Online videos has steadily become a more and more important part of marketing. Reasons for this range from more broadband connections to the rise of sites like YouTube which make video hosting and sharing a relatively simple thing.

If you are a company, creating a video to host either on your own site or a site like YouTube is a great marketing idea. However, you still need to optimize that video for the search engines. Here are a few tips on making that happen.

First and foremost, you should always offer your content in as many formats as you can. Doing this helps your video be accepted by more search engines. Plus, human users will be able to choose the format that works best with their computer and Internet connection.

Also, make sure that your title, description and keyword tags are complementary to your site. Examine them the same way you would the meta data with your site. Be sure to use appropriate keywords in the video filename and URL as well as in the link text for the file.

Don’t forget to optimize the page the video is on for the search engines. And offer a textual transcript of all of the content – audio and video.

Finally, host your video or a link to it everywhere you can think of. You’ve got to get the word out that it exists. Keep in mind you can help publicize your video with an RSS feed. However, make sure you’re logo is displayed on the video for proprietary reasons.

Videos are indeed popular, but you still have to make them appealing to both people and search engine robots in order for them to be successful.

Now that Google has Universal Search, videos are becoming more important for search engine optimization. It’s important to think about the audience you want for the video when optimizing. Don’t just post a video to have one out there. If it isn’t relevant to your site or what you’re doing then all the SEO in the world can’t help you. However, if it is relevant here are some tips to help it rank higher in searches.

First and foremost use your keywords in the metadata – specifically the title and description tags. These keywords, just like in your other webpages, should be related to your product. You can also index each section of your video with http://www.veotag.com tags. This creates embedded tags for your videos that are indexed by major search engines like Google.

Another thing you’ll want to do is upload your video to portals and provide links back to your site. Remember to have the links come back to similar content. Some of the more popular portals include:
• YouTube
• Google Video
• Yahoo Video
• Netscape

Additionally, you’ll want to create appropriate tags for your video in these portals to help searches find it.

Try to watermark your video content. This is the technique where you add the option of “send to a friend” or something similar to the end of your video. If you can set up tracking for this it’s a great option. Also, offer the ability to embed your video on viewers’ own blogs or websites.

Add copy to the pages around your video to help the search engines. They still primarily use HTML content for indexing and ranking, so provide it to them.

Keep your videos short. Five minutes or less is a general rule of thumb. If you have a longer video consider segmenting it into appropriate pieces. Don’t forget to tag them accordingly!

Allow a rating system for your video and submit it to RSS and syndicate feeds. If it is a good video the power of the people will promote it. And that’s the most important thing – make your video interesting and enjoyable to watch and it will become higher ranked just like highly interesting webpages.