This post was originally written Nov 14, 2024 and has been updated with newer information.

Before you post a video on YouTube, it helps to do some 

. This task reveals essential things about your video, like the popularity of your topic and the words people use to find videos like yours.

Knowing these details will help you get more views, especially now that YouTube is bursting with competition. You can use specific keywords to attract the right audience and ensure you get thousands of relevant, long-term views. And those same keywords will tell 

 what your video is about, ensuring that it appears on the right search pages.

So if you want more views, set your camera down for a while (we’ll come back to it, I promise!). For now, let’s explore the power of YouTube keyword research.

You probably hear about keywords all the time. But what are they?

On YouTube, a keyword is any collection of words people use to search for videos.

You use keywords all the time if you watch YouTube often. In fact, anything you type into the search bar is a potential keyword that helps YouTube show you the right video.

Just look at how many searches pop up when we type “iced coffee recipe.” YouTube uses

 search term to pull additional yet relevant searches we might be interested in.

A list of suggested YouTube searches for the original term "iced coffee recipe"

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and every day many people type in the same search phrases again and again. These are the most searched keywords on YouTube, and knowing them can give your channel an instant edge. While these terms often have high competition, they also reflect what’s trending and what viewers want most.

Autocomplete suggestions in the YouTube search bar

Google Trends (set the filter to YouTube)

, which shows search volume and competition for keywords

We’ll also share how to balance big, popular terms with more specific ones later in this guide.

As per their length and usage, keywords are primarily divided into 3 main categories:

 These are longer keywords that contain several words and target a specific type of query. They don't usually have a high search volume, but people using long-tail keywords know exactly what they want to watch. "

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" is a good example of a long-tail keyword.

 These keywords have a moderate search volume and may contain a group of words or a phrase. Many consider medium-tail keywords to be the best of both worlds because they aren't too hard to rank for. A good example here would be, "

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 Short-tail keywords are often the most searched keywords on YouTube, like “YouTube Shorts,” “Minecraft,” or “MrBeast.” These are broad and competitive, but they reflect top YouTube searches that everyone is chasing.

Should I Target the Most Searched Keywords?

When you look at what people search on YouTube, you’ll see that the top keywords for YouTube usually bring massive traffic, but they’re also extremely competitive. Broad terms like "MrBeast", "Minecraft", or "music videos" are searched millions of times each month. The challenge is that big creators already dominate these searches on YouTube, making it tough for smaller or new channels to break through.

Instead, think of the most searched keywords as a starting point. Use them to understand what viewers care about, then layer on niche variations that give you a better chance of visibility. For example:

Instead of "Minecraft", try "Minecraft survival tips for beginners".

Instead of "music", try "best workout music 2025 playlist".

This balance lets you ride the wave of popular searches while still carving out your own space in YouTube results.

, to find the sweet spot of high search volume and low-to-medium competition. That’s where smaller creators can stand out.

Finding the best keywords on YouTube isn’t difficult, but sometimes the process can take a while. If you’re short on time, we recommend using a 

. It cuts your research time in half by showing detailed information about various keywords, including:

An overall keyword score, which assesses keyword volume and competitiveness

And guess what? You can get all this and more from vidIQ’s keyword research tool!

Check out how easy it is to use in this video.

 right now. Then come back to this article to learn how to use the tool and see the best YouTube keywords. 

Or, scroll down to see free research options!

It's important to have a clear topic for your YouTube video so you can focus your keyword research. Exploring one topic in depth allows you to target the right audience and discover the specific words they'll use to find your video.

So get clear on your purpose. Are you posting a Minecraft tutorial? A vlog at the Grand Canyon? Two baristas racing each other to make a Starbucks latte?

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No matter what you’re aiming for, try to summarize the video idea in 1-2 sentences. If you can do that successfully, you’re ready to move to the next step.

2. Create a List of Phrases to Describe Your Video

The next step is brainstorming a list of words to describe your video. This task is all about identifying what makes your video special, so consider the key talking points you'll discuss or unique details about the theme.

