YouTube Video SEO Checker
Paste any YouTube URL to score its title, description, tags, chapters, hashtags and captions against YouTube's rules — with a specific fix for each. Free, no login.
Before a video can rank, its metadata has to be in order. This checker reads a video's public data and grades the fields you control against YouTube's documented rules and current best practice — then tells you exactly what to fix. No sign-up, no guesswork, no invented "ranking score."
What gets checked
Title length (so it isn't truncated in search), description depth, chapters (parsed from your timestamps using YouTube's real rules — start at 0:00, three or more, each ≥10s), hashtags (and the limit of 15 before YouTube ignores them all), tags, and captions. Add a target keyword to see where it appears.
From clean metadata to actually outranking
A strong score means your video is eligible to rank — not that it will. Ranking comes down to covering the topic better than the videos already winning. That's the job of the full VidHalo analysis: it reads the top-ranking videos for your search term and builds the brief to beat them. Polish the packaging first with the Thumbnail Previewer, then check the metadata here.
Frequently asked questions
What does the YouTube SEO checker look at?+
It grades the parts of a video you control: title length, description depth, whether valid chapters are set, hashtag count (and YouTube's 15-hashtag limit), video tags, and whether captions are available. Each check comes with a specific fix, and you get an overall score out of 100.
Does it work on any video, or only mine?+
Any public video. It reads only public metadata via YouTube's official data, so you can audit your own videos or study a competitor's. Private, deleted, or age-restricted videos can't be checked.
What's a good YouTube SEO score?+
Aim for 80+. The score weights the highest-impact fields most — a well-sized, keyword-led title and a real description matter more than tags. A lower score usually means an easy win: add chapters, flesh out the description, or trim an over-long title.
Can I check a specific keyword?+
Yes — add a target keyword and the checker reports whether it appears in the title, description and tags, and flags if it's missing from the title (where it matters most).
Is a high score enough to rank?+
No — and any tool claiming otherwise is guessing. Clean metadata makes a video eligible to rank, but ranking depends on satisfying the search better than the videos already there. That gap is exactly what the full VidHalo analysis measures.
More free tools
Don't just fix one video — outrank the ones beating you.
VidHalo reads the top-ranking videos for your topic — what they cover, where they're thin, what viewers still ask — and hands you the brief to beat them. Free tools get you started; the trial does the rest.