first impression. Google favours video, which is why it is more important than ever to link your videos to your brand with tags.
- Use YouTube Tools
If you’re finding it difficult to come up with effective phrases or keywords, YouTube has a few tools that will help you build your tagging strategy. First, start typing one of your keywords into the search bar – the ‘Auto-Suggest’ will kick in and give you 5+ of the most relevant phrases based on popularity of the search. This will give you an indication of what viewers are searching for regularly. You should also do some research on your competitors. Find videos that are similar to yours (in terms of content) or snoop on your direct competitors – make sure you use some of the same tagging methods to capture the attention of your shared market. Finally, YouTube offers a keyword Suggestion tool that will generate suggestions based on your core terms and your competitors. Use any or all of these methods to nail down the most relevant and most popular keywords and phrases for your video.
Start properly tagging your videos as soon as you upload them. But don’t fret, nothing is set in stone. It’s not too late to use these tips to update the tags you’ve already assigned to your videos. You’re it! Try these tagging techniques today!
