How can YouTube Hashtags Help You Get More Views?

“Dune: Part Two” premiered in cinemas worldwide almost one month ago. The hashtag #DunePartTwo was used on YouTube 306 times in the last 30 days. The number of people who have seen YouTube videos with this hashtag is nearly 6 MILLION! Adding hashtags can help you get more views on YouTube! Read on to learn how to use them!

YouTube hashtags can increase the reach of your video, and, thus the number of views. They are a way to categorize videos. It makes it easy for people to find YouTube videos they are interested in without browsing a welter of content they don’t care about at all.

Table of contents:

1. Do hashtags work on YouTube?
2. How to add hashtags to YouTube video?
3. How many hashtags should I use on YouTube?
4. How to use YouTube hashtags to get more views?
5. How to measure YouTube hashtag reach?
6. Conclusion

Do hashtags work on YouTube?

Of course, in 2024, hashtags still work on YouTube!

YouTube hashtags have a similar purpose as hashtags on other social media platforms. They group videos around a particular topic.

YouTube videos can contain hashtags in the title and/or description.

The hashtag in the video title is highlighted and clickable.

Meanwhile, hashtags added in the video description appear in two places:

• in the description (obviously)
• 3 of all hashtags from the description next to the number of views and date of publication

They are also highlighted and clickable. Look at the example below:

To find content with hashtags, enter the keyword you are interested in with the “#” symbol into the YouTube search bar.

As a result, you will get different videos (do not necessarily contain the search hashtag) and a special clickable tab with the hashtag’s name.

Let’s stay on the topic of the most talked about movie lately and check its hashtag #duneparttwo.

The second result (only the sponsored result before) is the just-mentioned special hashtag tab. It says there are 8,500 videos with hashtag #duneparttwo on 4,600 YouTube channels!

The hashtag tab contains videos with the same hashtag, both in the YouTube video description and title.

When you click on the tab, you will see videos divided into two categories: all and shorts.

Also, when you click on the hashtag used in a particular video, you will be redirected to this location with all videos containing this hashtag.

Do you know that approximately 122 million people visit YouTube daily, and over 3.5 million videos are uploaded? YouTube hashtags are powerful – they can help all these people find what they want in this enormous amount of content.

So add relevant hashtags to your YouTube videos, let your content be found, go viral… and grow your YouTube channel!

How to add hashtags to YouTube video?

As I already told you, you can add hashtags to your YouTube video title and description. By video, I mean both standard videos and short videos called YouTube Shorts.

Regardless of the type of YouTube video, adding a hashtag looks the same.

I will show you step-by-step how to add hashtags:

Step 1: Upload a video or create it

Open YouTube and upload a video, ready to publish Short or create it in the YouTube app.

Step 2: Add hashtags

Add YouTube hashtags in the places for the video title and description.

When you enter the first letter of the keyword after the hashtag symbol (#), YouTube will give you hashtag suggestions.

Under each suggestion, the number of videos tagged with that hashtag and the number of channels are shown.

Step 3: Add other settings

Once you’re satisfied with your title and description, select the rest of the settings, such as:

• Thumbnail: Upload an image that grabs attention and shows what is in your video. You can also choose an image from the video proposed by YouTube.
• Playlists: Create a new playlist with this video or add it to an existing playlist. It will organize the content on your YouTube channel even more.
• Audience: Decide if your content is suitable for children or not.
• Tags: YouTube tags are not that important, but they are helpful in case of common video misspellings.

Step 4: Add video elements

It’s an additional step that is unnecessary but worth doing to reach a broader audience and promote your video. You can add subtitles, an end screen, and add cards that display during the video.

Step 5: Publish your video

Everything is ready, so all you have to do is click the “publish” button.

Do your old videos not have hashtags? Nothing lost!

You can edit your video and add hashtags at any time. This may give them a second life!

How many hashtags should I use on YouTube?

You can’t add too many hashtags!

Doing this is called “over-tagging”. The maximum number of added hashtags for one video on YouTube is 60. If your video contains more than this number, all the hashtags will be automatically ignored. Over-tagging can even result in the removal of your video!

Moreover, remember that the number of characters in the title must not exceed 100. Consider this when planning to use a hashtag in the video’s title.

You may notice that using hashtags in the title is not that common today. Hashtags in the title are generally found in hashtag campaign videos, such as Nike’s #JustDoIt.

But putting hashtags in both places can increase the visibility of your video!

The title of a YouTube video is also the meta title on search engine result pages. So, you can get views from people searching for a particular hashtag there.

To sum up, I would advise using 3-5 hashtags under one YouTube video. This is a sufficient amount!

How to use YouTube hashtags to get more views?

