Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
YouTube's chapter rules are a parser, not guidance. Break one of the four and you get no chapters at all — not the valid ones, none of them — with no error anywhere on the page.
Grouping a keyword list so each group becomes one page. The proper way needs ranking data; the approximation you can do in a browser is good enough to plan from.
The advice is everywhere and the reason given for it is usually wrong. There is a real argument for rotating, and it is not the one about being flagged.
The 100-character limit is the number the upload form enforces. The numbers that decide whether anyone reads your title are 70, 60 and 40, and nothing mentions those.
The "1-2%" target repeated across the web has no source. Two things about a keyword are checkable - whether it is present and where it first appears - and they are what to measure.
The cap and the useful number are different things, and the gap is large. Instagram allows thirty and recommends three to five. Here is every platform's cap and its sensible count.
Most hashtag mistakes cost you one tag. Three of them cost you every tag on the post, and none of the three announce themselves.
Google gives a desktop snippet two lines and a phone three. The useful target is one clear promise inside about 155 characters — and Google may still use a passage instead.
A title tag is cut by width, not by character count. The desktop column is about 600 pixels — which is anywhere from 45 to 75 characters depending on the letters.
A search snippet is assembled, not published. Google picks the title, often rewrites it, chooses the description from the page, and cuts both to fit a fixed column.
The same link renders two different cards. Facebook gives a title 88 characters on desktop and about 65 on a phone — and the phone is where most of the taps are.
Copying hashtags out of a screenshot by hand is how most people do this. Here is how to pull them off a public post from its URL, and what the limits are.