YouTube Help Suggested Videos - You Tube and Tags

[ReachRishi]

In most of my new videos am able to get a significant number of tags that get ranked.. Eg, if I put 12 tags, all of them get ranked. Since my channel is about piano music - lets say I create a piano cover for a Juice Wrld / Marshmello Come and Go Song, I get ranked for almost all the piano tags related to the song, which is great and I also get regular views.
The questions I have :

1. Should I put all ranking tags related to the piano of this song in the tags section or should I put tags like "Come and Go Juice wrld". This tag is a highly searched term as its for the song itself. I have no way to get ranked for this tag as my video is an instrumental , however by putting that tag in my video, will I have a chance of getting into the suggested section of that song video for those viewers who have seen piano videos before? If thats the case, then I may be relevant for similar other searches eg - "Juice wrld come and go song", however my tag list in my tags section would have lesser ranked tags.
2. The 2nd question is whether its best to keep all ranked tags in the tags section or should we keep a mix like the one I described above.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

YouTube doesn't really do much with the tags that you put on your videos. Notice that the ranking of your tags increases/decreases exponentially when utilized at the beginning or your description and titles. That's is because YT is looking at the description and title primarily to determine what your video is about and who is interested in that subject matter. Tags are a distant third (and likely more like a distant 4th or 5th, as I surmise that captions and thumbnail are also a portion of the YT Search and Discovery formula).

If you removed all the tags from a video you are still going to rank for the terms that are in your title and description. The tags help, and they assist with mispellings etc. But having the keyword phrases inserted as tags is really more valuable as a means of letting you know what you are ranking for and what you should continue doing in order to continue showing up in search and discovery.

 

[TubeBuddy]

YouTube doesn't really do much with the tags that you put on your videos.

Not exactly true it's a minimal role, but still a role. YouTube still uses them, and they're a great way people can find your content outside of just spellings. YouTube gives search traffic sources for phrases that drive people to your video, and having those as tags let's you target that video in multiple places.

That's is because YT is looking at the description and title primarily to determine what your video is about and who is interested in that subject matter. Tags are a distant third (and likely more like a distant 4th or 5th, as I surmise that captions and thumbnail are also a portion of the YT Search and Discovery formula).

This is true, HOWEVER using tags based around keywords in that first 200 characters is THE BEST PRACTICE. Tags are based around your videos root keyword, and that is more valuable than any piece of metadata including title and thumbnail. If you mad a video no one is searching for has interest in doesn't matter how good of a video it is SEO can't save a video no one has interest in.

If you removed all the tags from a video you are still going to rank for the terms that are in your title and description. The tags help, and they assist with misspellings etc. But having the keyword phrases inserted as tags is really more valuable as a means of letting you know what you are ranking for and what you should continue doing in order to continue showing up in search and discovery.

Not necessarily you also have to keep in mind YouTube's biased results when you're logged in, and check that for incognito mode. Tags play a role still, and until YT removes it we'll keep supporting it. Keyword phrases matter more and that's why we changed the name from tag explorer to keyword explorer. Overall, tags by themselves don't save the content. However, tags combined with Title, Thumbnail, Description, and Captions help give you the best chance to earn views and show up in search terms by showing YT that's what the video is about out of the date, and helps it surface for more stuff in search. Check your analytics and TubeBuddy tools to see how it's going for YOU OP

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Wow, yeah sorry in hindsight I came across fairly condescending with tags. Wasn't my intention. I was trying to give a different perspective and totally failed on delivery. My point was supposed to be that the keywords in the titles and description were more valuable than those in the tags and I went off the rails. To be clear tags exist for a reason and therefore have an obvious value. I whiffed on that point as well.

My apologies OP; I tried to give a different point of view on the value of good keywords and in hindsight just did not do a good job explaining myself. Sorry for the confusion! @ReachRishi @Andrew