Thursday, January 8, 2009

Video Search Engine Optimization Tips and Guidelines

By Mark Robertson

As you may have noticed, there is a ton of buzz out there about video search and marketing for video search engines, and there are a few posts out there with good information on how to upload your videos to these search engines, but most do not provide insight into the specific needs of SEO for video.

To ensure that your video gets seen and discovered on these search engines, it is important to first learn some of the technical aspects that are important to online video as well as search.

As with Search Engine Optimization for webpages and text content, keyword research is an important first step. Prior to optimizing your videos, you will want to obtain a keyword target list. There are however, some difference with regard to how users search for videos vs. website and webpages. Namely, most users include the word "video" when doing a search. Make sure that your keyword list contains several variations with the word video, Examples - car videos, car video, racing video, automotive videos, etc....

The next step after you have generated a keyword list is to take a good look at the video search platforms to see which channels and categories, tags, etc... tend to get the most views, as well as to look at which platforms have the highest performance in views, ratings, etc... You will certainly want to submit your video to multiple sites but you will want to make sure that at the least, you submit your video to the more popular engines.

Well, as you know with keyword research, it is an ongoing process. It is important to pay attention to the feedback, comments, and links to existing related videos to find related keyword terms that you may have missed in your original keyword list.

You will want to encourage readers to submit feedback as studies show that users who provide feedback tend to be more active and easier to convert. In other words, those users that provide feedback, typically are more likely to call, email, visit your site, etc...

If your video is popular in the video SERPs, you get the opportunity to submit fresh content. Many websites make a common mistake by providing the same content again and again. Don't make your video content to simply repeat what's already out there, instead, finding a fresh "content space" for your target keyword term.

Another important factor to know is that typically, users do not watch videos that are long and drawn out. Instead, users want quick snacks of video content, usually viewing no more than a few minutes of a video. If you have a video that is many minutes long, consider creating several shorter clips for your video ranging from 1-3 minutes in total length.

With video SEO, it is also important to take advantage of the ability to brand your video using watermarks, logos, text, or any additional information that will get users back to your main destination. That is the beauty of video search engine optimization. It does and will drive traffic back to your website or business.

So, if you want to get your video discovered, view, and consumed by more and more users, video search engine optimization is the way to go. This is a great new technique for getting maximum exposure to your business, and currently, this is such a new topic, that you can be one of the first to capture your keyword or theme with a video search result.

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