Guest blog by Alan Lastufka (FallofAutumnDistro), video creator, emo, blogger and author of the forthcoming “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts.”
When uploading a new video to YouTube, or any other video-sharing site, you need to give a few pieces of information to the site because encoding software can’t actually watch your videos. Your title is important for tricking viewers into watching (they’ll think your video will be more interesting than it probably really is). Your description is important for whoring out links and shout-outs to other channels.
But your tags… your tags are where the real magic happens. Your tags are keywords used to place and rank your video within YouTube’s search results.
Even better, just like your video’s title, thumbnail and description, your tags — or keywords associated with your video — can be easily manipulated or gamed! Adding popu
lar search words like “porn,” “sex,” “naked” and “guitar hero” to your video’s tags will give you a bump in views over the long run. In addition to appealing to the fourteen-year-old perverts, you could also include tags from recent popular news stories. Favorites this past week would have been “Bernie”, “Mac” and “RIP.” Users searching for news clips about an actor’s recent death would hopefully find your video waiting for them at the top of the search results.
Most users only tag their own channel name, or repeat the video’s title in their tags section. Get out of this habit now! You could be luring in a much larger audience if you only knew what they were searching for, and including those words in your tags.
For a list of the daily most popular search terms click here: http://google.com/trends
Also, if you’re lucky enough for your video to be monetized, your tags not only help pop your video into popular search results, but may determine which ads are placed beside and within your videos.
If you notice a cell phone company *cough*SamSung Instinct*cough* is spending a lot of money on a site-wide ad campaign, tagging the video with phone, electronics, or the product itself could help pull in some of that sweet Google ad revenue (assuming you’re a YouTube partner).
Okay…I’ve been taking an overly-sarcastic tone throughout this article. All of the above taken into account, it is a good idea for most content creators to make better use of their tags.
But for the love of koolsurfer24, please keep them relevant and appropriate for your video’s content. If your latest video documents your weekend fishing trip, don’t just leave “fishing” as your lone tag, include “boat”, “bait”, “catch”, “release”, “lake”, “fish”, “sport”, “tackle” and everything else related that you can think dream up.
Don’t try to cheat the rankings. Don’t game the system. Gamed views will only leave you feeling empty at the end of the day, can get you kicked off some sites, and at best, will get you a bad rep.
Alan Lastufka is on YouTube, BlogTV and occasionally writes for
his own blog, ViralVideoWannabe. Alan is currently writing a book entitled
“YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts” for O’Reilly Media, Inc.
This type of keyword stuffing used to work in the SEO market as well, back in the early days. Beware – a small but well liked search engine soon got wise to this technique and began using real language algorithms to determine whether the page content matched the stuffed keywords. Pages without a match were then scored MUCH LOWER than pages with legitimate content. The end result was that the keyword stuffers were appropriately penalized. “Search relevance” was born.
The name of this small search engine was GOOGLE.
And who owns YouTube? GOOGLE.
I realize that it is much easier to analyze text than video and audio files, but look how far technologies like Virage have come with speech to text recognition. (Back in the day, they also used to pay people to type in captions for closed captioning, and now it is all speech to text).
So it is only a matter of time before your fakey stuffed keyword videos end up on the bottom of the heap.
The lesson here? Stay relevant.
I tag EVERY SINGLE ONE of my two videos with Nalts and poopy, just to annoy sukatra and Marryland. :o)
I tag NONE of my videos with Nalts, because why would I waste valuable tagging space giving a nobody like Nalts recognition he obviously doesn’t deserve?
I only tag the embarrassing Nalts videos with Nalts, everything else I tag with renetto.
The cheese in this blog’s banner is moving.
You know, MDJ, I think you’re right!! What’s going on? A cheese conspiracy of some sort? Or is Nalts just playing with our minds?
AND FOR THE LAST TIME IT IS:
M-A-R-I-L-Y-N
as is Monroe.
Tagging is important, and so is relevant tags. If you can somehow manage to make frequent videos that deal with current relevant issues, I would imagine that at the least, you would get tons of views. It worked for WhatTheBuck.
Wow Marlin, a little over-sensitive about the name thing?
What The Buck is a hot tag MACHINE (click) !
somecallmetim:
How do YOU like it?
