Should your tags be phrases or single words? Does it make any difference?

A quick example, if I'm making videos about java programming,

Should I use phrases for tags like

"java programming tutorial", "java for beginners", "learn java programming"

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or just put in the relevant words like

"java", "programming", "tutorial", "learn", "beginners"

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I noticed that vidiq shows the position of your video for each phrase that you have in tags which I find very convenient and makes me think that phrases are also better for ranking. Although I see the latter being used more across youtube.

in my experience tags are not very importante.. work on your title and the description

mnrfas said:

in my experience tags are not very importante.. work on your title and the description

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They are very important but if you are not going to use tags, then try using hashtags. OP, you can mix long phrase and single keywords tags.

zuytr said:

They are very important but if you are not going to use tags, then try using hashtags. OP, you can mix long phrase and single keywords tags.

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confused ...what's the difference here b/w tags & hashtags

Pardesi said:

confused ...what's the difference here b/w tags & hashtags

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Hashtag example - #bhw can be placed in title or description
Tags in example - bhw (without #) can be placed anywhere in title, description or tags section as just keywords