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.

Let’s start off by answering the question, what exactly is Video SEO? Simply put, Video SEO, also known as video search engine optimization is the art and process of publishing a video such that it is easily discovered and attracts as much traffic as possible for your target audience. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 different strategies for getting your videos discoverable on the search engines.

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.

When optimizing your video for uploading (”posted” video SEO), it is very important that you choose your target keywords wisely and include these in your titles, descriptions, tags, comments, etc… There are also many services available on the web that allow you to upload your videos to multiple video sharing websites at once. Although there are a few tactics that can help, for the most part, a “posted” strategy does not assist well with driving traffic back to your own 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

With “hosted” video SEO, it is most important that you follow best practices in general for search engine optimization. Because search engines can not yet read within video content, it is important that you optimize the HTML pages that contain your video content much in the same way that you would with regular SEO. Although there are many detailed tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO, most can be summed up with the following tips:

1) Make sure that the page with your video on it includes a good amount of relevant on-page text to guide the search engines. Include your keywords in your meta tags, URL string, descriptions, etc…

2) Leverage the use of transcripts, descriptions, related links, meta tags, URL-structure, etc…

3) Keep your videos in one main directory with one video per unique URL.

4) Publish a video sitemap or MRSS feed to help 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 you choose “posted” or “hosted” video SEO, ReelSEO is a great reference and resource for your to learn more tips and guidelines for video search engine optimization and marketing. ReelSEO is the only website available today that is completely focused on providing expert advice when it comes to video search engine optimization. If you want to learn more, ReelSEO is the most authoritative site in existence.

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 internet video marketing 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.

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