Writing a description for your YouTube video is never a bad idea. It helps people understand your content and the value it holds, which leads to a better viewing experience. You can even place keywords in your description and possibly get featured on search pages. 

The only problem? Writing descriptions from scratch is time-consuming. And besides a basic summary of the video, what else goes in that big, empty box?

To answer that question, here's how to write descriptions for YouTube videos.

1. Get Ideas from a YouTube Description Generator

If you want to come up with descriptions fast and easy,  vidIQ has some tools to help you out. The AI description generator allows you to type in keywords that describe your video, see a few description options, and choose the right one for your content. Best of all, you get three free descriptions each month when you 

In the video above, Dan explains the benefits of the AI description generator by vidIQ, and the many ways it can help you! Here's how to get (and use) the AI Description Generator:

3. Give your video a title. If you have vidIQ installed, use our AI title generator to get a few suggestions.

4. Scroll down to the description box and find the AI Description Generator. Type in a few keywords that describe your video and click Generate.

5. Review the AI-generated descriptions (there are three). When you find a description you like, click Insert to add it to the video.

Once you've signed up to vidIQ, you'll see the 

 on the left-hand side of the webapp screen and you can use that to flesh out your ideas.

The Generate tab will help you with other aspects of the video as well like a catchy title, tags, 

, and a fully recordable script--all from a single prompt search! And, of course, you'll also get a relevant YouTube video description for your content.

2. Use the Right Keywords for YouTube's Search Engine

Do you know which keywords people will use to find your video? If so, add those terms to your video description. That will help YouTube determine what your video is about and display it on the right search pages. Your videos might even rank higher when keywords are in the title 

 into your summary, not poured. It's best to write like a human speaking to another human and add keywords sparingly to fall in favor of the YouTube algorithm.

YouTube video description for vidIQ channel

We used two keywords in the example above: "small channel on YouTube" and "more YouTube views." The summary sounds natural, and 

If you don't know where to start, read this guide to discover the best YouTube keywords.

YouTube never shows the full video description — at least not automatically. You could spend 30 minutes writing hundreds of words, but no matter what, viewers will only see the first few sentences. After that, a "show more" link allows them to keep reading.

Unfortunately, some viewers don't click on that. That's why it's a good idea to  put vital information in the first 100 characters, such as:

Example: On a search page, YouTube shows the first 90 characters of our video description.

But below the video itself, viewers see the first 160 characters.

To optimize your description in both areas, write an interesting 100 characters!

Did you know that the YouTube description box holds 5,000 characters? It's unlikely you'll need that much space, and no viewer wants to read paragraphs of text. After all, they came to watch a video.

That begs the question: What's the ideal YouTube video description length? There isn't an answer that fits all scenarios, but you can stop writing as soon as you've covered:

What viewers need to know about the video

Information related to the video (research you used, downloadable resources, etc.)

Have you ever read a YouTube description that didn't explain the video? You probably had no idea what to expect before pressing play, especially if the creator was trying to be funny, random, or aloof.

That approach may work with subscribers who already know you, but what about new viewers? They should be able to understand a video just by reading the title or description.

 You can be funny and authentic, but try to write descriptions that build upon the video title.

6. Use Timestamps to Make Your Video Skimmable

If your video is longer than 20 minutes, some viewers will need extra encouragement to watch it. Luckily, YouTube creates automatic video chapters that let viewers skip around and find different scenes.

But if someone moves away from the video to read the description, you might consider adding timestamps to that area.

When someone clicks a timestamp, the video jumps to the chapter that's available in that time frame. To make this work in your description, type the exact time you want viewers to skip to, and bam — the timestamp becomes clickable.

7. Add Links to Your YouTube Video Description

After you've written the bulk of your description, it's time to add a few links. These should direct people to videos or websites that add more value to the experience while also boosting your channel's authority.

