Metadata: What It Is, How It Can Increase Your Youtube Views

Metadata. You’ve heard the word, or maybe not, but you never quite knew what it meant. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. More than half of the people who upload to Youtube don’t know what metadata is, or that it can be working for them to increase their Youtube Views. Well don’t fret, Grapevine is hear to help, and lucky for you we make it our business to know everything about metadata.

So what exactly does metadata mean? It is essentially what will get a Youtube browser to click and view your video. There are three parts to metadata, title, descriptions, and tags, and if they are used correctly they will work together to get you the most Youtube views possible.

Titles

The title of your video is very important. It is most likely the first thing that a viewer will see when scrolling through a list of videos. Your title needs to be descriptive but short. You don’t want the title of your video to cut off, so keep it short and sweet. A good way to keep your character count down is to use colons. Colons and commas allow for you to leave out filler words such as ‘and’, ‘or’. For example, “How I redecorated my room and saved money” can be changed to “Room decor: how I saved money”. Colons can also allow you to highlight your keywords, which in this example would be “room decor”. Your title should be a sneak peak of the content in your video, as well as the image that is next to it. Along with your title, one of the first things a viewer will see is your image. Make sure it is appealing and reveals a little something about your content. When in doubt ask yourself subjectively if you would click on your video. If the answers no, then you need to rethink the way you are presenting your videos to the Youtube community.

Descriptions

The space that appears under your title Youtube provides you is to write a few sentences about your video. This is a very important space for you to further increase your Youtube views. If someone is interested in your video based off your title they will often read the one to two sentences you have provided to further describe what the video is about. This is your chance to give slightly more detail than your title allows. You still need to keep is short, character count is usually limited to about 140. However, you can think of this space as a mini ad of what the viewer will see if they click on your video. You want it to be appealing to the Youtube viewer, but you don’t want to be misleading of the content in your video. That is very important, make sure your thumbnail accurately describes your video content!

Now your description is also on your video’s page. This is a bigger space allowing you to leave information for your viewers. Here you can put link for the viewer to subscribe to your channel, links to other related Youtube videos or channels, or any websites that you may have talked about in the video. You should also include your social media links in this space, you want everything to be clear and easy on the eyes. Make sure you stay consistent with these with these link, include them in every video. Viewers appreciate when you provide them with correct information, and you always want a first time viewer to be well informed about everything to do with your channel.

Tags

Tags are where you want to clearly identify your keywords. Keywords are what Youtube uses to pick from the billions of videos to bring yours to the top of search roll. How can you make sure Youtube picks your video over another? There are simple things you can do with keywords. First make sure that your most important keyword for your video is in the title and thumbnail of the video. Next you want to include a few more keywords that are specific to that video. Then include a few more broader keywords that apply to all of your videos and your channel as a whole. Make sure to keep them updated. This will help viewers see your videos more often, and in return increase your total Youtube views. On quick tip that many people don’t know, if your keyword is two combined words make sure to enter them using quotation marks (“Room Decor”). If you are thinking back on past videos where you think you missed an opportunity to include important keywords, it is never too late, go back and add them in!

It is important to think about metadata when creating and uploading a video. Consciously thinking and planning out your title, thumbnail, and tags will better increase your Youtube views. Let us know if these tips help you by tweeting us @grapevinelogic