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YouTube tags may not be as important as they once were, but you might still consider adding them to your podcast episodes on YouTube. As you may recall, I livestream all my podcast episodes to YouTube. Once the livestream is complete, I edit out the countdown timer, and the video is still available for all to replay on YouTube and YouTube Music.
Let me walk you through how that works.
What are YouTube video tags?
Here’s what YouTube officially says about that: “Tags can be useful if content in your stream is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your stream.”
When I looked for them on one of my videos on the public side, I couldn’t even find them. They only show up in the source code.
Read next: Unlock Creativity: The Benefits of Using an AI Headline Generator
How many YouTube tags should I use?
The VidIQ AI YouTube Tags Generator gave me ten tag recommendations, so that’s probably a good number to try to stay below. Adding excessive keywords is against YouTube rules anyway.
To add tags, go to the video in YouTube Studio, click on the show more section further down.
Then simply add the tags, separated by commas.
What tags should I use on YouTube?
It all depends on what your podcast episode is about. Don’t tag irrelevant words. No spamming. If you choose to use tags, make sure they are relevant.
There are really three ways to do it:
Choose from memory
Since I hosted the episode, I remember many of the topics discussed. So, I can add a handful of relevant tags—no different from how I used to tag blog posts back in the day.
Read next: Writing for your audience: Beyond just guessing who they are
Use an AI generator
Use a tool like VidIQs generator to give ideas. Add the description of the video into the software.
Once you click generate, it gives you several ideas:
You can copy and paste them into the video’s tags area in YouTube Studio.
Analyze the entire transcript for tags
I usually upload my podcast into Otter to get a quick transcript. I can then take that transcript and feed it into Claude AI. From there, my prompt would be:
Review this transcript and give me 15 options for YouTube tags.
I can then pick 5-10 to add.
Easy breezy and three options you can try.
Is this really necessary? It depends. Test it and see if it makes a difference. I’m trying it for a bit, and if nothing else, it gives me some ideas for themes that are bubbling up across episodes.