So, you’ve produced a stunning online video and have it hosted on your Web page. Now what? You’ve got to get viewers! Just as Web sites need to be optimized in order to draw traffic, so too must your Web videos. Certainly, a well-paced video on a currently optimized Web page will attract viewers; however, your search engine optimization shouldn’t end there. Rather than relying on the underlying traffic of the page, optimize the video to bring in viewers. By doing so, not only will your video get watched, you’ll have two powerful content elements (text content and video content) working together.

A compelling reason to optimize your Web video is this: Online videos are ranked differently than standard Web pages in search engines. In fact, some users are specifically searching for video content online. Go to Google right now and see for yourself. Click on the Videos link and then enter a search term, any search term will do. Notice that all of the results are videos?

Even users that do not specify video searches are served up video results. According to ComScore’s January 2008 “Google Universal Search Results Searcher Penetration by Result Type” report, 38 percent of Google searchers were served video in universal search engine results pages. If you want your website video to be discovered by viewers specifically looking for videos about whatever it is your video discusses, then you need to optimize it.

Optimizing a Web video is similar to optimizing Web pages. First, quality content is a given. After all, you want viewers to come to your site and stick around. Ideally, they’ll tell their friends as well as return time and time again.

Next, you’ll need to understand how viewers find videos online. Some stumble across videos randomly, others find them based on recommendations from friends, others visit sites like YouTube, others specifically search for videos in search engines as you just did with Google, others find online videos by clicking links in eMail marketing messages, and finally, some viewers find videos online via RSS feeds.

While your Web site will certainly benefit from random viewers, a smart SEO strategy is to focus on:

•    Friend recommendations
•    eMail marketing
•    Online video sites
•    Search engine optimization 

Getting others to share your Internet video can lead to increased traffic, especially if your video goes viral. While only a small percentage of videos ever achieve true viral traffic, incorporating a “share video” feature is easy to do. Typically, an embed code is created when the user clicks the “share video” feature. The user then embeds this code into his own website or blog. This in turn creates a backlink that points to your Web site which is also useful for driving general Web site traffic. Friend recommendations via direct links shared via email are also desirable.

In addition, if you have a mailing list, create an eMail campaign or newsletter and make sure to provide a link to your online video. As your subscribers visit your site and watch the video, they may even click the “share this” link. See how the two strategies work together?

Posting a copy of your video on an online video site such as YouTube is also an excellent way to drive traffic to your Web site. Not only can you create an entire channel of related content, each Web video can link to your site.

While getting others to share your Website video and posting it on online video sites are solid strategies, you’ll also want to pay attention to basic SEO. Use keyword phrases in your title, save the Internet video file with a keyword rich title, use solid keywords in the file’s metatag and metadescription fields, and place the online video on a Web page optimized for those same keywords.

Optimizing a Web video isn’t overly difficult, especially if you are already optimizing the rest of your site’s content. Apply similar strategies to your videos and reap the search engine rewards!