The problem with falsely tagging your videos with popular search terms is that when people find you video when searching for “Paris Hilton Boobs xxx”, the only comments you are going to get are going to be stupid hater comments like “Dis shiznit isnt bout pari$ hilt0n! fuk dis noobzx!!1” I’ve have trouble with that in the past.
Also, BTW, I don’t use youtube to search for pervert things. You are jumping to conclusions about us 14 year olds. I usually use Metacafe…
Hey, MDJ, thanks for turning me on to YouTubicide. I love it!
@10
Better quality porn on Metacafe, Reubnick? Better than mine (click)??
@11
My pleasure, M
#8 hahahahahahahaha
#10 hahahahahahaha
don’t have enough to do yet?
[click]
Anal warts are itchy.
THAT was sarcastic? Buddy, you got a LOT to learn.
Mary Linn,
Doesn’t bother me. By the way, is it an accident you picked “Tim” or are you as big a “Holy Grail” fan as I am? 😀
Okay, okay, I’ll play nice…someday…
tags: name, misspelling, monty, python, holy, grail, mary-linn, marlin, marylin, mariyln, is, gonna, get, me, for, this
Look at it this way Marilyn – at least you’re getting a lot of play out of this. After all, Robnickel got like, 15 seconds of notereity on this blog when I changed his name.
I know I spelled notereity wrong. I do not care. Suck it spelling nazi!!
Kevin. If you’re gonna start handing out free blog entires like toothbrushes at the dentist’s office…I want one. I’ve certainly earned it watching your demons for quite a few months now.
Demons (and regrets) are counterproductive. (click)
somecallmetim:
Maybe this will give you an idea of what kind of Monty Python fan I am (Jan, this post may be rather long; I’ll try not to go on longer than you, however. 🙂 )
Last year I coached my school’s first ever Odyssey of the Mind team. If you’ve never heard of OotM, it is not necessary for this story, but click if you want to learn more.
At the regional competition, my team was waiting to go into their spontaneous competition. This is where the judges give you a scenario and as a team you have 2 minutes to come up with a creative solution to present to the judges. This is done in secret so no other team can see your solution. The coaches are not allowed to come with their team either.
At the door to the room where the spontaneous was being judged was a volunteer who let the teams into the room at their appointed hour. I had staked out a spot near the door to make sure that we weren’t late for our time and had heard him usher other teams into the room. In an attempt at humor, he approached each team and said, “Who would cross enter the room of spontaneous must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.”
And then he would ask the team,
“What is your name?”
“What is favorite color?”
And for the third question, he would ask something silly (remember, these are mostly middle school and younger kids). It was a different question for each team.
When the time came for my team to go into the room, I told them that they would be asked three questions. I said, “If the last question he asks you is, ‘What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?’ I said that they should answer with, “What do you mean? An African or European swallow?” They had no idea what I meant, but agreed to do so.
Well, he asked them the three questions, and the last one was the unladen swallow question. I couldn’t believe it. My team looked at me in astonishment, and one of them finally had the presence of mind to say, “African or European?” The volunteer looked around and said, “Who has coached this team?” When I indicated that it was me, he replied, “You have coached them well.”
Our team ended up coming in third in the entire competition, which is remarkable for it having been our first year. Spontaneous only counts for a small portion of the total score, but I like to think that I helped them out there!
At the regional competition, my team was waiting to go into their spontaneous competition. This is where the judges give you a scenario and as a team you have 2 minutes to come up with a creative solution to present to the judges. This is done in secret so no other team can see your solution. The coaches are not allowed to come with their team either.
At the door to the room where the spontaneous was being judged was a volunteer who let the teams into the room at their appointed hour. I had staked out a spot near the door to make sure that we weren’t late for our time and had heard him usher other teams into the room. In an attempt at humor, he approached each team and said that they
OK, I don’t know why some of my last post got duplicated. That is weird. Just ignore the last 2 paragraphs.
That was 443 words, not counting the duplicate paragraphs. I’m sure marquis could kick you ass in word count though. Just piss him off and watch him blow!!
Okay, I’m sorry. That was really mean marquis. you know I love you. I would give you a big smooch on the cheek but it might cause you to regurgitate your dinner, and I’m not in the mood to smell vomit right now.
