Everyone knows that online video is the fastest growing online medium. As of Oct. 2008, not only is it popular, but on the major 5 search engines,video has now passed search as the most popular online activity, according to research released by comScore and covered by ReelSEO.

Online video, combined with search, is one of the most effective ways to drive internet users to your videos and market your products and services. However, being that online video marketing is such a new strategy, there are still many aspects of video marketing that are not well understood. For online marketers and video content producers, it is important to learn and practice techniques that increase the likelihood that internet users will discover their content via the major search engines. To do this, one must understand video search optimization, also known as video SEO.

In order to leverage the power of online video with search, one must first answer the question, “what is video SEO, or video search engine optimization?” Simply stated, it is the art and process of creating online video content in such a way that it is easily discovered and indexed by search engines. Doing this will help to drive maximum exposure to your video content. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 separate and distinct strategies for optimizing video online.

First, there is what is known as “Posted” video SEO. With “posted” video optimization, the strategy is to get as many views to your video content as possible. To do this, you can take advantage of the massive audience that video sharing websites like YouTube, metacafe, blip.tv and others have. One other benefit to this strategy is that you can leverage the existing authority and page rank that these sites have in order to show up in Universal search on the major search engines.

With posted video SEO, it is important that you pay close attention to the keywords that you include in fields entered upon upload like the title, tags, descriptions, etc… We recommend utilizing tools and services that help you to automatically upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Although it is not impossible to do so, the major downfall with this strategy falls into place when your goal is purely to drive traffic back to your website.

While “Posted” video SEO is a great strategy for getting video views, “Hosted” video SEO is a good strategy when your goal is to drive users to your own website. Essentially, “hosted” video SEO is the practice of optimizing your own website video content. Another benefit to this strategy is that it allows website owners to leverage video content to generate high rankings within the major search engines due to the proliferation of universal search

For “hosted” video SEO strategy, it is most crucial that you consider it a holistic approach to website optimization and follow general best practices for optimizing website content. That being said, because search engines can not yet understand the content within a video, it is most important that you optimize your pages utilizing on-page text that is relevant to your video content. There are many tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO. The following tips are crucial:

1) When including video on a web page, make certain that you populate the page with relevant on-page text.

2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.

3) Publish all your videos within the same directory or subdomain and keep each video on its own unique URL.

4) Create and submit a video sitemap to guide the search engines to your video content.

5) Be sure to generate off-site links to your video pages by encouraging users to share and link to your videos.

Whether your strategy is to drive visits to your video or to your website in general, video SEO is an effective way to leverage the power of online video. If you are interested in learning more advanced tips and techniques for either “posted” or “hosted” video content, ReelSEO is the website to visit. They are the only site completely focused on providing resources and information for Video SEO.

Good luck and much success to you and your video optimization efforts.

Before you dive further into online video, be sure to check out the VSEO experts at ReelSEO, the online video marketer’s guide. Learn more about video marketing, video SEO, video advertising, and general best practices for online video publishing and marketing.

Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and ConversionSolve your traffic troubles and turn browsers into buyers

When web design expert Ben Hunt set out to quantify the difference between an ordinary web site and a great one, he expected to find the key in design simplicity. But when his team more than doubled the conversion rates for a wide range of sites, they identified simple yet powerful solutions involving design, copy, appropriate analysis, classic optimization techniques, and targeted testing. You'll find the fixes easy to implement, and they're all right here.

• Understand the essentials - your market, your proposition, and your delivery.
• Create a site that is seen by the right people, provides a compelling experience, and generates the desired action.
• Learn how to use testing to improve your site's conversion rate.
• Discover the holistic nature of web site optimization and why multiplicity matters.
• Examine dozens of simple techniques for building traffic, engaging your audience, and crafting effective calls to action.
• Combine creativity with analysis for the best possible results.

Ben Hunt is Principal Consultant for Scratchmedia Ltd. He operates webdesignfromscratch.com, which provides tutorials and advice to over 120,000 web developers each month. Ben has been designing, coding, and producing web sites for clients worldwide for more than 15 years, and is considered a leader in the web usability industry.

Forewords by Ken McCarthy, founder of the System Seminar, and Drayton Bird, Drayton Bird Associates.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 9:19 am and is filed under Web Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.