The Proliferation of Video as an SEO Tool

Over the past several years, online video viewing has become a cultural sensation and a new marketing outlet for businesses.  The site that has become ubiquitous with the advent of Internet video is YouTube.  The online video phenomenon creates numerous opportunities for the promotion and marketing of companies, especially those doing business online. 

 Contrary to popular belief, YouTube is not merely an outlet for the bored youth of a digital age looking to entertain themselves.  A smart business owner remembers that where there is an audience, there is a potential customer base.  The operators of online businesses must keep this in mind and should now start incorporating the use of video into their marketing plans.

 With over 80 million unique monthly visitors to the site, YouTube is consistently at the top of the list of websites with the most traffic.  Since the site was purchased and taken over by Google, it is common for YouTube to rake in over 3 billion searches in a single month.  By simply uploading some promotional videos, you can start showing up in these search results, gaining valuable links for no cost, generating buzz for your products, and/or services and truly increasing your presence on the web.

 With the propensity of certain videos to go “viral” and spread pandemically throughout the web, it makes it much easier to get one-way links (as opposed to the usual required reciprocal link) to a video than to a site.  This method of link building is a surefire way to increase your page ranking.  Increasing your rank will place your site higher in the search engine results pages and this will hopefully lead to an increase in traffic and eventually increased sales.

When utilizing the online video as a marketing tool, it is essential to use the most important keywords in the title and description fields.  The title of your video is the most crucial element and is the equivalent of the meta tags on your home page.  Creating, posting and sharing videos is a vital component of advertising in today’s digital era. 

For those operating or managing online businesses, sites like YouTube should be taken full advantage of.  Not to mention, posting and marketing videos is one of the only free forms of advertising and building links left available on the web.