Too busy enjoying the smell of poop, sukatra?
hmm too long, eh?
M r lyn – y r st ry p t my st m ch n kn ts, s gl d ‘m n t t chr r n
m ddl sch l!
Jan: I think I got what you said. I know it’s weird, but I love middle schoolers. They tire me out, but I love them! 😉
@20 – that has to be one of the coolest stories I’ve heard lately! Quality!
@24 – Clever. I almost didn’t understand that.
And to both of you, never forget my motto: Why use one word when six will do?
@26: My youngest son, who just turned 20, is a HUGE Monty Python fan. Has all the DVDs, etc. I had to call him long-distance at college to relate that story. I was so proud.
My motto is: Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?
@22
Smell THIS (click), sukatra.
🙂
@23
If she thinks SHE’S got poop problems:
One of the Davel Limo drivers comes in to the Arco, signs his gas charge slip and trots briskly over to the restroom. He’s a tall, lanky man in a black suit not quite big enough for him. It makes him look like a black Abe Lincoln.
“Man,” he says to no one in particular, “I REALLY gotta go!”
Soon as Abe shuts the Arco restroom door, he bounds back out.
“Toilet’s backed up,” he says, “BAD!” Abe looks at Serj behind the counter. Serj looks at me.
“Cabbage Patch,” I say, “She was just in there. I TOLD you guys not to let those crack heads in there. See what happens?”
“Can SOMEBODY fix it?” the limo driver asks plaintively, “I REALLY gotta go!” He looks at Serj. Serj looks at me. Serj ALWAYS looks at me when there’s something to be done on the customer side of the cash register counter.
I walked into the restroom and peered into the toilet bowl. Inside the toilet bowl was the biggest, meanest chunk of crackhead shit I had ever seen. Big mother. Jeeezus! It was big around as my fist and half as long as my arm. The fucker was jammed tight into the little toilet hole like a brown concrete log.
Jeeezus! How the hell’s something like THAT come out of somebody without an ambulance being summoned? Frikkin’ monster turd it was. Something like this could plug up the whole neighborhood sewer.
The limo driver called out through the door I had closed for modesty’s sake, “See it! See it! That thing’s got her all jammed up.”
“I see it.”
“Can ya work it? I, uh, I normally wouldn’t ask a guy to work something like that alone, but . . .”
“You gotta go. I know. Hang on.”
I looked around the restroom for a plunger. There was no plunger. In fact, I don’t ever remember seeing a plunger anywhere in the gas station.
“SHIT!” I said.
“What happened?” the limo driver asked as I possibly could’ve been attacked by the monster. Wouldn’t want something like THAT on his conscience. I imagined he was on the other side of the door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as the male of the species is like to do in cases like this.
I looked at the malevolent biological mass in the john. Jeezus, it was a big fucker. Freakin’ Cabbage Patch. What the hell had she eaten? A horse? Cripes.
I took a deep breath, held it a moment, and exhaled. No fuckin’ turd is gonna beat ME, I thought. No turd. No turd. No turd.
I steeled myself. Planted my feet. Grit my teeth in as ferocious a badass scowl as I could manage (maybe scare the fucker off). Then I made my body hard as iron and plunged my arm into the abyss, yanking and tugging and pushing and punching the damned turd. On the other side of the door, no doubt they heard splashing a cursing, “No turd! No turd! No turd!”
I wrestled that evil boa constrictor turd with my bare hand, twisting and yanking and cursing the day that Cabbage Patch ate the horse and the turd began to give way, began to crumble around the edges and succumb to my powerful will until finally, with one last burst of power, I shoved that evil piece of human concrete through the little hole.
If nothing else, I am master over the trespassing turd. No turd has ever beaten me. None.
I washed my hands and walked out of the restroom triumphantly.
“Go ahead,” I said to the limo driver with the air of a city mayor who had just cut the ribbon to a new underground expressway, “It’s all yours.”
The limo driver hurriedly brushed past me into the restroom and backed out again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s lookin’ at me,” he said.
Damn! The thing had crawled back out. Tougher turd than I thought. It was just a smaller chunk, though, and I was easily able to dispatch it. No turd has ever beaten me. None.
Speaking of tag fraud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0P6x5nNU7I