For example, let’s say your video is about buying dog food for senior dogs. Your list could look something like this:

Dog food for senior dogs with special needs

Dog food for senior dogs with dietary restrictions

Dog food for senior dogs with sensitive stomachs

Once you come up with a list of potential words, your research becomes ten times easier. You won’t have to wonder, “What should I type into the keyword tool?” because you’ve already covered that part!

 to discover relevant terms and drive traffic to your videos. All you have to do is place them in your titles and descriptions, then hit publish!

Here, we use the phrase "YouTube Short" to generate related keywords.

vidIQ AI YouTube keyword generator tool showing search results for 'YouTube Short'

After clicking on "generate", the tool will provide a list of related keywords and a score to prioritize their use.

vidIQ keyword generator results showing relevant YouTube keywords with priority scores

3. Paste Those Descriptors into vidIQ’s Keyword Tool

Now it's time to take your word list for a spin. If you’ve signed up for vidIQ, then head to 

. You can also find it lower on the dashboard screen.

vidIQ dashboard showing the Keywords tab location for YouTube keyword research

Go to the search bar and paste in a phrase from your keyword list. Then hit enter!

vidIQ keyword tool search bar with the phrase 'dog food for older dogs' ready for analysis

Next, let’s see how the tool analyzes monthly search volume, competitiveness, related terms, and additional questions people ask.

After hitting enter on your search, look directly below the search bar; you'll notice a 

 for the term you just typed. This number represents the quality of your keyword in terms of search volume and competition.

vidIQ keyword analysis showing 'dog food for older dogs' with a keyword score of 65 indicating good search potential

Generally, you want to use high-volume, low-competition keywords on YouTube. For example, “dog food for older dogs” has a medium search volume and low competition overall — not bad for a few seconds’ work!

Now we know the search volume for this topic is high enough to get views without facing too much competition. That's a great sign because it’s not easy finding low-competition keywords (

Want to see other versions of the keyword you're exploring? Take a look at the 

 panel, which is right below the keyword score.

vidIQ matching terms panel showing keyword variations for 'dog food for older dogs' with search volume data

As you can see, the tool shares additional keywords we should consider. You might find some that describe your video better or have a higher keyword score, so take advantage of this panel.

With related keywords, you can explore how people search for the smaller details related to your topic, which is always good to know.

But even better, related keywords can expose the 

 in other YouTube videos — the "subtopics" viewers care about but don't get to see because they're missing from a video. So, you can use related keywords to fortify your content with information people are looking for.

 section on the right side of the screen. Click 

vidIQ related keywords panel showing expanded keyword ideas for 'dog food for older dogs' to enhance content

When we expand the list, we get more related keywords, including:

People are searching for these related topics, so it makes sense to cover them in the video.

Imagine that viewers are asking questions about a topic on YouTube. In that case, you can make your video 10 times more valuable by providing a clear, helpful answer.

 panel in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Sometimes you won’t see any questions if your topic is narrow, like the one we've chosen (dog food for older dogs). When that happens, try expanding your search to a broader term.

A magnifying glass hovering over a phone screen showing the YouTube app.

Magnified YouTube logo on smartphone screen with pink background and video thumbnail visible

The most common things people search on YouTube are music, gaming, tutorials, and trending pop culture topics. These searches on YouTube often include short, high-volume terms like 

. While these top keywords for YouTube bring huge traffic, they’re also competitive. Smaller creators should look for niche variations to stand out.

Find powerful YouTube keywords that boost views and subscribers. Our research guide helps creators build channel keywords lists that rank higher in search.

How to Find the Most Searched Keywords on YouTube for Your Niche

Keyword research. It's one of those things every video creator on YouTube should have in their skill set. While you may know what your content is about, you need to be able to understand how to tell YouTube what your content is about. So in turn, YouTube can share that content with exactly the people who want to watch what your content is all about. We're going to tell you everything you need to know to get proven results, to help grow your channel. In this post you’ll learn:

Keyword Research Basics: Using the YouTube Search Bar

How to Play the YouTube Search Bar Alphabet Game

How to Drill Down on Niche YouTube Keywords

How to Target a Specific Audience with the Right Keywords

How to Determine Keyword Interest Over Time

How to Analyze the Success of Your Keywords

A keyword is a word or concept of great significance. Or to put it into a YouTube context, an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content of a video. When it comes to keyword, try and imagine it as the first word, or phrase, or conscious thought, that instinctively comes into your head, when you think of that particular topic.

