VIDEO SEO

With most people now having access to broadband Internet combined with the enormous growth of popular online video sharing sites such as YouTube, video marketing is rapidly becoming something that's too important to ignore for many businesses. With Google showing video results and linking directly to YouTube, video marketing is one of the biggest trends in the world of online business. To get the most out of your video marketing campaign, you should take into account that, because video content is now a favorite of the search engines, you should combine it with some search engine optimization.

SEO and video marketing is somewhat different than traditional SEO which combines HTML meta-data, text and back-linking. Video, by contrast, has no text and no index, so you will need to use some slightly different strategies.

Before you begin, take the time to produce quality video content which offers something of use to your viewers. Followed by a call to action, the main part of a marketing video should be inspiring and enticing and anything but boring. Keep videos short and informational. Some marketing videos make the mistake of droning on for so long that the vast majority of viewers end up getting bored and just switch it off. When you post a video to YouTube or another video sharing site, do not assume that it will start driving large amounts of traffic to your website. Some work will be required to get the most out of your video marketing campaign. For a start, you should submit your video to the search engines in addition to the pages where they appear.

Major companies like Google are constantly improving the way that their search engine algorithms work when it comes to providing video-related results and it's easy to see why. Long gone are the days when the Internet was entirely text-based with a few images thrown in. In spite of this, search engines still need some help (SEO) in order to effectively index your video content. A search engine crawler is not going to discover a video on your website or anywhere else by itself. Instead, you will need to submit the video to the search engine by using the tools provided by that company.

Video clips should also be accompanied by some text, since this is the only thing that a search engine crawler will read and a brief description and title is also useful to your viewers. Incorporate your chosen keywords in the title and description meta-tags of the webpage's HTML code.While it is by far the biggest video sharing site, YouTube is not the only player in the industry. Submit your video clips to other video sites as well. It doesn't have to cost you anything more and not a lot of extra work is involved either. Some sites to consider include Yahoo! Video, Google Video and Vimeo.

YouTube provides some useful analytics tools which are there to help you with research. Using these will allow you to determine how your currently posted videos are performing. Not only that, they will also help to guide you towards potential opportunities for creating new videos which are likely to be popular not only among your current audience, but also to drive in more viewers. The more popular your videos, the more often they will end up in the recommended results section when people carry out a search.

YouTube provides other useful features to help you get the most out of your video marketing. You can create channels and playlists, for example, linking relevant videos to each other and ultimately enticing your viewers to take a look at more of your content. YouTube also allows you to add annotations to your videos which can lend to a more interactive experience, though they should be used sparingly lest they become an annoyance.