If you thought YouTube was a place for posting goofy videos of everyday antics, think again. When successfully leveraged, YouTube can drive traffic to your Web site and build trust, both of which are vital to your ultimate goal of converting prospects into customers. While the videos play a critical role in delivering content and building your brand, posting videos on YouTube also improves search visibility. Imagine how effective your Web site would be if it were listed on page one of Google's search results. Now imagine how much traffic would find its way to your site if not one, but several, organic links to your site appeared on page one! The major search engines list video and image results on the first page of results which puts you in an excellent position to improve your site's search visibility by using video as part of an SEO strategy.

Before you dust off your video camera, you need a plan. Use the following five strategies to improve search visibility and leverage YouTube to drive traffic to your Web site.

1. Know your message. Your video content should complement your Web content, providing relevant and useful information. In fact, video is the perfect medium for providing step-by-step instructions or illustrating a key concept discussed in the text. For example, if you have a Web page about how to sharpen knives like a pro, adding a brief video that demonstrates the different techniques discussed adds value and complements the text.

By embedding your videos in relevant, keyword-rich pages you may notice search engine performance improvements. When a search engine finds your video, it will index it within the context of the page's content, thus improving the video's search ranking for your keywords. If your page has already been optimized, your video is likely to rank well.

2. Align video with existing SEO efforts. You've already done extensive keyword research as part of your larger search engine optimization efforts so use that to your advantage. Refer to your keyword list and you'll quickly see the types of videos that you need to produce. For example, if your keywords are "how to sharpen kitchen knives" and "how to clean knives," you already have two good potential video topics. Use your list as inspiration, but don't get too wrapped up in this. Use your creativity and industry expertise as well, making sure to keep your videos relevant and useful.

In addition to using your keyword list to generate ideas for videos to produce, use your keyword research when you embed your videos. Use keyword phrases in your video's metadata fields that have proven to be effective, accurately describe the video content, and appear within the page's text.

Use YouTube's analytics tool, Insights, to monitor your videos' performance. One measurement, "attention," can be tracked over time. If you notice that a video's attention is "low" and later edit the video to boost its attention, you can use Insights to analyze the effect your edits had on its attention.

3. Pick a topic and dig in, keeping the term "related videos" in mind. Rather than producing videos on a wide range of topics, pick a single topic and then dig in and explore that topic in greater depth through a series of related videos. Upload batches of related videos to YouTube and reap the rewards of having many of your videos appear under the "related videos" section of similar videos posted on YouTube.

4. Keep videos short, sweet, and professional. Not only do shorter videos work nicely, many viewers will continue viewing your related videos which builds trust. Attention spans online are much shorter than with other mediums, so limit your video to a length of one to three minutes. YouTube isn't the place to post a three-hour video on how to restore a car, but it's a terrific place to post a series of concise three-minute videos covering individual car restoration topics such as restoring the dashboard, restoring the gearbox, restoring the headliner, and so forth. Your videos should be professionally produced with as much care put into the video's production as you've put into your Web site's design.

5. Pay attention to your brand. When producing the video, it's important to find the right balance between branding and being intrusive. Place a graphic with your company name at the beginning and end of each video as well as mention your name verbally at the beginning of the video.

When uploading your videos to YouTube, create a branded channel and make sure to link each video's YouTube page back to your YouTube channel. Place a link to your Web site in each video's description field.

Please review our Portfolio for examples and a list of our clients.  Hear what our clients are saying about us in our overview video.

Contact RainMaker today for a free consultation, and let's get started expanding your online presence, attracting more qualified prospects and converting those prospecting into customers.

Website video services for the greater Houston, Texas area.