Transcription
YouTube just released a massive algorithm update that completely changes what hashtags and what tags you should be using in your content. It doesn't matter if you're uploading long form content or short form content. The tags and hashtags you need to use have completely changed.
In addition to that, they've also increased the weight that these are going to have in the algorithm. So, you want to make sure that you're not messing this up. In fact, I just helped this creator, this creator, and this creator all changed their tags and they all gained tons of subscribers from it.
So hashtag strategy number one that you need to make sure that you're implementing is going to be using three niche specific hashtags when you go to upload a YouTube short or a long form video. Now where you're actually going to put these tags is going to change whether you're uploading long form content or shorts content. But before I actually show you where you should be placing these hashtags, I need to make sure that you actually understand the two types of hashtags that you could possibly be using on YouTube right now. In fact, there's three if we take another one into consideration.
So, the first type of hashtag that you could use is going to be something that is niche specific. Essentially, what this is going to be is very specific to whatever you're posting about. For example, let's say I was making a video about getting six pack abs. If I did #ab workout, that would be a nichspecific hashtag for that content right there. But that's only the first type of hashtag.
The second type of hashtag is going to be something that is a broad hashtag. If I again was making content about getting six-pack abs, well, guess what? If I did something like #fitness or #workout, that would then be a broad hashtag. And then that final type of hashtag is going to be using something like #shorts.
Now, like I alluded to before, where you put your hashtags is going to change whether you're uploading short form content or long form content. So, here's what you need to do.
So, when it comes to uploading long form content on YouTube, you want to make sure that you have your hashtags show at the bottom of your description. Now, I know what you're thinking, Rob, that's not where I see other people show. But this is what actually happens. So if we actually click into this YouTube video right here that I just set live on my other YouTube channel. If we come over here, we could see that these hashtags actually show next to the views and next to when it was actually posted. So even though I put them at the end, that's not actually where they show. They show closer to the top. In addition to that, the other thing that you're going to note is only the top three actually show here. If we come over here, I have four hashtags that are being used, but only three of them are actually showing.
Now, if we were uploading YouTube shorts, the placement of these hashtags is completely different. So, if we come over into my shorts, for example, this one right here that's gotten 1.8 million views, we could see that if we look at the title, I have hashtagshorts in here. And if we come over into the description, I don't have any hashtags. So, that's basically the rule. When you're uploading shorts, put the hashtag in the title all the way at the end after your actual title. When you're uploading long form content, don't put it in your title. Only put it at the end of your description.
Now, I don't want you to think that there was only that one hashtag strategy because again, there's three of them. And the last one I'm going to share with you makes the most YouTube shorts go viral. But for right now, we need to go through the second hashtag strategy, which is going to be using one niche specific hashtag and one broad hashtag. Again, back to another example. Let's say that we were making a video about Pinterest affiliate marketing. If we used # Pinterest affiliate marketing, that would be the niche specific hashtag. And then if we just put #aff affiliate marketing, that would actually be that broad hashtag.
Now, in addition to just using the right hashtags, you also need to make sure that you're choosing the largest hashtags when you go to use them. Because if you're using small hashtags or you're just using suboptimal hashtags, what's going to end up happening is you're actually signaling to the YouTube algorithm, whether you're uploading long form content or you're uploading shorts content, that there aren't actually a lot of people that are interested in whatever you're posting about. In addition to that, you also need to make sure that you order your hashtags from largest to smallest. Otherwise, you could confuse the YouTube algorithm.
Now, lucky for you, it's actually really easy to determine how large hashtags are. For example, if we come over into the title right here, we could see hashtagshorts. This has 1.5 billion videos made to it, and more than 80 million channels have used this. Essentially, what you want to be paying attention to is two things. one, how many videos have been made to it, and you want to pay attention to how many channels have actually used it. What this is going to do is signal to you which one is the largest. For example, again, if we come over here and we type in #affiliate marketing, we could see 701,000 videos, 132,000 channels. And if we compared that to something like #affiliate marketing for beginner, we would see that this has way less videos made to it and way less channels have actually used it. So, if we were going to use both of these hashtags right here, we would want to make sure that we put #affiliate marketing as the first hashtag and then the second hashtag that we use should be # affiliate marketing for beginners because we want to make sure that we aren't putting the smaller one first because that's the one that YouTube is going to read first and we don't want it to think that we're only using small hashtags.
