Use This YouTube Video Description Template to Get More Views and Money (2026)

[00:01] parts of the YouTube video description box actually carry more weight than others, not just with the algorithm, but also with how people actually engage order here, or forget to put certain elements in place, you could be missing

[00:14] income. To spare you the trouble of having to remember all of this every put together a free YouTube video description template as a companion guide for this video. It's totally free.

[00:27] You can grab it at yttemplate.com or just click on that first link in the let's start there with the most important part of your video To make changes to your YouTube video descriptions, head on over to your

[00:41] profile picture. You can click YouTube Studio, head over pencil icon under the video that you'd like to make changes to, or you can come specific video that you're looking for. So, right here is where we can start

[00:54] making changes to the description. The first place we're going to start is what this would look like on your channel before a viewer has to click more. This section of your video descriptions is mission-critical because anything else

[01:08] that you put in your description that is below this line, people have to choose to view. So, most importantly, if there's a specific link or place that you are pointing people to, it needs to appear right here. But, we

[01:23] shows up right here. We also want to take the first line of the description, which is heavily weighted, to reinforce notice here in the description that this is highlighted blue. Well, because this

[01:37] actually is a keyword phrase that VidIQ, a plugin that I've got here in the YouTube Studio, is actually showing me, "Hey, there's a lot of searches for this that's here as well." And there's like other phrases that are present

[01:50] this plugin in place. So, when it comes to the above the fold section of your description, you can think about two objectives. Number one, trying to anchor the topic, title, and thumbnail with additional reinforcement through some

[02:04] sort of search-based phrase to kick things off. Objective number two is going to be to prioritize the link that you would want someone to click on. And related to a call to action that you made in the video for your own products

[02:18] or services, for your own freebies or lead magnets, or someone else's. So, if prioritizing here or a product that you were reviewing specifically, whatever you want someone to click because they watched your video, that link is got to

[02:33] go right here. And to be clear, this is a choice only you can make. What is the priority of the video at hand? And by the way, this could change video by video. I'd love to show you an example of one of our students, Kayla, that I

[02:45] was able to coach. Check out what she does here. In the above the fold see happening. The first one is the prioritization of the call to action but then the very next thing that we decided for her based on her content

[03:01] strategy was actually pointing people to a playlist. So, you can see that both of these things appear above the fold. And then in her case, if we click more, description. And this is critical. If the most important part of the video

[03:15] above the fold, the second most important part is what shows up after clicks more, whatever pops up right there first should be your second here? Well, check out what Kayla's doing. She's actually jumping into some

[03:32] SEO reinforcement. This is the description, right? And here's the important part. A lot of people are keyword stuffing their descriptions. You as you possibly can, and even if you're using AI to try to make it sound human,

[03:46] sometimes it can come across pretty clunky. This is actually what YouTube calls misleading metadata. So, when it comes to repetitive, irrelevant, keyword-stuffed tags, or even hashtags, these kind of practices can lead to

[03:59] severe reach reduction, and in some extreme cases, channel termination. So, descriptions because she does such a is no keyword stuffing going on here. It's short, it's sweet, it's to the

[04:12] point, and it only reinforces what it needs to. Hyper-specific to the nature and topic of this particular video. She's going through a book of the Bible. represented here. Nature of the topic, Bible study.

[04:29] Bible study for beginners. Study the Bible. Bible study tips. Romans chapter 1 verse by verse. The here, would you please just make sure that it's stuff your viewers are

[04:45] actually typing in. It's their own actual phrasing. And one of our favorite tools to identify this language is vidIQ. Their keyword research tool shows you the actual search volume and competition, so you can literally just

[04:58] copy and paste the best ones into your YouTube studio. But, it goes beyond tags. I love their Outliers tool. It allows you to identify breakout videos in your niche, so you can study what's working, and then go create your own

[05:10] access to their entire suite of YouTube growth tools for a full 30 days for just growth tools for a full 30 days for just $1. Just go to vidiq.com/think to jump in and start optimizing your videos. Again, that's vidiq.com/think,

[05:26] description below for you. After someone clicks more, another great use of real estate right here is to put in more links. So, social links could be even additional links to your own products or services. You can see right