That’s a very simple introduction to keywords, but it obviously gets a lot more complicated. I'm sure you already know, that if you put in a single word into a YouTube search, you're not going to get exactly what you're looking for. Often, when people search on YouTube, or on Google, they're looking for keyword phrases AKA long-tail keywords. And again, you have to have an instinctive mindset.

If I have a flat tire on my car, my instinct is to search for something along the lines of “how to replace a flat tire.” If I have a sudden urge to play the piano, my instincts might be to search for “beginners guide to playing the piano.” If my toilet is blocked, well, you get the picture. And of course, if you want to grow your YouTube channel, your instinct might be to search for “how to get more YouTube views.”

So before we dive into the details, there are three fundamentals of keywords:

A keyword represents the first thing that usually comes into a person's head.

A keyword is often part of a key phrase - a sentence of three or four words.

And most crucially, think like a human, not a robot, when it comes to researching keywords, and then using them in your titles and descriptions.

As a very simple example, let's take the title, “how to get more YouTube views.” It's keyword rich, but does it have enough of a draw to really entice a viewer to click on it? What if we added a year to the title, to give it more currency? And maybe an adjective to give it more umph, such as how to get more YouTube views fast in 2019. Simple changes like this, can have a really powerful impact on the way a title is perceived by a potential viewer.

1. Keyword Research Basics: Using the YouTube Search Bar

All right, let's go on an epic keyword journey using your best friend, the YouTube search bar. Even if you type in a very simple keyword, such as “how to,” almost an auxiliary keyword for many phrases, YouTube will start to make suggestions.

But of course “how to” is a very broad keyword. So how could we narrow this down? Let's add a verb, such as install. Now we are getting into a more technical landscape, which is all to do with construction, or building something. We're very much in the instructional, or tutorial area of YouTube. But of course, your channel and topic of interest, is going to be very specific to one of these keywords. So let's look at how to install Windows 10.

Now we have a pretty good, broad keyword, for computer tutorials. But again, look at how YouTube is encouraging you to dive even deeper into this topic. Remember, these are the topics people are searching for on YouTube, and that's why YouTube is showing them to you. It thinks, you want to know how to install Windows on a new PC, or on SSD, or with a USB.

So to dip your feet into the YouTube keyword bathtub, so to speak, you should always start with the search bar, and see what auto-complete suggestions is pushing your way, for your topic of interest.

2. Play the YouTube Search Bar Alphabet Game

Another thing you can try is the YouTube search keyword alphabet game. Once you have a keyword you're comfortable with, simply add one character to it, and go through the alphabet. So “how to make slime A”, or “how to make slime B.” And you'll get all sorts of interesting suggestions from YouTube, that people are searching for.

It's amazing how many long-tail keywords you can find doing this process, to really help you niche down, and find a very specific topic that you're passionate about.

Now on to my favorite part of any video, and that's introducing you to some vidIQ tools. Remember, if you want to see any of this on your YouTube pages, download the 

. We're going to take a fairly general keyword here, which is “how to make slime.” And once you press enter, and it shows you the YouTube search page, you're going to start to see some of the YouTube tools that we have. The first one we're going to look at is the subscriber count. Something I'm always interested in, is whether a small channel is having an impact on a search term.

At the time of making the above video, we found two channels with less than 10K subscribers who were ranking on the front page of YouTube for “how to make slime.” WProving that small channels can make an impact with very broad, and popular, search terms. If a channel with 1,000 subscribers, is getting a video with 100,000 views, that tells me at some point in the past, this keyword was right for making content about.

