For budding Youtubers, gaining platform traction in the form of views and (more importantly) dedicated subscribers can be extremely difficult. After Google, YouTube has become one of the most important search engines, which is why so many brands have tried their chances at gaining visibility, and hopefully new followers, by implementing YouTube marketing strategies. It takes time and effort to beat out the competition, and given the fact that almost anyone and everyone can start a Youtube channel, this means that there’s a lot of competition to beat. One of the first questions that can pop up in your mind is how to add hashtags on a YouTube video. We’ll guide you through it!


There are several ways for Youtubers to grow their subscriber base fast, and to retain their audience. One such way is by using hashtags in videos to gain reach and make your videos more accessible to viewers. However, there is a method for this, and not just any hashtags will be effective in helping you keep your fanbase. Using certain hashtags may weaken your channel growth and stop viewers from coming to your channel. This blog will cover how to research and add the best hashtags for your videos to establish a successful Youtube Channel.

Dangers When Using Hashtags

It’s important to note that some risks come with using hashtags on your Youtube videos. Some of these include that hashtags can distract your viewers from your video. If a viewer is watching a Youtube video of yours and clicks on a hashtag that you put up, they will be sent away from your video and to a page filled with other videos with the same hashtag; this will stop you from getting views.

Additionally, if you use more than 15 hashtags on your video, Youtube will remove all of them, so it’s important to choose the hashtags you use wisely. Another risk is that if you use hashtags that are irrelevant to the information in your video, you might get a warning from YouTube as you would have violated its policy on misleading metadata. Therefore, it is important that your hashtags are genuine rather than misleading so that you don’t get in trouble.

Weeding Out Competitors

Perhaps the best way for you to weaken competitor’s channels through hashtags is by looking at your competitor’s most successful videos and taking hashtags from them that relate to your content, as well.

This ensures that those who see your competitor’s videos also have a high chance of seeing yours, which levels out the playing field between your and your competitor’s channel (and, if your content is better, you may even be at an advantage).

Helping You Create A Youtube Identity

Another great way for you to utilize hashtags well on your Youtube channel is by creating branded hashtags for your videos. Branded hashtags can be used in two different ways. Firstly, you can create a hashtag for your entire Youtube channel itself. For example, if the name of your Youtube channel was “Colibri Digital Marketing”, then you would create the hashtag “Colibri” and put it on all of your Youtube videos.

Another way to use branded hashtags is by creating different categories for your Youtube channel and creating a hashtag for each category. That way, if you create a series on your Youtube channel or a genre of videos called “Advertising Tips”, you will be able to use the “Advertising Tips” tag on specific videos to make your channel more organized and your Youtube persona more evident.

Use Hashtag Websites To Help You

There are several websites out there that can help you come up with effective keywords/hashtags for your Youtube Video simply by having you put in the title of your video. An example is Hastagsforlikes, in which you can get hashtags suggestions by searching the topic of your video. Using such websites can be an effective way for you to find valuable hashtags quickly without having to put in too much effort.

How To Add Hashtags On A YouTube Video

SEO is also a very important side of YouTube. Now that you’ve gotten familiar with how you can find the hashtags that best suit your YouTube video, we are going to walk you through the process of how to add them. There are two ways you can do this:

  • Add the hashtags to your video description: To do this, make sure that you add the hashtags in the description box when uploading your video. You can either write in the hashtags inside the description text or you can add them at the end. It’s also important for you to know that you can add as many hashtags as you’d like, but we recommend that you keep it under five. When your video uploads, the first three hashtags will appear above your video title (so make sure that the first three hashtags that you add are the most relevant).
  • Add hashtags to your video title: This is a pretty straightforward way of including hashtags. Just choose the main keyword in your title and put in a hashtag.

Monitoring Your Hashtag Performance

When trying to implement a hashtag strategy, it is key for you to monitor its performance to see if they’re being effective at attracting new viewers; or if they need some adjustments. In the analytics section of your channel, you can find a “traffic source” tab, where Youtube breaks down the different sources that have been directing viewers to your content. In “YouTube search”, you can see how effective your hashtags have been effective at increasing traffic to your video and which have the most views.

How to add hashtags on YouTube video: monitoring results
Screenshot: Colibri Analytics on YouTube

If your analytics show little to no change in traffic from hashtags, then you know it’s time to make some adjustments to the hashtags you have been using so far.

How to add hashtags on YouTube video: YouTube search
Screenshot: Colibri Analytics on YouTube (Traffic Source)

Key Takeaways

Overall, this blog post covered the dangers of using hashtags in Youtube videos, and some great ways to come up with beneficial ones to use. In general, designing and implementing a well-thought-out hashtag strategy on YouTube can help give more exposure to your YouTube content and help your channel stand out in what is currently the second most important search engine. We hope this post was insightful to you and wish you the best of luck!

For more interesting content about branding and digital marketing, check out our blogs. And if you’d like to learn more about how our team can help, schedule a meeting with Colibri Digital Marketing today.