Saturday, January 31, 2009

SEO for Video - How to Market Videos to Search Engines

By Marcus Richard

If you perform a simple search on video search or video SEO, you will be bombarded with numerous articles that try to explain this technique. Video search optimization, or Video SEO (VSEO) is a new bug that has bitten the world recently. Though it's a new technique, still many companies have started using it aggressively to earn high ranking and more business.

To have a success in video search engine optimization, you should have knowledge of some key technical aspects involving online video and 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....

So, after you have completed your keyword research, I would also suggest that you take an inventory of the various video search websites. In other words, take note of which sites have the highest traffic, which channels and categories are the most popular, etc... You will likely want to submit your video to as many sites as you can but it will certainly be important to get your video on the more popular search engines as well.

You should also keep a track of the audience already searching for your targeted terms. In case you fail to find the same, find the closest related terms being searched. In video search engine optimization user feedback plays a very vital role.

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 you can do this, it is always better to pick a video theme that is not saturated in terms of competition out there. As an example, a video about Tom Cruise will likely be very hard to optimize for as there are thousands of results for that search.

Studies have shown as well that users who watch videos are less interested in watching videos that are more than a few minutes in length. Try to target your videos to be less than 3 minutes in total length. If you have a very long video, perhaps try to create multiple segments or clips from the video targeting videos with 1-3 minutes in duration.

You can even put the actual branding inside the video, such as text or domain name or specific URL as a graphic in the video. Of course, getting users back to your website or business is one great result for doing video SEO in the first place.

Therefore, in order to get more visibility for your business, website, etc... search engine optimization for video is an excellent, and fairly new concept that you can take advantage of right now, while the buzz is hot.

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