Now, interestingly, the title of one video includes the word cheap. So maybe we can include that in our keyword search term - “How to make cheap slime.” Now at this point, we can riff on the keyword a little bit. Instead of searching for “how to make cheap slime”, how about searching for “how to make slime on a budget?” It means the same thing, it's just worded slightly differently.

But who's searching for that search term? At the time of writing, the number one result on YouTube for that keyphrase is a channel with only 1,137 subscribers. Scroll down and there are other small channels appearing on the first page for the term.

So we can confirm that there are relatively small channels making a huge impact in the world of how to make slime. And all I did was focus on a particular niche in the area, which was making slime on the cheap, or on a budget.

Funnily enough, you're not the only one doing keyword research on YouTube. There are thousands of video creators, just like you, trying to find those super-rich keywords to help serve the billions of people who watch YouTube every single month. YouTube's been around for 13 years, so many a keyword, such as “how to unblock a toilet”, “how to replace a spare tire”, and “how to get more YouTube views” have had the life sucked out of them, over that period of time.

So what becomes super important, especially for smaller channels, are trending keywords. For example, Fortnite is one of the most popular video games on the planet right now, and is heavily searched for. So how might a video gamer refine the search? Maybe if they looked at how to improve gaming performance on Fortnite in season six and beyond? Essentially raising their phrase per second, or FPS boost.

So now we have a very popular keyword, combined with a trending topic, combined with a sub-genre of the core keyword. Instead of finding just channels of eight-million subscribers, we're finding channels of all shapes and sizes competing for this very specific trending keyword.

A telltale sign of a juicy keyword is when small channels are wrangling for this keyword, and they have far more views than subscribers, on their channel. That means the video's been shared out to a much wider audience.

5. Target a Specific Audience with the Right Keywords

Now for something that is super important to remember. Most of us probably aren't interested in Fortnite, don't have a clue what season six means, and definitely don't understand the concept of frames-per-second boost. But you have to remember that you're not trying to appeal to the entirety of YouTube. You're looking to target a very specific audience, wanting very specific answers, to very specific things. And this is where keyword research is so important.

When you are passionate about a topic you build-up an intimate relationship, knowledge, and interest in the topic. Just like your potential audience. And that's who you want to appeal to. Whether it's for educational purposes, to tell a story, or to draw an emotional response from your audience, that innate passion you have for the topic, will be seen in your videos. And you just need to transfer that into your knowledge of the keywords that surround that content, in your tags, titles, and descriptions.

Because, what you're trying to find here are keywords of opportunity. Those are keywords, or key phrases, with the most search volume as possible, versus keywords with as little video competition as possible, on YouTube.

You can do this with the vidIQ keyword score tool. It tries to simplify this task, as much as possible - the higher the score, the juicier the keyword. But as you might expect, these things do not grow on trees. Which is why it's so important to spend some time doing some keyword research. Anytime you see a number next to a video tag on YouTube (once you have vidIQ installed) that's your keyword score. As you might expect, the potential of keywords can change very rapidly. But as a general rule of thumb, you want to be looking at keywords of a score of 50, or above. For a lot more detail to look into our keyword score, check out this video:

Now let's return to this keyword ‘ “fortnite season 6 fps boost”. At first the keyword score shows that there is still relatively low search volume, but very low competition. So it was a very juicy keyword. We looked again at the keyword two or three weeks later. Search volume increased significantly, while the competition score has remained relatively flat. And this is quite a rare occurrence in YouTube.

Now the landscape of the search results has changed as well. We've got a much larger channel now, dominating the top of the search terms, but look at our second channel. This one has managed to maintain its presence in the search terms , and the view count has more than doubled, and subscriber count has increased significantly. So this channel has really benefited from this keyword. As for the other channel that appears in these search rankings here, we'll come back to him later.

What else can vidIQ tell you? Well, if you enable inline keywords, you can see all of the keyword phrases they're using in their video tags. If we click on one of these tags, it launches the vidIQ keyword inspector. This will give you a mountain of information about the keyword selected, including the keyword score, and interest over time.