[05:38] here what Kayla did next was additional resources. And this kind of additional resources section can be super were for people, and it can be smart to put this and I both know not everyone's going to click the more option. But if they did,

[05:53] what would be the priority here? Other ways to connect with you. So, Kayla, as an example, simply listed out all of the ways people can go deeper with her, free or even paid. In Think Media, a classic example is connecting with us. So,

[06:05] social media links. And by the way, if you want those links to show up in that you want those links to show up in that really nice and crisp bubble, the link is with any link is to make sure that you've included the https

[06:20] {colon} {slash} {slash} mark. And if you've got that in place, number one, it will be clickable, but number two, YouTube can auto-detect if it is a automatically give you that pretty sweet-looking icon with the bubble. The

[06:35] same thing will happen if you actually link to anything on the platform itself. So, you could see, as in Kayla's case, we've linked people to a playlist. You simply copy and paste that playlist link into your YouTube description, and it

[06:48] will show up just like this as well. It's important to note here, too, if for clickable links, it's probably because you don't have advanced features enabled. You can check this real quick. If we go over to settings inside YouTube

[07:01] Studio, click on channel, and head right over to feature eligibility. If it's You should be set. But the main thing we're wanting to enable is advanced features. And so, if you don't have that

[07:13] super easy. Could take a little bit of time depending on the way that you want those links fully functional, which by the way, you can always verify as you're pasting your link, tweaking something, maybe you forgot the https {colon}

[07:29] super common. You can hit save, and you can then view that video live to make sure that all these links that you want to be clickable are clickable. But at to the bottom of the video description. So, like, what do we put here? A great

[07:43] time codes and chapters. If it's relevant for your video and if this is plug in. You can always let YouTube automatically do this for you, but truth usually doesn't get things that accurate. I'm sure it will get better

[07:58] Think Media, if it's applicable to the video, we sure love kind of taking make it easier for someone that's watching to navigate your video. And to you say time codes and chapters. Like what's the what's the difference here?

[08:12] The time code is just that, the place in the video where this chapter starts and the place in the video where the chapter ends. So, time code is going to be the digits, the chapter is going to be the text, what you're naming that section of

[08:27] the video. And to do this, it's as simple as making sure that you start there as well, but starting with all zeros and then simply from that place mapping out the points in your video where you want a new chapter to start

[08:43] and making sure that you're naming that chapter appropriately. So, for example, the space here from the beginning of the video all the way to 40 seconds would encompass how to upload a YouTube video in this case. By including chapter

[08:56] for people to navigate your video and this is how you get the text to show up when people hover over your video and can simply scroll through different parts. But as we closer to the bottom, a couple really good things to include

[09:09] that at least we do here at Think Media and encourage others to is any sort of disclaimers or additional ways of contact and reaching out with you. We place right here followed by additional ways to connect with her through her

[09:21] website, Instagram, even an email that would be appropriate. This should not be connected to the Google account that you use to log into your YouTube channel. that you created and set up just to

[09:34] smart for Kayla to have this closer to the bottom cuz the idea would be if reaching out, they would have opened the description and like went all the way cover, which you might be surprised we didn't talk about this earlier, but it's

[09:47] in video descriptions? Well, let's hop back over to Think Media and see what's going on here. You'll notice we've got three right here. Think Media, Sean Cannell, YouTube Tips. Hashtags are different from tags.

[10:01] Hashtags are far more about grouping and organizing content than it is labeling content with the assistance of search. When it comes to hashtags in your video description, the best way to use them and think about them is to not overstuff

[10:15] them, as we talked about before, and to just pick a handful. Pick a handful of anchor hashtags that would fit umbrella terms with your channel, with your and simply reuse them. And what you're doing over time is you're creating

[10:29] for example, if I clicked on one of these links here, his word "My Walk With Kayla", what shows up, all of a sudden my whole screen is populated with just with videos that have that tag. This is an organizational mechanism, not a

[10:44] kind of thinking about your own branding, your own channel, your own name, if you're comfortable with it, to try to associate and connect all of your you'd like to go deeper on that topic, I put together a quick updated video. You

[10:59] can click or tap the screen right here to learn more about tags and their role as much as they used to, but there's still a role for them to play in your content, [music] and would love to meet you over there in that video.