Research links that support your video content, such as studies or surveys

Affiliate links that allow viewers to buy products mentioned in the video

Viewers need a good reason to click on the links in your description box. So when you have a few links in mind, add a CTA nearby explaining why they should click something and what happens when they do.

Check out the example below. Two of our CTAs clearly explain the value behind the links we're pushing. With the first CTA, we want to help viewers 

 by watching another video on our channel. The second CTA expresses that if you want more YouTube guidance, it's wise to hit subscribe!

9. Put Hashtags in Your YouTube Description

Adding two or three hashtags to your video description is a fantastic idea. If you create content people love — and relevant hashtags are attached — you might see your videos at the top of a hashtag page.

Out of 63,000 videos and 11,000 channels, we managed to get two videos at the top of YouTube's #growyourchannel page. So don't skip this vital step!

Most people strive to make original content on YouTube, but that rule applies to more than just videos. If you're copying descriptions from one video to the next, that becomes repetitious — and entirely unhelpful.

 with repetitive content will be hard. YouTube checks everything when you apply to the 

11. Avoid Profanity, Hate Speech, and Spammy Links

Now that you know YouTube checks your video descriptions, try to write words that make people feel safe. You can start by following the 

, which denounce profanity, hate speech, spam, and more.

If the idea of writing descriptions from scratch sounds daunting, we have good news: You don't have to.

Here's the video description template we use for the vidIQ channel:

Section 1: Describe your video (don't forget to add keywords).

Section 2: Tell viewers what to watch next on your channel (add video link).

Section 4: Add other important links (website, social media, affiliate, etc.).

Section 5: Create a list of video timestamps.

And now, here's a written example of a video description. We paired it with the video, "If I Started a YouTube Channel in 2025."

DOWNLOAD THE WORKSHEET HERE 👉 https://vidiq.ink/YouTubeSuccessRoadMap 

START USING vidIQ TOOLS NOW 👉 https://vidiq.ink/grow 

In this video we look at how to start a YouTube channel and win on YouTube in 2025 to get more views, grow your channel and monetize your YouTube channel in 2025!

Close-up of hand writing with pen on blank spiral notebook on wooden desk

What goes in the description box for a YouTube video? You need the right links, trending hashtags, and an awesome summary of your video content. Read to know more!

YouTube Video Descriptions: How to Write Them Better In 2025

YouTube descriptions, what have they ever done for your video? Well, they could be doing a lot more, if you actually wrote something worthwhile in them, but the truth is most YouTubers don’t, so here are a couple of tips and tricks to help you write better YouTube video descriptions. First, let's go through the hierarchy of importance:

The most important hook you have to pull in the viewer, is the 

. That's going to stop them from swiping or scrolling through the videos that are suggested to them.

, which provides some clarity for the video,

 to find out just how important tags are)

So when it comes to marketing your video, make sure you put most of your time, energy and resources into the thumbnail and the title. But the description does have its uses, and we'll start with the beginning of your description.

7 Ways to Optimise Your YouTube Description Right Now

There’s something that I want to stress at this point. If you see huge channels not paying any attention to video descriptions and not writing anything in them, that doesn't mean that you should do exactly the same thing. Those super-channels have already made it on YouTube, and they can do whatever they like. But when you're a smaller channel, trying to grow, making a good description is one of those marginal gains that gives you one or two percent more reasons to click on your video, as opposed to another, similar video of a channel of a similar size.

1. Use the Right Keywords to be Found in Search

There are two reasons why the beginning of your description is important. First of all, YouTube scrapes those descriptions for keywords, and it may help your video appear in Search. The higher those keywords are in the description, the more likely they are to be found by YouTube.

Second of all, when people are searching through video content, they will see a snippet of your description, roughly the first 140 characters, so think of your description as a Tweet when you first start to write it. If you're not sure how to start your description, a good idea is to more or less repeat your title.

You've no doubt put in a lot of effort into your title, and included as many keywords in there as possible, so if you put that in your description, and then maybe riff on the title a little bit, add a question in there, or a few more keywords, that's a good starting point for your video description.

