Video Marketing as Part of Your SEM

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Professional Internet marketers consider video marketing as a mainstream and effective form of SEO and Search Engine Marketing. For strong evidence of this, consider that in February of 2005, YouTube was launched and is now a household name around the world only three years after launch. That kind of name recognition is a good indication of the rising relevance of video marketing but how do you use video marketing as part of your SEO? These tips will help get you started:

1. Integrate video marketing with social marketing – A big part of YouTube’s success is the ‘Hey, check this out!’ factor of people linking to videos on blogs, forums, and email. No matter what the video is about, there’s likely to be an online community of people that is interested in the subject. So help create your own buzz by searching for blogs and forums where people who will be interested in your videos hang out. Post links to the video and links back to your website.

2. Submit videos to YouTube – Consider this: YouTube’s market share exceeds that of all the other video sharing sites combined. It’s so dominant that Google decided to buy it so plan on making YouTube central to your video marketing plans. You won’t be able to optimize the URL but you will be able to write a brief, optimized description and link back to your site.

3. Host your videos on your website – Videos will show up in natural search results and by hosting them on your site, you’ll have control of the URL optimization, the title optimization, and the optimization of the description. Embed videos on your site and also link to the video on YouTube for additional linking opportunities. You should double-check the description to ensure that it accurately reflects the contents of the video.

4. Make sure that each video gets right to the point – Web users have notoriously brief attention spans so avoid lengthy intros and edit the video so that it gets right to the subject matter. Also, by cutting large videos into smaller segments (when appropriate), you’ll create additional linking opportunities.

Video marketing is just another way to drive traffic to your site and even though submitting videos to YouTube may seem counterintuitive to this goal, it makes sense because of YouTube’s dominance and the additional linking opportunities. If your company makes widgets, produce videos on how to use them. If you sell apple sauce, post videos on how to turn apple sauce into delicious entrees and desserts along with the recipe in the description.

Video marketing is here to stay and its relevance is expected to increase as people look online for niche content. Professional-looking videos won’t be cheap to produce but as the old saying states, “You gotta spend money to make money!”.