YouTube Hashtags: How and When to Use Them

What YouTube Hashtags Are and How They Work

YouTube hashtags are words or short phrases preceded by the # symbol, added to a video description or title. When a viewer clicks a hashtag on a video page, YouTube shows a results page containing other videos that use the same hashtag. This creates a horizontal discovery path — a viewer can move from your video to an entire feed of related content through a single click.

Hashtags function differently from tags and keywords. Tags are private metadata read by the algorithm but invisible to viewers. Keywords in titles and descriptions influence search rankings. Hashtags are public, clickable, and displayed on the video page. Their primary value is topic clustering and secondary discovery — helping your video appear when viewers browse a hashtag feed rather than searching for a specific query.

The first three hashtags in your description are displayed above the video title in a blue link format. These prominent hashtags are the most visible to viewers on the watch page, which is why the first three hashtags you choose should be the most strategically important ones.

Where to Add Hashtags on YouTube

You can add hashtags in two places on a YouTube video: in the title, or in the description. Both placements work, but they have different implications.

Adding a hashtag to the title uses up title character space and makes the title look different from a standard heading. For most videos, adding hashtags to the description is the preferred approach because it keeps the title clean and readable while still triggering the hashtag display above the title on the watch page.

Within the description, hashtags are typically placed at the very end, after all other content, as a line of clickable labels. Some creators place them at the top of the description before any other text. If the hashtags are placed at the top, be aware that they will occupy some of the visible description preview space that appears in search results — space that is more valuably used for keyword-rich text about the video content.

How Many Hashtags to Use

YouTube allows up to 60 hashtags per video, but using more than 15 has an important consequence: YouTube will ignore all hashtags on that video entirely. This means using too many hashtags produces worse results than using a small, focused selection.

The practical recommendation is to use 3 to 5 hashtags per video. This number is enough to cover the primary topic and one or two secondary associations without creating noise. For channels in niches where hashtag browsing is common (music, gaming, fitness, beauty), 5 to 8 hashtags may be appropriate. For B2B, educational, or technical content where viewers primarily arrive via search rather than hashtag browsing, 3 to 5 is sufficient.

Choosing the Right Hashtags for a Video

Hashtag selection follows a simple tiered approach. Start with the broadest relevant topic, then move to more specific topics, then add a channel-branded hashtag.

For a video about how to write YouTube descriptions, an appropriate hashtag structure might be: #YouTubeSEO (broad topic) + #YouTubeDescription (specific topic) + #YourChannelName (branded). This structure places the video in the broad YouTube SEO hashtag feed, the specific YouTube Description hashtag feed, and your own branded channel feed.

Before settling on a hashtag, type it into the YouTube search bar and look at how much content is associated with it. A hashtag with very little associated content means few viewers are browsing it. A hashtag with an enormous amount of content means your video will be buried almost immediately in the feed. The most effective hashtags are those with a substantial but not overwhelming amount of associated content — enough for active browsing but not so competitive that a single new video disappears instantly.

Hashtags and Trending Topics

YouTube sometimes features trending topic hashtags, and videos using a trending hashtag may be surfaced more prominently in those topic feeds temporarily. If a trending topic is directly and genuinely relevant to your video content, including the trending hashtag is a legitimate way to gain additional exposure during the trend period.

However, attaching trending hashtags to videos where the content has no connection to the trend is a violation of YouTube policy and is the hashtag equivalent of tag stuffing. YouTube actively monitors for this practice and can remove videos from search results or remove hashtags from videos that misuse trending terms. Only use trend-based hashtags when the video genuinely covers the trending topic.

When Hashtags Provide Limited Value

Hashtags add the most value when viewers in your niche actively browse hashtag feeds. This browsing behavior is more common in content categories with strong community cultures: music, gaming, fitness, lifestyle, beauty, and entertainment. In these niches, viewers use hashtags to explore a topic broadly and discover new creators.

In highly technical or professional niches — software development, finance, legal content, B2B marketing — viewers typically arrive via specific search queries rather than hashtag browsing. Hashtags still work in these niches and are worth including, but they are unlikely to be a major traffic source. Focus first on title and description optimization for these audiences, and treat hashtags as supplementary.

The relationship between hashtags and broader content discoverability on YouTube is part of the same optimization thinking as internal linking on websites. The internal linking lesson in the SEO course explains how topic clusters and link structures create discovery paths — a concept directly parallel to how YouTube hashtags cluster related videos into browsable feeds.