When you upload a video to YouTube, you have the option to add a description to it. The description will be displayed under your video and it's recommended that you write them cautiously. Descriptions are typically neglected by most YouTubers however a good description can be helpful in certain cases. It's really important to note that you don’t have to necessarily write the descriptions for your viewers, but rather write them for the YouTube search ranking algorithm since descriptions can help it to understand what your video is about. Therefore, it's not a good idea to skip writing a description because you think that nobody is going to read it as, in a way, YouTube will “read” it.
Since the description is part of a video’s metadata, it can help your video's rankings just like the title or the tags can. That said, it should be noted that the description is not an important ranking factor but rather an additional tool that can be used to tell YouTube what your video is about.
Since the description is part of a video’s metadata, it can help your video's rankings just like the title or the tags can. That said, it should be noted that the description is not an important ranking factor but rather an additional tool that can be used to tell YouTube what your video is about.
Read more about related videos in our tag guide.
If you put a link to your Instagram account and other social media pages at the top of the description, there’s a higher chance that viewers will visit (and follow) your profiles. Therefore, always put your social media accounts’ links in the video description.
If you make a sponsored video, you can link your advertiser's website or the product's page. This will help to increase the revenue that you receive from the sponsor.
You can ask viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel (you should do this in your video too).
You can always place your other (related) videos in the video’s description. If somebody enjoyed your video then he or she might check out the description and see some of your other content.
As previously mentioned, the description is not really for your viewers but rather the artificial intelligence of YouTube to help it better understand your video. Thus, we recommend that you write 50-100 words minimum. If you can write a lot about the video, just do it. It’s not going to hurt you.
It depends on what your video Is about as there can be a big difference between topics. For example, haul videos, reviews and gameplays are quite description friendly topics and you can easily write descriptions for them. However, writing a good description for a random daily vlog can be challenging. The most important thing is that you should use the popular keywords which you would like to rank in the YouTube search results (please don't forget that this factor is largely responsible for your video’s search rankings). Furthermore, it's also recommended to avoid swearing or anything else that isn’t considered family friendly as this could hurt your rankings.
Some examples of what you can write in your description:
You can explain in the video description why you made the video, what you’ve done in the video (whatever challenge you did, which game you played, what kind of tutorial you’ve made, which video you reacted to, what product you tested, etc...). If it's possible, you should compose round and descriptive sentences instead of plain enumerations. This way, YouTube's text processing AI will understand what your text is about easier, which can lead to your video appearing in the search results for more keywords.
If the video’s concept isn’t your own idea then you can always explain who your inspiration was (the original creator). Besides, this will help your video get more publicity as it will be displayed when people search for the original video. This is because the original title and uploader’s name will be in the video description.
You can also write about the videos you are planning to do in the future. This way you can put more keywords into the description and further expand the number of search results that your video appears in.