YouTube Hashtag Extractor
YouTube tags are hidden meta tags associated with videos on YouTube. Not all videos have these tags because the video publisher adds them when uploading the video.
Tag Extractor tool is a convenient way to extract and display these meta tags associated with any public video. Extracting YouTube tags can provide great insight into how competitor videos and other high-performing videos use these tags to improve performance.
Don't confuse tags with the tags that appear in the video description and above the video title.
What are YouTube Tags?
The confusing thing about YouTube is that there are two types of tags:
- Tags: This is the invisible "meta" tag associated with the video.
- HashTags: These are the visible tags displayed above the title of the video. See more information on YouTube tags.
Tags are added to videos when they are uploaded to YouTube. Unlike HashTags, they are not preceded by a pound sign (#), and they can also contain spaces to contain multi-word strings. Best practice is to use all lowercase tags with alphanumeric characters.
Since these tags aren't visible on the actual video page, our friends at SEOptimer kindly shared some screenshots with us so we could get a behind-the-scenes peek at how they tag videos.
At the bottom of the Video Details page in YouTube Studio there is a "Show More" hyperlink:
When clicked, it expands more options, including Labels:
A YouTube video can have a tag of up to 500 characters - that's a lot! In the example above, we can see that the SEOptimer video has 11 tags. In total, the labels only take up 164 characters out of 500, so there's room for more.
Now comes the magic. Using YouTube Tag Extractor, we can easily reveal these hidden meta tags with the click of a button:
You'll notice that the tags are extracted in the exact order that the author used. This gives you real insight into what the author considers to be (a) the most important topics in the video, and; (b) the highest priority tags for video SEO.
Why are YouTube Tags important?
So now we know that YouTube Tag Extractor works like magic on any public YouTube video and extracts invisible meta tags while maintaining the order of these tags as indicated by the video author.
But why is this important? You're probably reading this page right now because you're interested in the overall topic of video SEO. We know from YouTube itself that many signals contribute to the overall ranking of search results pages (title description hashtags thumbnail tags video quality, etc.).
We recommend you get the basics right and take advantage of all the features YouTube has to offer to categorize and apply meaning to your videos. The jury is still out on the extent to which hidden meta tags affect search result rankings, but our recommendations will always favor Optimize and use all YouTube features together. After all, the more YouTube knows about your video content, the more likely your video will rank higher in YouTube search results.
YouTube Tags strategy
There are some strategic considerations when extracting tags from competitors' videos.
1. The video has no tags: This is actually quite common because the tags field is hidden behind a "Show more" text link at the bottom of the video detail page in YouTube Studio. So unless your competitors are YouTube savvy, they may simply ignore this and upload Zero tagged videos. This is a good result for you, as any tags you add to your video will be better. Consider the wording your competitors use in their video titles and descriptions, and whether they use any tags in their video descriptions.
2. The video is tagged: Like the SEOptimer example above, 11 tags are shown in their video, the next step is to use your best judgment to assess the quality of these tags. Try to find any surprises or anomalies about labels and the order of those labels. Again the above example The tags from SEOptimer are a pretty typical set of tags that start with the brand term "seoptimer," then include broad category terms like "seo," and expand to include subcategory or niche terms like "seo reporting."
The ordering of these tags gives you an important clue as to how they perceive their key terms. For direct competitors, we recommend using similar broad tags to stay competitive, but also using some unique tags to capture niche searches where you might have a competitive advantage.
The great thing about tags is that you can also edit your video after you post it. So, if you feel that some of your videos might perform better in search, or that your competitors outperform you on certain key terms, try editing your tags accordingly.
A final consideration for your tags is what YouTube describes right above the tag input box:
"Tags can be useful if content in your videos is frequently misspelled".
Because these tags are hidden on the page, they're ideal for containing common misspellings of your brand's products or services, including other usages such as colloquial slang or other "language of the internet" used in your organization.
People online often abbreviate and use informal terms, so depending on your video, it might be helpful to include some of these terms in the tags field if relevant.
