Online videos are one of the most “sticky” and viral forms of media on the Internet. They give us the power to create our own TV show that we can broadcast from anywhere and distribute through free platforms.

Because of this, video optimization is becoming more important to search engine optimization. A good way to optimize your video content is to think about the user and who you want to engage with your video. Be strategic about it and consider your audience, demographics, their language and their needs.

I’ve compiled some tips to help make your videos successful.

1. Be relevant and informative — Videos that demonstrate step-by-step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too.
2. Create an interesting title for your video — A good title will grab the attention of users and help sell them on viewing the video. Additionally, the title and description should contain a related key-word-rich phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand to optimize it for SEO.
3. Use Video as a magnet to lead users back to other content on your site — Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube, Vimeo, or Viddler and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site.
4. Optimize your video for Important Key Words and Phrases — You also want to optimize your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your videos with key phrases that are related to the content, and optimize your video for relevant keywords and include a meta tags and a keyword rich description of your video content.
5. Provide Transcripts of your Videos — Search engines love to index HTML, and by surrounding your videos with key-word rich copy you can improve the search rank of your video.
6. Keep Your Videos to four minutes or less — In today’s fast paced environment, it takes a lot to hold a users attention. If you have video content that is longer than four minutes, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tag each accordingly. This will keep the experience succinct and will give you more content to promote to your fans.
7. Create a Video Sitemap — For video that is native to your own website, make sure that users and search engine spiders can find your video content. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap on your site. Use important keywords in the anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.
8. Brand your Video by adding your Logo — Video is an excellent tool for generating brand awareness for your company or service.
9. Remember Inbound Linking Factors — Link to videos using important keywords in anchor text.
10. Offer the Option to Embed Your Video — allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing
11. Allow Users to Rate your Video — videos that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to favorite and save.
12. Syndicate Your Video — Submit your video to RSS.

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