Free YouTube Keyword Tool (+ Guide)

What is a YouTube keyword tool?

A YouTube keyword tool is a tool that finds the searches people make on YouTube, so a video's title, description and script can use their words.

How to use the YouTube keyword tool

Copy the list when you're done. It's plain text, one search per line.

How to do YouTube keyword research

Keyword research for a video comes down to five steps:

Step 1: Start broad

Start with the topic in a few words, like "time management". Broad words bring the most suggestions, and the long tail shows up under the letters.

Step 2: Read the questions

The Questions tab holds searches that start with how to, what is, why and best. A question is a video idea already phrased by the viewer: answer it, and put its words in the title.

Step 3: Check the competition

Press Check on a suggestion to read its own top results, then read the numbers in the table below.

Step 4: Pick one main search

Pick the one search your video answers best, and two or three close ones it also answers. A video aimed at 10 different searches answers none of them well.

Step 5: Use the words where YouTube reads them

YouTube's page on how search works says it estimates relevance from "how well the title, tags, description, and video content match your search query".

Put the main search in the title, the first lines of the description and the first 30 seconds of the video.

The tool does the first three steps for you in a minute, so most of your time goes into the video.

Where the keywords come from

Every keyword here is a suggestion from YouTube's own search box, the list it shows as someone types.

Typing more after the keyword brings more of them. So the tool asks for "time management a", "time management b" and so on to z, plus "how to", "what is", "why", "best" and "vs".

That brings up the long tail: longer searches with fewer videos competing for them.

The tool reads them signed out, in the country you pick, the way a new viewer there sees them.

Why there's no search volume

YouTube doesn't publish how many people make a search. Any number shown as YouTube search volume is an estimate from outside data.

This tool shows only what YouTube itself shows: the suggestions in YouTube's order, and the videos that rank. Where a number would be a guess, it's left out.

What the competition numbers mean

The 4 numbers come from the top results for your keyword:

A keyword worth a video tends to have real views, some new videos, and channels your size among the top results.

How YouTube ranks search results

YouTube's page on how search works names 3 things it weighs: relevance, engagement and quality. To estimate relevance, it looks at "how well the title, tags, description, and video content match your search query."

So a keyword belongs in 4 places:

• The title, near the start.
• The first 2 lines of the description.
• What you say in the first 30 seconds, so the captions carry it.
• The chapter names, where the video answers its questions.

For the chapters, use the YouTube timestamp generator. For tags from the top videos, use the YouTube tag generator.

Who is the YouTube keyword tool for?

It's for YouTubers who want the searches behind a topic:

• YouTube rank checker – creators checking where a video ranks
• YouTube title checker – anyone writing the title
• YouTube niche finder – people sizing up a niche
• YouTube outlier finder – creators looking for proven topics

More tools like these are on my free tools page.