Tips & TricksWhy meta data is important for your YouTube channel?

Did you know that YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine after Google?! More than 300 hours of videos get uploaded to YouTube every hour, out of which less than 5% get a decent amount of views! And, around 52% of the video views come from YouTube searches & recommendations. These YouTube search results and recommendations depend mainly on the metadata used in the videos.

READ MORE: Simple Ideas That Can Optimize Your YouTube Channel

What is metadata of a YouTube video?

The metadata of a YouTube video are the Title, Description and Tags used for it. If the metadata is optimized properly then the chances of the videos appearing in YouTube search results and recommendations increases exponentially. The metadata used should be appropriate and relevant to the content of the video. YouTube confirms that the use of metadata helps the site index your content better, which is vital to building more views – both from search and from the suggested videos feature. To ensure that your content is well indexed and is easily discoverable throughout the platform, use strong titles, descriptions and tags.

1. Title:

Titles help audiences and YouTube’s search algorithm to make sense of your content. Hence, make sure that you include relevant keywords in the title which describe your content. It is also important to treat titles and thumbnails as complementary elements that work together to tell a cohesive story about your content.

Pointers to keep in mind while writing video titles:

• Include descriptive and relevant keywords toward the beginning of a title.
• Display branding and episode numbers toward the end whenever appropriate.
• Keep titles concise so they don’t get cut-off because of a high character count.
• Always represent your content accurately; misleading titles can cause audience drop-offs that negatively impact viewership and watch time.
• Create titles that reinforce their respective thumbnails. Together, they should tell a cohesive and click-compelling story.
• Update titles so they remain relevant and continue to attract views over time.

2. Description:

Similar to the title, a video’s description field is a valuable real estate that helps audiences and YouTube’s discovery systems to better understand what your content is all about. Only the first few sentences of your video description will appear in search results and above the fold on a watch page – so make them count!

Pointers to keep in mind while writing video descriptions:

• Accurately describe your video in one to three concise sentences at the top.
• Include relevant keywords in your description that can aid in content discovery.
• Add experience-enhancing links such as subscribe, related videos, playlists, etc.
• Display a recurring channel boilerplate that includes relevant search-driven keywords. Including this boilerplate in all descriptions will inform first-time viewers about your channel.

3. Tags:

These are the descriptive keywords that will help people find your videos. Include a mix of specific and general tags. Include tags that are keywords in your title and description. Also, consider including a set of standard tags that can be applied across all of your videos to help explain what your channel is all about (ex: Music, Hollywood, Startup etc)

Pointers to keep in mind while using tags:

• Include a mix of video-specific and more general (but still relevant) tags.
• Only use enough tags to thoroughly and accurately describe your videos.
• Update video tags when new and relevant viewership trends emerge.
• Include keywords from your title in your video’s tags.
• Use quotation marks (“) to convey multi-word tags (ex: “Harry Potter”)

Read More: Best practices for your video SEO

Once you optimize the title, tags, and description, you are almost done! For content creators, this is one of the best organic strategies to generate more views on the videos.