YouTube is the second most-visited site after Google, with over a billion hours of videos being watched daily. Did you know that it is also the 2nd biggest search engine and social platform?
With video content consumption on the rise, it is more important than ever for your brand to be part of this movement towards video marketing.
Video marketing is far more than just creating and publishing a great video but like any marketing effort, proper keyword targeting and tagging is required to maximise your SEO and organic hits.
With the huge amount of videos on YouTube, without the proper keywords being embedded in the description, title, tags and transcript - it is quite unlikely for your video to be seen given the average user’s propensity to only check the first few results.
Hence, you’ll need to perform YouTube keyword research to ensure that you are creating content and targeting keywords people search for.
It is important to note that these keywords are not necessarily the same as your website / Google keywords as people often search differently on YouTube as compared to Google. That said, there will be some element of overlap and you can use those keywords to kick off your research.
Fortunately, there are YouTube keyword tool sites that can help you with your research to quickly scan for your keywords and similar ones, competitor data and more.
Below is our compiled list of the best YouTube keyword tools.
The 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tool Platforms in 2021
1. YouTube Autocomplete
The first and most obvious free keyword tool you should use is YouTube’s own autocomplete as it automatically shows the most common searches related to your keyword.
Just plug in your keywords and start to find out what are the common related searches.
2. Keywordtool.io
This tool builds on YouTube Autocomplete, using its data to easily create keyword lists, providing you with search volume data, trends, CPC and competitor research. It also allows searches for questions people ask.
However the free version is also fairly limited, so be prepared to make an investment if you wish to use this tool for bulk research. Keyword Tool’s monthly plans range from $69 to $159 a month depending on the volume of keywords analysis you require.
3. Ubersuggest
Ubersugest is one of the best free YouTube keyword research tools, providing data on search volume and competition, cost per click and the seasonality of the keyword.
If you are just starting out or have a small budget, this is a great option!
4. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer
On the other end of the scale is Ahrefs, which is a premium tool used by global brands. Their Keywords Explorer runs on a database of over 640 million YouTube keywords, allowing you to see local and global search volume (for nearly every country), clicks, click percentage, and more.
Ahrefs offers four pricing tiers, ranging from $99 per month for a single user to $999 per month for 5 or more users at an agency. They also have a $7 7-day paid trial.
5. TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is a freemium Chrome browser extension for Chrome, which overlays data as you browse YouTube.
It provides estimated global search volume, competition, and an overall keyword score, however their methodology is not well-explained and estimates appear to be inflated.
What we do recommend them for is their ability to duplicate tags from relevant videos which can allow you to quickly build up a list of tags and it also removes duplicate tags automatically.
Their rank tracker tool is also useful for tracking how well your videos are doing compared to competitors and features downloadable reports as well.
While some of their features require a monthly subscription, prices are fairly affordable starting from $7.20/month.
6. VidIQ
VidIQ is a YouTube Certified partner specifically serving video content creators. It pulls data for keywords from YouTube providing helpful information like recommended tags and related top-performing videos for these keywords.
This tool helps confirm the relevance of keywords, find new keywords and perform competitor research, and also features other help tools for video content creators. It does require an affordable monthly subscription of $7.50 per month.
7. Keyword Tool Dominator
This is a simple and easy to use keyword research tool that allows you to quickly find related keywords and data.
Unfortunately, the free version only allows three searches daily. If you intend to do a high volume of research it may be worthwhile to consider paying an one-off fee of $39.99.
8. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome and Firefox extension which shows keyword search volume, cost per click and how many competitors are bidding.
This is great for refining your keyword list to select less competitive keywords to maximise your advertising budget or even for SEO to focus and own the long tail keywords.
9. Kparser
Kparser is another keyword tag generator. It creates a list of other high-performing tags that are related to your topic, search volume for those tags, and their cost per click.
They are especially useful for global brands allowing you to filter terms based on geography to modify your SEO strategy by country and by language.
Kparser’s basic features are free but limited, but subscriptions are quite affordable and start at only $4.99 per month.
10. Keyword Keg
Keyword Keg is a powerful tool pulling from many data sources including Wikipedia, Alibaba, Playstore and more. You can see a term’s search volume, Google AdWords cost per click, and overall strength of the keyword based on their data.
Keyword Keg lets you see only the first five results for free, so if you are interested, a monthly subscription starting from $40 is necessary.
Keywords Are Just The Beginning
Regardless of the YouTube keyword tool and keywords you ultimately pick, it’s important to remember that the greatest value in video marketing is the virality which depends only marginally on your keywords and SEO but instead the quality of your content.
