Friday, January 30, 2009

Strategies and Definitions of Video Search Optimization

By Marcus Richard

According to the latest research, not only is online video the fastest growing media online, but is has now surpassed search as the most popular activity online. Online video views surpassed searches performed on the top 5 search engines, according to stats released by comScore and covered by ReelSEO in October 2008.

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.

"Posted" video SEO is one strategy whereby the goal is to get as many viewers as possible to your video content. "Posted" video is basically when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video sharing websites. The benefit with this strategy is that you can leverage the massive viewing audiences that already exist at these major video destinations like Youtube and metacafe. Additionally, by uploading videos to these video sharing websites, you can leverage the pre-established page rank and authority that these sites have in order to assist you in ranking well within universal search.

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

To optimize video on your website, it is essential to follow common best practices when it some to general search engine optimization tactics for websites. Additionally, because search engines have a difficult time interpreting video content, you want to include relevant on-page text with your video pages to help search engines understand what the video is about. While there are many tips and techniques for website video SEO, the following tips are essential to keep in mind:

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

2)Take advantage of captions, transcripts, related links, meta tags, etc...

3) Keep your videos within a common directory and publish each video to a unique URL

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

5) Create inbound links to your video pages and encourage linking and sharing of your video content.

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 happy optimization. Get on board with Video SEO today. - 15433

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