Google Creator Playbook Version 4 - Manual (Page 32)

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Metadata
YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine,
and it uses metadata – your video’s title, tags and
description – to index your video correctly. To
maximize your presence in search, promotion,
suggested videos and ad-serving, make sure your
metadata is well optimized.
Title
Make it compelling – this is your video’s headline. Title
and thumbnails are often the primary elements
driving a viewer’s decision of what they’ll watch next.
If your video’s title showed up in a search, would you
click on it?
• Always represent your content accurately.
• Offer keywords first, branding at the end.
• For serial content, add the episode number to the
end of the title.
• Create a title that reinforces the thumbnail - make
sure that together they tell a cohesive story.
• Update video titles so they continue to grab views.
Tags
Tags are descriptive keywords that will help people
find your videos. Create a set of standard tags for your
channel that can be applied to any video you publish.
(E.g. filmmaking, animation, comedy, “Funny Videos,”
“Pet Videos,” etc.)
• Include a mix of both general and specific tags.
• Use enough tags to thoroughly and accurately
describe the video.
• Update catalogue videos’ tags when new search
trends emerge.
• Properly format tags to ensure proper indexing of
your video.
• Include keywords from your title in your
video’s tags.
Avoid titles that trick viewers into
clicking the video. This will cause drop-offs in the first
few seconds of your video and will negatively impact
your video’s watch-time. Update the metadata on older videos if
title, tags or descriptions are not optimized. This can
increase views even if the video’s been public for a
long time.