Many YouTubers are bent on growing their channel, and a handful of them focus on content, perhaps SEO, or thumbnails. Still, one thing is a substantial fact, and this is choosing the right YouTube category for your video. The category you choose for your video impacts how YouTube classifies and promotes it, and there is a reasonable obsession that selecting the right YouTube category for your video can help it rank better.
In this article, you will learn why choosing the right category matters, how it can impact your channel, and what steps to take to ensure you are choosing the right category for your video.
What Are YouTube Categories?
YouTube has 15 different categories: from music to education, gaming, and entertainment. When you upload a video, you have to select a category that resonates with your content. This helps YouTube organize the videos and makes it easier for your video to be found by viewers.
Every category has its trends, expectations of the audience, and level of competition. Thus, the “Gaming” category is probably the most competitive one, while “How-To & Style” can present opportunities to cater to a niche market.
Why choosing the right category matters
Choosing the right category helps YouTube’s algorithm understand the context of your video. This will help it decide how to index your content as well as suggest it to or recommend it to users on the platform that will find it relevant.
Here are the main ways in which choosing the right category can impact your channel:
1. Improved discoverability
YouTube’s recommendation system uses metadata, video tags, and categories to suggest content for users to watch. So, if your video is unlisted incorrectly, it can be shown to an irrelevant audience, negatively impacting view time and overall watch time and engagement.
2. Appearing higher in search results
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. As such, you want to make sure that your content is search-optimized to grow your channel. One element of SEO on YouTube includes appropriate category placement. By selecting the right category, you can increase the chances of your video showing up in people’s searches when they are looking for similar content.
3. Attracting the Right Audience
If you categorize your content correctly, you attract the viewers into your categories. If the category doesn’t match your audience’s interests, it could result in higher bounce rates or lower retention, which are all negative signals for YouTube. However, if you select the right category for your content, you can attract an audience that’s interested and will watch, like, comment, and subscribe to it.
4. Increased Channel Authority
Correctly categorizing your content over a long period can lead to an increased channel authority in that niche. If your channel is verified as a trusted source of a specific type of content, it can provide an advantage when YouTube recommends videos from your niche to a new audience.
How to Choose the Right YouTube Category for Your Videos
To ensure that your videos are correctly categorized, follow these steps:
1. Understand Your Content Type
The first step in categorizing your video is understanding what kind of content you’re making. What is your video primarily about? Is it educational, is it tutorial-based, or is it more entertainment-focused or vlog-like? Understanding the core purpose of your content will help guide you toward the correct category on YouTube.
2. Research similar channels.
If you look at other creators in your niche and see which categories they’re using, that can help you distinguish what’s working and how viewers in that niche are engaging with the content. Make sure not to copy their category too quickly—your content may fit a slightly different niche for the category recommendation.
3. Use analytics tools.
You can use YouTube Analytics to check out your watch times and subscriber counts for different videos you upload. Also, use their watch time reports to understand if people are watching the videos you upload; determine the specific and detailed categories of videos they are watching to channel your efforts. Feel free to use the LenosTube all-in-one platform to understand your performance metrics in comparison to your competitor’s videos.
4. Use Free Category Tools
One of the easiest methods to be sure that your video is categorized correctly is to use TubePilot YouTube Category Checker. It is a free tool that helps position a specific YouTube video in a category or niche. You have to enter the link to your video, and then the tool will help to determine the category in which the video is. The tool is very useful for content producers, marketers, and researchers who want to understand the competitive segment or state that their videos are rightly labeled for SEO and visit targeting. Only several steps divide you from the right category: 1. Enter the URL, and 2. Press a button. The tool is very fast, easy, and 100% free.
5. Experiment and Track Results
YouTube allows changing the category of your video even after you upload it. If you are not sure which topic fits your content best, try assigning different categories and tracking their impact on views, engagement, or search results. Make changes based on the results you get.
6. Consider Subcategories and Niches
For instance, while a general topic category such as “entertainment” may fit a lot of videos, focusing on a sub-niche puts you in a better position. For example, if your content is related to personal finance and is informative, assigning “education” will be appropriate. However, if there is a playlist of videos about personal finance or a video on budgeting, this category will define your audience better.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
If you want to reap the benefits of the YouTube categories, avoid the given mistakes:
- Choosing Popular Categories for More Exposure: many creators believe that if they select a popular category like “Entertainment” or “Gaming,” it will give them more exposure. However, in many cases, it will only result in your video getting lost among the competition. It’s more beneficial to select a niche category where your video will be more likely found.
- Not updated video categories: If you keep progressively transforming your channel and changing the type of content, update corresponding video categories. Otherwise, you confuse YouTube and possibly your audience.
- Relying Solely on Categories: Sometimes, you can mistakenly rely only on video category updates and forget about all the other growth strategy components. Any decision should be complemented with good efforts on filling titles, descriptions, and tags of your videos with necessary keywords.
Conclusion
Choosing the right YouTube category is a powerful yet often underrated tool to improve your channel’s growth. When done correctly, it makes your content more discoverable, attracts the right audience, and puts you in a good search position. For that to happen, you need to understand your content and your niche and continuously track your results. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, especially with YouTube’s constantly shifting algorithms. Don’t forget that you can use our TubePilot YouTube Category Checker to immediately find out the category of any video if you’re in doubt if it is used correctly. Keep in mind that while the category is important, it only works in conjunction with good quality, effective SEO, and a good experience for the viewer.
