Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
YouTube SEO is not keyword stuffing. It is matching a real query, earning the click, and holding the view. Here is what each field does, in order of weight.
YouTube's own autocomplete is real demand data, free to read and impossible to fake. Here is how to turn one seed word into a video plan.
YouTube shows three hashtags above your title, ignores every hashtag past 60, and may remove over-tagged videos from search. Here is the working number.
The default YouTube embed code is fixed-width and sets cookies before anyone presses play. Here is the version that is responsive, lazy and privacy-enhanced.
Copy this YouTube description template: the three visible lines, chapters, links that get clicked, and the boilerplate that belongs at the bottom.
A YouTube channel ID is the UC... string behind a handle. Here are four ways to find one, including for channels that only show an @handle.
Every YouTube video publishes its thumbnail at several resolutions. Here is how to download any of them, including the maximum-resolution version.
YouTube video tags are hidden in the page source, not the interface. Here are three ways to read them, and what they are actually worth.