Now, there still is one other hashtag strategy that we need to go through, and we need to talk about what kind of tags you should be using on YouTube and a few other things that you want to do to increase your reach right now in 2026. But before we dive into those, I wanted to make sure that you knew exactly how to find what was trending in your niche on YouTube. And my favorite way for doing that is using today's video sponsor, Metricle, because this tool allows you to spy on your competitors without having to check their page every day or be creepy. Here's how it works. Metric will let you very quickly add your competitors to a dashboard where you can instantly see which topics, which formats, and which videos are actually trending in your niche so that you don't have to guess and you don't have to waste uploads. What's even better than that is it helps you repurpose your YouTube content across other platforms, which is exactly how the top creators are growing faster without having to post more. In addition to that, you can manage all of your comments, messages, and engagement from all of your platforms in one place. And since you're watching this video, if you go to the pin comment below right now, you could get 30 days free access to any of Metro's premium plans with code Robert. This tool is going to help you manage all your engagement on YouTube, post your YouTube content all over to increase your reach, and stay on top of exactly what's trending by allowing you to spy on your competitors. What are you waiting for? Go to the pin comment below and get started with it today for free.
Now, the last hashtag strategy that you need to make sure that you're using is actually the one that I've shown you several times in this video, but I'm not sure if you've actually noticed it, and that is that you need to make sure that you're using # shorts. And you should only be using this when you're uploading a YouTube short. So, here's how I would actually think about it. If you are going to be uploading just shorts content, I would use all three of the hashtag strategies that I shared with you. But, if you're only going to be uploading long form content, you should only use the first two. And if you are uploading shorts, I would add # shorts onto the hashtags that you're using for all three strategies because essentially what that's going to do is help the YouTube algorithm understand, okay, this is a short. And then what happens is that YouTube looks at everybody that's interacted with content that has # shorts on it in order to determine if they should show your content to those people. And what this does is increase the reach that you get on your YouTube content.
Now, like I was sharing with you earlier, you also need to make sure that you have the right tag set up. And there are two different places that you need to be doing this. Let me explain.
Now, the first type of tag that you need to make sure that you're implementing are going to be your channel tags. The way that you're going to find these is you're going to come over here down in the lefthand corner inside of your YouTube studio, and you are going to click on settings. From here, you're going to be able to click on channel right here, and then you're going to see all of your different tags. And you want to make sure you have three types of tags that show up here. First and foremost, you want to make sure that you have your channel name. We could see that I have Robert Benjamin here, which is my name and my channel name. In addition to that, if we come to the end of the tags, we could see Vid IQ, Think Media, Marcus Jones. These are going to be my competitors. These are all incredibly important because they allow YouTube to understand one, what the name of my channel is, and two, who I am trying to compete against, aka show my content to the same viewers of these people. And then in addition to that, what I have are a bunch of different keywords here that are going to be showing in the title of my content. Things like growing on Instagram or growing on YouTube or YouTube shorts. Because if we come over to my content, we can see I'm posting about growing on YouTube. I'm posting about growing on Instagram. I'm posting about going viral on Tik Tok. So all these different things show up. And that's one of the secrets for how I've gone viral on YouTube shorts so many different times.
Now, in addition to that, you also need to make sure that you are adding tags inside of your individual content. And there are a ton of different rules that you need to make sure that you're following when it comes to these tags. Where you're going to find them is down here. You're going to see tags right here. So, in addition to having your channel tags set up correctly and having your hashtags correctly on your content, you want to make sure that these tags are set up correctly, too. And there are three major rules that you want to be following.
