Go to Business Online

Did you know that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and the 4th largest web property? It also attracts hundreds of millions of users a month, and 15 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

A web presence with that much power really shouldn't be ignored. At SMX West, YouTube Product Manager Matt Liu made these points, and they are good points to consider when it comes to your marketing. Liu encourages users to "Take advantage of what YouTube has to offer."

How Can You Improve Your Video Ranking?

The fact that YouTube is an important search engine means marketers have to strive to get their videos ranked. Some simple things that can improve your rankings include:

• An accurate and descriptive title
• Make sure your description is just that - descriptive. It should be accurate and unique, and use complete sentences.
• Descriptive keyword tags - avoid keyword stuffing

Community Opinion

Obviously YouTube is more than merely a video search engine. You might consider it a social network. It is a community. That means community opinion counts. As with any other community on the web, your best results will come if you actively participate. This means sharing videos with other members. Experiment with annotations, video responses, and thumbnails.

Great Tips For Maximizing Your YouTube Video Potential

Drew Hubbard, who created a channel page for SMX West 2009, had some very hepful tips:

• Use Keyword Rich Descriptions and Tags
• Include the word "Video" in your titles because people do search for it.
• Use a link for the very first thing in your descriptions.
• Make sure and utilize your thumbnails. YouTube pulls these from the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. Make them count.
• Encourage participation by enabling everything.
• use meta data
• use captions and subtitles
• use watermarks
• use google maps integration

He also says that for your purposes, Google does not recognize videos on the page, and for this reason, you need to include as much supportive content as possible. This will help your rankings. "Use every opportunity to put links on a page," he adds.

By Chris Crum