The next thing you want to do is to include a subscribe link to your channel somewhere near the top of the description. Think of it as a point of sale. Your viewer could be on the edge of subscribing to your channel, and they just need a little bit of encouragement, and seeing a subscribe link in your video description may persuade them to do just that.

And you can make it even easier for them with this little subscriber hack. Simply copy and paste your channel home page, and then add this bit of code to the end of it - ?sub_confirmation=1. When people click on it, it will give them an automatic pop-up to subscribe to your channel. This does only work on desktop computers, but on a mobile it will still tune in to your channel page, where your viewer may subscribe to you.

Next comes a paragraph where you can go into more detail about your video content. Again, this is where you want to be using as many keywords as possible, so that YouTube can identify your content with as many associated terms as possible, which helps you in Search.

This doesn't mean keyword stuffing, where you're simply adding tags to your video description, that's against Terms of Service. But it may mean you're writing natural sentences, with a bit of repetition of those keywords. If you want a good example of this, check out the video description of the video at the top of the post.

The next thing you can do which can be really helpful to viewers, especially on longer videos, is to use time stamps. Time stamps are very easy to create and work on both YouTube descriptions and YouTube comments. All you need to do is create a time with a colon, for example, if you put in 1:53, that creates a link that when you click or tap on it, it takes you to one minute 53 in the video.

Now, as I say, if you've got longer videos, then this can be a great way to break up the video, and it gives you another opportunity to include keywords in your video description. And, once again, if you look in the above video description, you'll see some examples of this.

Next, there's nothing wrong with earning a little bit of extra cash from your YouTube videos, from non-YouTube tools, and that includes affiliate links in your video description. As long as you follow the rules. To quickly explain affiliate links, these are links to products and services that you create, that if the viewer clicks on them and buys something from those sites, you will earn a little bit of commission.

A simple example of this might be including an affiliate's gear guide so you're telling all of your viewers the type of camera, lighting, and other things that you use in your videos, and it gives them the opportunity to buy exactly what you use, and you earn a little bit from that. But as a disclaimer, let me stress this. Make sure you check out all of the YouTube Community Guidelines on how to use affiliate links and sell products and services on your videos, because you don't want to get in trouble, and have a strike put against your channel.

Now it is likely that you'll want to include these affiliate links among many other things in all of your videos, and so that's where you can start to use upload defaults. You'll find this under Settings in the new Creator Studio, and there is a section called Upload defaults.

Essentially, Upload defaults is all of the stuff that you want to include in every single video, so it will appear below everything else that we've already talked about. As a good example, if you go to the bottom of our video description and work your way up, you will see lots of things that come from our upload defaults.

For us, it's a case of answering commonly-asked questions, such as who vidIQ are, whether we support multiple languages, how can we download vidIQ, and videos that may help you understand how to use our tools. We also include social media links in there, so that we can communicate with our audience, whether they're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and tell them when we have new content on any of those platforms. Head on over to Upload defaults and start to amend yours.

If you want to include hashtags in your video above your title, you need to add those hashtags to your video description. You can use a maximum of three, and they will appear as blue words above your videos. Find out more about YouTube hashtags here:.

Something else to remember about video descriptions. If you change one of your video descriptions, it's not going to transform your channel overnight. This is a long-term game plan, you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. Constantly reinforcing the keywords that you use, including links to other videos in your description, and other playlists that send your viewers on a feedback loop throughout all of your content. You want to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to find your content, and then stay in your own little corner of YouTube, and that's helped through not only video descriptions, but cards and also endscreens.

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 

Man thinking about YouTube video text with vidIQ branding and green arrow pointing up

Attention YouTubers - how much value are you getting out of your descriptions? It could be a whole lot more if you follow our tips, tricks and hacks!

YouTube Descriptions: 7 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

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Posts tagged with “YouTube Descriptions”

YouTube Video Descriptions: How to Write Them Better In 2025

YouTube Descriptions: 7 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks