After four years of photo sharing success, Flickr has finally decided to announce the debut of video sharing. Supposedly, this is to take place some time in April. That could be in as few as 16 days or it could be in as much as 46. Unless something comes up that pushes the date back.

As pointed at by Paul Glazowski, Flickr has been talking about video sharing for a while now and we’ve just been waiting. Now it’s here, or soon to be, and videographers still don’t know whether Flickr will compete with YouTube or offer other opportunities. My bet is, there will be no contest between Flickr and YouTube, just as there is no contest between Flickr and Picasa, the photo sharing site owned by Google.

The question in my mind is this, since Yahoo! owns Flickr and Yahoo! has Yahoo! Video, what do they hope to gain with Flickr video?

On the positive side, if Vlickr video is to be anything like Flickr photo sharing then it could be a good opportunity to gain some video Search Engine Optimization. With Flickr photos, webmasters can upload photos and hot link them to their websites and blogs and since Flickr passes on link juice, those are good inbound links. Plus, you can place URLs in your profile and photo comments. Will those opportunities also be available with Flickr video? My guess is, Yes.

YouTube is rolling out a beta version of a personalized home page. I think this is great and could have implications for Search Engine Optimization.

I think this is a sign that Google sees its personalization efforts as successful. I assume I don’t need to remind you that Google now owns YouTube, which means the move is a Google executive decision. So the Search Engine Optimization implications are even more far reaching than one I’m about to tell you.

In terms of Search Engine Optimization, since many webmasters use YouTube videos as embeds on their blogs and websites, personalization could make these embeds more accessible. If I, for instance, have a tendency to embed videos about search engine optimization and internet marketing on my blog then when I log into my YouTube account I should get recommendations for videos tagged as search engine optimization or internet marketing. These will mostly be videos I haven’t seen yet.

The personalized home page, according to YouTube’s blog, will focus on three improvements:

1. Recommendations
2. Subscriptions
3. Activity of Friends

What this means for active YouTube members is you will get recommendations based on past videos watched, but you’ll also be given the latest uploads from your subscriptions and be able to keep track of the latest videos uploaded by your friends. That’s three ways that you can use YouTube for Internet marketing purposes.

Recommendations will be taken care of by YouTube, of course. But subscriptions can be targeted. And friends, too, can be targeted. Plus, you can use YouTube’s internal messaging system to let your friends know that you’ve uploaded a new video.

While none of this is Search Engine Optimization-related per se, you can increase your Search Engine Optimizationsimply by networking through YouTube. Whenever a friend uses a video on their website or blog they may, and you can make it available through your profile, decide to link to your website or blog. When used as a networking tool, YouTube can become another method of increasing your Search Engine Optimization benefits. Personalization will go a long way to helping you do that better.

Two days ago I posted two suggestions for improving Google Universal. Thanks to Sebastian Lewis for bringing up the video search issue. I had pointed out that Image Search has issues. Video search actually has some of the same issues. I was delighted to an interview with video search engine optimization expert Jeremy Clem in today’s issue of Search Marketing Standard.

One of the interesting things Clem said in the interview had to do with motivation for producing and posting videos online:

You need to first understand if video content is advantageous for reaching and resonating with the client’s target audiences.” says Jeremy. If you’re doing video SEO for the purpose of just showing up in the video search results, that’s not reason enough yet.

But what if your client is already producing video content for offline areas (television), and they have a fan base for their commercials? “Then I think that IS a huge opportunity to create video content that is just for the online space, because you already know that there are interested parties to leverage that offline interest into the offline space, and brining more people to your site.” says Jeremy.

I’d have to say that I agree with this. I see people posting videos online for the sake of posting videos. You’re really wasting your time if your target market won’t stop to watch those videos. The first thing you need to do is capture their attention. How do you do that on YouTube? It’s not like people are out scouring YouTube looking for marketing videos to watch.

I think the best use of video marketing in the future will be something akin to product placement. People primarily want to be entertained. So when they watch a video they’ll want to see something that entertains them. Video makers who produce short entertainment videos will need to make those videos pay or they’ll just be frittering their hours away. Enter product placement.

Let’s say I’m a producer of a series of five minute entertainment videos that I publish every Friday afternoon. They’re funny and amount to a little mini-SITCOM. Same characters, same setting, different situation every week. If they’re popular enough and I’ve got the demand to keep producing them, I can make them pay off by having product placement opportunities where sponsors can have their products placed in the scene somewhere without it actually appearing as if they are placed there on purpose as advertising gimmicks. This would take some creative and technical know-how, but I can see that as a way for companies to have their products introduced to new markets while not spamming the search engines and spending thousands of dollars producing videos themselves that no one will watch.

(Kelsey Group) So what are these search engine optimization tactics? One example some clever SMBs (and search engine marketers) have started to use is to have the video on their Web sites linked to the same video that has been uploaded to YouTube. When Google sees that the copy and tags surrounding the video are the same as the corresponding video on YouTube, it will rank the video highly as part of its general favorability of YouTube content. Clever.

Brilliant post on The Kelsey Group blog. I was just thinking myself earlier today about new ways to optimize video for the coming search explosion.

If you’re not up on it yet, the search engines are gearing up for the expansion and growth of video search. Ask calls their package Ask 3D, Google calls it Universal. What it’s called, the idea is to return results for searchers that do more than just list links. You’ll also get a list of relevant photos, videos, and other types of content. This should make video marketing a much more powerful medium than it is now.

Savvy search engine optimization experts will have to devise a strategy for marketing their businesses through video. They’ll have to think outside the proverbial box and beyond the shores of YouTube and Google Video. Chances are, Google (if none of the other search engines) has already thought ahead on this one. What will video marketing look like?

I think the above solution presented by the The Kelsey Group is on the right track. I also think that niche video sites will begin to spring up within the next year or so. YouTube and Google Video will get saturated with videos on every imaginable topic. And you’ll see many more videos on other websites as well, including traditional company websites, blog directories, and article directories. But how will they be search engine optimized?

This is really a problem for the search engines and the question should be styled, “How will they be indexed?” Will YouTube continue to enjoy top rankings while everyone else plays second fiddle, only to see prominent rankings when YouTube can’t muster the search juice? Will YouTube enjoy top rankings for the same video that exists on another website even if that other video was there first? Webmasters will want to rank higher for the videos if they exist on their own websites. But that will depend partly on their ability to search engine optimize the videos properly. Linking to YouTube may be a temporary solution, but it won’t last long term. The question is, what will replace that practice?