Many of our clients ask: What are the best keywords for my YouTube channel?

In this post we’ll explore what are the best channel keywords to use (and how many you should use) by analyzing the data of thousands of trending YouTube channels.

Hi, I’m Mik from TunePocket. These are not some generic keywords generated by an AI chat-bot. This post is based on the actual YouTube data collected over the course of several months.

Key takeaways

• We’ve analyzed thousands (and counting) of trending YouTube channels.
• “Funny” is the most frequently used channel keyword. Other top keywords include “news”, “gaming”, and “music” (read the post to see the complete stats).
• Don’t limit yourself to broad and popular keywords, include narrow, specific keywords relevant to your channel.
• Don’t rely on the channel keywords alone, use video tag and hashtags as well (you’ll find the list of tools and resources near the bottom of the post).

What are channel keywords?

YouTube channel keywords are descriptive words or phrases that help to define the content and niche of a YouTube channel.

These keywords are part of the channel’s metadata, which is used by YouTube’s search algorithm to understand the focus of the channel and suggest it to the viewers with similar interests.

How channel keywords are different from tags and hashtags?

Channel keywords define the overall theme and focus of the entire YouTube channel, helping YouTube understand what your channel is about.

Channel keywords apply to the entire channel, not individual videos.

Tags are specific to individual videos and help YouTube understand the content and context of each video.

They are used for search and discovery and not visible in the video title or description.

Related: Discover and generate proven tags with free YouTube tags generator.

Hashtags are clickable words or phrases that categorize content and help viewers find videos on specific topics. They are used for discovery and trending topics within the YouTube platform.

Unlike tags, hashtags can be added to the description or title of a video and are clickable, allowing users to discover related content across YouTube.

what keywords should i use for my YouTube channel?

The keywords you should use for your YouTube channel depend heavily on the topic or the niche of your content.

It’s important to use a mix of broad and specific keywords relevant to your channel’s main topics, target audience, and content style.

Research keyword popularity and use SEO tools to make data-driven decisions.

If you have no idea where to start, research what keywords are used by other popular channels in your niche using a simple YouTube channel keywords extractor tool.

For a more general overview of top keywords, as well as most popular keywords in different niches see below.

10 YouTube channel keywords used by most trending channels

We ran an analysis on thousands of trending YouTube channels to see which keywords appear most often.

Here’s what we found:

funny

“Funny” is the most frequently used keyword.

This undoubtedly reflects a strong preference for humor and entertainment on YouTube. Keep that in mind when choosing your channel’s niche.

news

Many channels focus on delivering current events, breaking news and updates. That tells us that YouTube often picks news videos for their trending playlists.

gaming

Gaming-related content is highly popular on YouTube, with a nearly equal occurrence to news. No surprise considering that YouTube is a major hub for gaming communities, tutorials, playthroughs, and live streams, catering to a large gaming audience.

Here’s the complete list of the most popular channel keywords based on the sample we analyzed:

1. funny
2. news
3. gaming
4. comedy
5. music
6. shorts
7. vlog
8. video
9. sports
10. football

Stay tuned (bookmark this page) to see updated results as we collect and analyze more YouTube data.

YouTube channel keywords list by video topic

New let’s look more specifically into various video categories to understand better which keywords work best for each niche.

Best keywords for sports YouTube channels

sports, football, basketball, soccer, baseball, tennis, cricket

Best keywords for gaming YouTube channels

gaming, game, let’s play, playthrough, speedrun, esports

Best keywords for news YouTube channels

news, politics, breaking news, current events

Best keywords for comedy YouTube channels

funny, comedy, humor, skits, satire

Best keywords for music YouTube channels

music, songs, singers

Best keywords for vlog YouTube channels

vlog, lifestyle, personal, daily life

Best keywords for education YouTube channels

tutorial, science, education, history, learning, how-to

Best keywords for entertainment YouTube channels

entertainment, movies, pop culture, celebrities, tv shows

Best keywords for shorts YouTube channels

shorts, viral, memes, clips

Best keywords for kids/children YouTube channels

family, kids, cartoons, toys, children

How many channel keywords should I use?

We discovered that nearly 30% of trending YouTube channels use between 5 and 10 keywords.

You can see the full analysis in the chart below:

don’t rely on the channel keywords alone!

Setting the proper channel keywords is an important step in your video SEO strategy.

However, don’t forget to optimize each video!

Here are some tools and resources that can help.

Want to know what keywords are used by the most popular YouTube channels?

Unfortunately, the channel keywords are not published in channel details, but we have a handy (and free!) tool that can help:

More free YouTube video SEO tools:

Questions?

We hope you find this guide helpful.

Have another burning question about YouTube? Post it in the comments and we’ll do the research.