All right, one more super powerful vidIQ tool to tell you about. And a lot of people miss this one, because it's found in the vidIQ Chrome extension button. So click on there. You'll see a range of options, and you want to select SEO tags. This brings you into the vidIQ web app, and you will need keyword research tab. Now when you do a keyword search here, not only does it bring up all of the information that we saw on the YouTube search page, such as the search score, competition score, overall keyword score, but all of the related keywords, as well. So, for a combination of all our tools, you can not only find single keyword phrases, all that are significant, but a whole bundle.

The idea with keyword research, is not to spend five minutes finding that golden keyword that you can create maybe one or two videos from. It's to spend a considerable amount of time getting a collection of keywords, that all work together for a video series. That's why we recommend maybe spending a morning, or an afternoon, using the vidIQ tools that we've shown you, to get maybe 10, 15, 20 keywords, that you can create 20, 50, maybe 100 videos from.

When you have a focus, a particular niche, that's where you can hammer the YouTube algorithm, time and time again, with content that YouTube will start to see you as an authority, in. And that's when you can start to climb up the search rankings. Especially for search intent. Because when you find your niche, spectacular things can start to happen.

Keyword Research: The Positive Impact on a YouTube Channel

 we briefly saw in the Fortnite search rankings before. In the summer of 2018 this channel didn't have any focus. They were doing random videos on pranks and whatnot. But then, they had one breakthrough video, on the topic of boosting frames-per-second, on Fortnite, on season five. And this is what the channel did next.

They threw all of their content into that one keyword phrase, boosting frames-per-second on Fortnite, whatever season it was. And these went from a few hundred a video, to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of views per video. In just a few short months, this channel has become one of the authorities on the subject, so that now, whenever they post a video on Fortnite, and boosting frames-per-second, they rank at the top of the search terms, instantly. If you want to know more about this particular keyword research story, then check out this video:

I know we've used Fortnite for many examples, and it's because we have a lot of data on the subject. But believe me this strategy can be applied to any video topic. I did exactly the same thing a couple of years ago. It was all on a topic of how to record your iPhone screen, or your iPad screen, or iOS screen. And I was able to successfully leverage YouTube into sharing these videos with hundreds of thousands of people. And it grew my channel from tens of thousands of subscribers to over a 100,000 subscribers.

Use Keywords to Show YouTube What Your Content is About

All you've got to do is take these tips, tricks, and strategies, and apply it to your video topic, by doing the keyword research. But don't leave those keywords in your notebook or in your computer, because those are going to form the basics of your metadata to help your content be more discoverable on YouTube.

The more keyword research work you do for your titles and descriptions, the increased likelihood of YouTube surfacing those videos in search results. To put it simply, front-load your video titles with keywords, include those same keywords in the first two lines of your description, and include them in your video tags and playlist, as well. Give YouTube every opportunity to understand specifically, what your content is about. And stick to it over a series of videos.

Another important reason for having keywords at the very beginning of your video descriptions, is because people can read this when they search for content. So try to think of the beginning of your description, as if it were a classic tweet of 140 characters. Reinforce your keywords, while still making it a readable sentence. Give an enticing reason for the viewer to click on your video, and don't waste space with links and calls-to-actions, that will take the viewer away from your video.

Just before we analyze the success of your keywords in your YouTube videos, I want to step outside of YouTube for a second, and go into Google search, to look at something called LSI keywords. What on earth are they? It stands for latent semantic indexing. And if you still don't understand what that means, it's a system search engines use to analyze other words people use surrounding a given topic. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, I'll show you in Google.

When you do a search on Google, if you scroll to the very bottom of the first search page, you'll see lots of related keywords to what you were searching for. And these are your LSI keywords. So this is another golden opportunity to beef up your keyword collection.

If you scroll to the top of the Google search page, you'll find something else of interest, as well. If you produce good quality content, and have a strong keyword metadata in your YouTube videos, they'll start to be suggested in Google search. Imagine all of that extra free external traffic, being driven to not only your videos, but to YouTube, as well!