First and foremost, you want to make sure that the same keywords that show in these tags also show in your channel tags and they're the keywords that are showing in your title and your description. We could see this video right here. Tons of stuff in here about YouTube settings. Now, if we come up to the title, we could see that we also have YouTube settings. And if we come over to the description, we could also see that we have YouTube settings. So, we have the same keywords overlapping. And that's essentially what you want to do. But what you want to make sure that you do not do because I see this error made by so many small YouTube channels is don't just put the same tags in here over and over again. If we look at these tags right here, we could see that they're really solid. Now, if we come back out to my content and we type in setting right here, we can see I've uploaded more content on this. For example, I have this one right here, 458,000 views. So, I've gone viral on this topic several times. And if we scroll down, these tags are going to be completely different. But again, I do have settings in here, but these are totally different than the tags that I used on the other one.
And then the final thing that I wanted to comment on is how many tags you actually use. More importantly, how many characters you actually use. You want to make sure that you fill this up to about 450 out of 500 or anything above that. Just make sure that you don't go above 500. And I wouldn't go below 450.
Okay. So, now that you're using the right hashtags, you're using the right hashtag strategies, you're putting them in the right places, and you know exactly what tags you should be using, there could only be one other thing that's potentially holding you back from growing on YouTube right now. And that is that you're not putting the right metadata in your content. Because here's the deal. When you upload something to YouTube, for 99% of you that aren't getting the views that you want, it's not that you aren't uploading the right content or that you're messing up something else. It's that you simply don't have the right metadata in your post. So, YouTube shows your content to the wrong people and then as a result, you just don't get the watch time that you need. So, here's a checklist of the things that you can actually walk through in order to determine whether or not it's YouTube or it's something you're messing up.
Now, when it comes to your metadata on YouTube, there are essentially three things that you want to be looking at because we've already spoken about tags. That is going to be one of those things. But the next things are one, the file name that you've chose. We could see that this video right here is about Tik Tok. So, I chose a file name that has Tik Tok in it. In addition to that, if we come over to my title, we could also see that we have followers on Tik Tok here. And then if we come into my description, we could see the same exact thing. In fact, in my description, I repeat that keyword twice. This video is about getting more followers on Tik Tok. So, we could see right here, real followers on Tik Tok. And if we come over here, how to get followers on Tik Tok. So, basically what's happening is my tags plus my description plus my title plus my video link. And then there's one other thing that YouTube looks at. If I played this video for you, what you are going to notice is that I say how to get Tik Tok followers in the first 10 seconds of this video. Now, if it's a long form video, you want to make sure that the keyword that you want YouTube to know your video about is in the first 10 seconds. But if you're uploading a YouTube short, you need to make sure it's in the first 3 seconds.
Now, if you have all of your metadata correct, here's the only other reason you're not getting the views that you want. So, if you're uploading a YouTube short, you need to come into your analytics right here, and you need to make sure that two things are true. One, stay to watch right here. You need this to be over 80%. If it's not over 80%, either one, the topic of your video wasn't good, that's why people aren't watching it. Or two, the hook of your video, the first 3 seconds, wasn't good, and that's why people aren't watching it. Those are the only two things that will actually affect that stay to watch number. And then the next thing that you want to pay attention to is the average view duration. If your video is less than 30 seconds long, this video right here is 41 seconds. So we only need to hit 80%. So basically, if your video is less than 30 seconds, you need this average view duration to be the same or higher as the length of your video. But if your video is greater than 31 seconds, it only has to be around 80% of it.
Now, that's what you need to be looking for with short form content. With long form content, you need to be looking at something else. So, you need to come into your analytics, come under reach right here, and come under impression click-through rate. And you want to make sure that this ideally has spent a lot of time over 10% as we could see that it has on this video, which is why this video has gotten over 120,000 views. And literally just from this one video, I have made over $1,400 simply just by posting this video right here. And guess what? That isn't the only thing. The other thing that needs to be taken into consideration is going to be the engagement here. average view duration. You just want to make sure that this is above usual. And we can see on this video right here, it's over one minute above usual. So, as long as you're hitting those things, your content should be getting pushed out.
Now, if you're still struggling to get the views and the subscribers that you want to on YouTube, and you want help so you could finally get monetized, I would strongly suggest you check out this video right here that walks you through three different ways we can work together one-on-one, and I can help you grow faster on YouTube. If that sounds interesting, well, please check it out right here. I'll see you over there.