Getting Started with Video Marketing

Video marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways for a small business owner to advertise his or her products or services online. YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the web and in July of 2010 it was the 3rd most visited website on the planet with over 100 million unique visitors for the month. With more people going online every day looking for information on how to do things, clearly video marketing on the internet is here to stay.

Many online entrepreneurs use video marketing as a way to showcase their product or showcase a product that they’re an affiliate of. Whether using video footage taken with a digital camcorder, a PowerPoint presentation translated to video or a screen cast of their computer, marketers are taking advantage of the opportunities that video marketing produces. With technology costs coming down all the time it’s easy for the average small business owner to make a 2 minute commercial or a 20 minute infomercial and upload it to the various video sharing sites on the web.

In order to make a video popular, however, you’ll need to give your videos the same SEO treatment as your website or your articles that you’re trying to promote. Search engine optimization is critical if you want your video to show up on the first page of the search engines. Therefore attention must be paid to on page SEO as well as off page SEO. With video marketing being in its infancy many small business owners overlook search engine optimization when it comes to their videos, and they suffer in the search engines because of it.

Taking YouTube for example, when you submit a video you must make sure that the title of your video matches the keyword term you are trying to rank for. For instance, if you submit a video detailing how to shave, then the name of the video should be “How to Shave”. As an added boost, you might try using your keywords more than once in the title. For example you could name the video “How to Shave – Step by Step Guide Teaching You How to Shave”. Featuring the exact phrase you are trying to rank for in the title is highly effective for SEO purposes. Also, make sure the description field on YouTube starts off with your keyword term or keyword phrase. The tags should also contain the keywords you are trying to rank for as well.

Other things you can focus on will be the clarity of your video. The easier it is to view the video the more likely a person is to view the entire video. Shorter videos also work better, but you’ll need to take into consideration your target market and your vieo topic before deciding on the final length.

You should also get links back to your video for off-page SEO purposes. Upload the YouTube video to your own website, also submit your video to the other video websites and link back to your YouTube video.

With more and more people coming online each and every day, video marketing will continue to be an important part of any small business owner’s marketing plan. It’s a goo idea to get started with your video marketing plan now, and get as many videos as you can online to complement your other marketing activities.