Now let's look at how you can analyze the success of your keywords. We're back into some vidIQ tools here, so once you have the Chrome extension installed, you can take a look at our SEO scorecard. This can be found either on the video upload/editor page, or on video watch pages.

You want to pay close attention to the actionable aspects of this SEO scorecard. When you use strong keywords in your tags, titles, and descriptions, and reinforce them throughout your metadata, your score will continue to increase. And you want to try and get to as close as 50 as possible. This gives your videos the best possible chance of fruition on YouTube, and that's reflected by the performance score.

If you want to learn more specifically, about the vidIQ SEO score, we've got the 

When your keywords in your video tags, start to rank highly and consistently, you will definitely see the rewards in your video views.

And for all vidIQ Boost users, don't forget to scroll to the bottom of the video editor page, and take advantage of our recommended tags tour. As you input keywords into your tags, titles, and descriptions, we will advise on further tags you might want to use. But be selective. Choose the ones that really define your video content.

How else can you analyze the success of your keywords? One of our most powerful tools is the Channel Audit button, found on the left-hand side navigation bar once you've installed the vidIQ Chrome extension. It will give you a full report card on your channel, 24/7. What we want to do here, is scroll down to this section that says ‘Top Search Terms’. This will show you all the traffic that's coming to your channel, from keyword search terms on YouTube. And you can click on the view more buttons to see all of the traffic coming from keyword search terms, including views and watch time.

Common sense will compel you to create more content on the keywords that are performing well for your channel. It's what we like to call the double-down strategy.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Everyone knows that keyword research is hard work - but it's a skill that every video creator should have in their toolbox. Here are 7 ways to rank on YouTube using the best keyword research hacks.

7 Ways to Rank #1 on YouTube with Keyword Research

 These are the most searched terms, and they have a high search volume because everyone uses them. Short-tail keywords only contain a few words. Terms like, "youtube shorts", "algorithm", "youtube monetization", etc. are great examples.

 to discover relevant terms and drive traffic to your videos. All you have to do is place is them in your titles and descriptions, then hit publish!

 tab on the left. You can also find it lower on the dashboard screen.

vidIQ keyword tool showing no questions found for the narrow topic 'dog food for older dogs'

Using a dedicated tool is the easiest way to research, but there are other ways to get keyword ideas on YouTube. Here's a quick list!

Find Keywords Using the YouTube Search Bar

Have you noticed that the YouTube search bar auto-completes every query? You could type the phrase "how to cook" — a basic search — and YouTube will share a list of relevant searches to explore. This is a fantastic observation to understand the intent behind the search for these keywords on YouTube.

YouTube search bar showing autocomplete suggestions for 'how to cook' revealing popular search queries

Pay attention to these suggestions. If YouTube is recommending them, it's because viewers are searching for them 

. You can use these "freebies" to kick off your research.

Want to make the suggestions more targeted for your niche? Make sure you're using the correct verbs. We used "cook" in the example above, which works well for a culinary channel. But there are plenty of words you can use to get better suggestions:

grow (gardening, finance, personal growth)

build (DIY, construction, personal growth)

Find the Related Google Searches Associated with Your Video

Have you heard of related Google searches? You’ll see them at the bottom of Google search pages, like these keywords for the popular search phrase “YouTube Shorts monetization.”

Google related searches for 'YouTube Shorts monetization' showing valuable keyword opportunities

So how do these keywords affect your content?

If you produce quality YouTube videos (that have keywords from related searches), Google might recommend your content at the top of search pages. Imagine all of that free traffic going straight to your videos!

vidIQ video ranking at the top of Google search results for 'YouTube Shorts monetization' keyword

Use Google Trends to Find Popular Topics/Keywords

Want to find popular keywords you can trust? Go to 

 and type in any phrase related to your content. Google will show you the relative popularity of that keyword over time, the regions people are searching from, related topics, and questions people ask.

Learn how to find powerful YouTube keywords that boost views and subscribers. Our research guide helps creators build channel keywords lists that rank higher in search.

Posts tagged with “Keyword Research”

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7 Ways to Rank #1 on YouTube with Keyword Research

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