Did you hear the news? YouTube released a free keyword research tool to help you make better videos. It’s located in the YouTube Studio – as most tools are – and tries to improve your content in three ways:
- Reveal what viewers are searching for on YouTube
- Display what your specific audience is searching for
- Suggest content you should make in the future
How to Find YouTube’s Keyword Research Tool
1. Go to the YouTube Studio (studio.youtube.com) and click Analytics in the left navigation bar.
2. Click the Research tab.
Here, you can “research some of the top searches from viewers on your channel and across YouTube in the last 28 days.”
How to Use YouTube’s Keyword Research Tool
The tool itself is divided into three tabs:
- Searches across YouTube
- Your viewers’ searches
- Saved keywords
Tab One: Searches Across YouTube
Want to see the search volume for any YouTube keyword? Here’s how to do that:
1. Click the Searches Across YouTube tab, then type any word or phrase into the search bar. We’ll use “dogs” as an example.
Here, you’ll see variations of the original word or phrase you typed in. For example, our query for “dogs” returned phrases like “who let the dogs out” and “cute dogs.” Each term is labeled as having low, medium, or high search volume.
2. Use the filter options to refine your search.
You can display all keywords at once or just your “content gaps” – video topics that currently have no results, few results, or low-quality results on YouTube. A geography setting also shows keywords people use in specific locations.
3. Finally, click the three dots on the far right to save a keyword, remove it, report it, or analyze it on Google Trends.
Tab Two: Your Viewers’ Searches
On this tab, YouTube shows the topics your audience is searching for. The terms should look familiar, as they’re all related to your YouTube niche – which is extremely helpful.
1. Click the Your Viewers’ Searches tab.
2. Browse the keyword list to see your viewers’ searches on YouTube, plus search volume.
This tab is similar to the “Searches Across YouTube” one. You can access the same options as before: filtering for content gaps, browsing keywords from specific locations, saving or removing terms, etc.
Check the previous section (Searches Across YouTube) for all filtering/saving instructions.
Tab Three: Saved Keywords
The last tab shows the keywords you saved from previous searches. Here’s how to use it:
1. Click the Saved tab.
2. To remove a keyword from the list, click the three dots on the far right or click the bookmark icon.