Do you want the video hashtags to really help you increase reach and views?

Read carefully and take the following advice to your heart:

01 Include hashtags related to your content

Less is more – use only relevant YouTube hashtags. Limit yourself to the hashtags most related to your video to attract your target audience.

If your video showcases your brand’s product, DO NOT add random popular YouTube hashtags like #roblox or #funny.

Even if you do it, YouTube automatically removes unrelated hashtags!

02 Create and use your branded hashtag

Creating your own hashtag is the perfect way to make your brand known on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Unique hashtag will differentiate you from your competition, drive your brand awareness and social media engagement.

Moreover, clicking on the branded hashtag will direct people to see all videos with this hashtag. It means they will be engaging with other videos from your channel!

03 Use niche hashtags

Do you want to target your niche audience? Nothing easier – use niche hashtags!

Do you want to target parents looking for apps for their kids? You can use the hashtag #AppForKids.

Do you want to target fans of “Dune: Part Two”? You can use the hashtag #duneparttwo.

Advanced social listening tools can help you select the right niche hashtags. For example, Brand24 lists related hashtags to a given topic.

04 Use popular hashtags

To discover popular YouTube hashtags, you must type in the hashtag symbol (#) into YouTube’s search bar.

YouTube will suggest all the hashtags trending on YouTube right now.

05 Check hashtags used by your competitors

Don’t focus excessively on trending hashtags if they don’t match your content in any way. You had better take a look at how your competitors are doing.

Go to their channel and check the hashtags used in their most-viewed videos.

Try these hashtags on your video and see if it works.

06 Try hashtag generator

Are the previous tips not enough for you? Try hashtag generators!

They are free, so you lose nothing even if they don’t please you!

YouTube hashtag generator creates a list of YouTube hashtags based on either your target keyword or a description of what the hashtags are needed for.

Do not copy and paste, but consciously choose hashtags from the list.

07 Keep an eye on hashtag performance

You should monitor how different hashtags for YouTube perform, especially those related to your industry.

Unfortunately, YouTube does not give more information beyond the number of videos with a given hashtag and channel.

Use external tools like social media monitoring tools for hashtag tracking and in-depth analysis.

How to measure YouTube hashtag reach?

Measuring the YouTube hashtag reach is impossible without a unique social media monitoring tool.

Besides, such tools measure different metrics like:

• Sentiment analysis of your hashtags
• AVE
• Online Presence Score
• User-generated content
• Non-social reach

One of the tools that offer both measuring reach on YouTube & other sources as well as measuring other metrics is Brand24.

Let’s take a look at the performance of #duneparttwo!

YouTube reach

The hashtag #duneparttwo gained 306 mentions on YouTube over the past 30 days. This small number (let’s not lie to ourselves) generated almost 6 MILLION reach! Impressive!

Social media reach

Brand24 is a very powerful tool. It monitors all social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, and Twitch), not just YouTube!

So, considering all social media, #duneparttwo was mentioned 22,687 times (last 30 days). The reach of these mentions is 329,337,550… WOW!

It’s like all the residents of Bangladesh and Brazil saw YouTube videos with this hashtag!

Non-social reach

Hashtags are also used outside social media, and Brand24 monitors these places too! These include blogs, forums, review sites, podcasts, newsletters, and news.

#duneparttwo was mentioned there 171 times, creating almost a 1.3 million reach.

Let’s now move on to the more advanced features of Brand24.

In Brand24, you can compare periods of hashtag performance! You can find this feature in the Comparison tab.

What’s more, Brand24 can do the AI Metrics Analysis!

It’s a great feature if you don’t like data or don’t want to waste your time analyzing it. Artificial intelligence will do it for you and provide you with valuable insights!

Another thing that you can get, thanks to Metrics Analysis, is the highest reach efficiency. Brand24 analyzes the hashtag reach generated on every platform and determines the most effective reach source.

Brand24 can also be considered emotion detection software – it detects and names the emotions accompanying social mentions.

This feature can also be found in the Metrics Analysis tab.

Conclusion

Even if someone says that YouTube hashtags are a relic, it is NOT TRUE!

Using hashtags on YouTube increases the chance of your videos getting more views. It’s recommended to do!

YouTube does not offer hashtag tracking, so you should use social media monitoring tools to track and analyze YouTube hashtags effectively!

Key takeaways:

• YouTube hashtags are one of the keys to a successful channel on YouTube. They should be used together with other YouTube SEO practices.
• It’s not the number of hashtags that counts, but their quality – use only relevant hashtags (3-5 hashtags are more than enough)!
• Take advantage of external tools such as Brand24 to get in-depth hashtag analysis and insights.

Want to discover the power of hashtags? Try Brand24 for free!