According to the latest research, not only is online video the fastest growing media online, but is has now surpassed search as the most popular activity online. Online video views surpassed searches performed on the top 5 search engines, according to stats released by comScore and covered by ReelSEO in October 2008.

Online video, combined with search, is one of the most effective ways to drive internet users to your videos and market your products and services. However, being that online video marketing is such a new strategy, there are still many aspects of video marketing that are not well understood. For online marketers and video content producers, it is important to learn and practice techniques that increase the likelihood that internet users will discover their content via the major search engines. To do this, one must understand video search optimization, also known as video SEO.

To start off, let’s answer the simple question, “What is Video SEO, or SEO for Video?” Basically, it is the process of creating and publishing a video such that it is easily discovered, indexed, and ranked by search engines. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 distinct strategies and methods to consider.

“Posted” video SEO is one strategy whereby the goal is to get as many viewers as possible to your video content. “Posted” video is basically when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video sharing websites. The benefit with this strategy is that you can leverage the massive viewing audiences that already exist at these major video destinations like Youtube and metacafe. Additionally, by uploading videos to these video sharing websites, you can leverage the pre-established page rank and authority that these sites have in order to assist you in ranking well within universal search.

With posted video SEO, it is important that you pay close attention to the keywords that you include in fields entered upon upload like the title, tags, descriptions, etc… We recommend utilizing tools and services that help you to automatically upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Although it is not impossible to do so, the major downfall with this strategy falls into place when your goal is purely to drive traffic back to your website.

While “Posted” video SEO is a great strategy for getting video views, “Hosted” video SEO is a good strategy when your goal is to drive users to your own website. Essentially, “hosted” video SEO is the practice of optimizing your own website video content. Another benefit to this strategy is that it allows website owners to leverage video content to generate high rankings within the major search engines due to the proliferation of universal search

With “hosted” video SEO, it is most important that you follow best practices in general for search engine optimization. Because search engines can not yet read within video content, it is important that you optimize the HTML pages that contain your video content much in the same way that you would with regular SEO. Although there are many detailed tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO, most can be summed up with the following tips:

1) Be sure to include relevant, on-page text with your video web page.

2) Leverage the use of transcripts, descriptions, related links, meta tags, URL-structure, etc…

3) Keep your videos within a common directory and publish each video to a unique URL

4) Create and submit a video sitemap to guide the search engines to your video content.

5) Be sure to generate off-site links to your video pages by encouraging users to share and link to your videos.

Whether you choose “posted” or “hosted” video SEO, ReelSEO is a great reference and resource for your to learn more tips and guidelines for video search engine optimization and marketing. ReelSEO is the only website available today that is completely focused on providing expert advice when it comes to video search engine optimization. If you want to learn more, ReelSEO is the most authoritative site in existence.

Good luck and much success to you and your video optimization efforts.

We all know that every aspect of Internet marketing has a specific tool that helps to drive traffic and sales, and any email marketing campaign is no different. What you need to concentrate on here is developing and building up a mailing list since that is the real cornerstone of any successful email marketing campaign. Remember that there is no denying the power of a well run email marketing campaign and with that in mind there are specific things you can do to ensure that your mailing list is strong and healthy.

Offer Something For Free

One of the oldest advertising gimmicks in the book is still one of the more effective. Its important to keep in mind that you really want your mailing list to have opt in clients. Those are the people that are much more likely to read what youve got for them, and offering this kind of incentive will push them to sign up. One of the more effective techniques is to get a content writer to write a free ebook and then offer the use of it as a bonus for signing on.

Contests

People love to be included in interactive events. Sponsoring a contest on your site draws people in to sign. There is one drawback that youll need to be aware of if you travel this route. Not everyone who subscribes in this manner will eventually convert into a sale. Many of the people that you attract this way will be people habitually playing all the contests looking for the latest freebie.

Article Marketing

This is one of the most tried and tested methods used today. Hiring a ghost writer who will work for a reasonable fee all but ensures that youll get a series of professional articles submitted that cant help but eventually build your mailing list.

Directories

Again, this is one of the more traditional but effective methods used on the Internet. Business Directories are a great way of getting your name out there in cyberspace so that you can draw the kind of attention that will help to build your mailing list in the end.

Of course there are other methods that include ad swaps and hover ads, but the major point here is that you want to have people subscribe to your mailing list. That way, youll already have their willing attention and the buildup on your mailing list will result in a solid email marketing campaign.

As a website owner, I am always trying to get the best rankings in the search engines.  Everyone knows that being first is better than second, and I am happy to say that I hold a number of first place rankings for some of my sites.

Though I know that I know what I am doing, unless all of your friends are webmasters, chances are that you don’t have anyone to showoff your skills to.  So you sit in silence, being the only one that knows what you can really do.

But now, there is another option.  You could become a Busby SEO Challenger and show off your skills to those who would actually appreciate it.  Not to mention the fact that you have the opportunity to win prize money, it is the one contest that will let you be appreciated for who you are.

The contest closes on August 31 at noon, so there is plenty of time to get your website going and win.  So what are you waiting for?

Being a webmaster, it is important that I am aware of the current search engines news.  Things can change on a daily basis that can affect my search engine rankings and it is important to know what I can do to ensure that I get the most traffic out of my search engine listings.

What I like to do to supercharge my website traffic is take advantage of the many RSS submission sites that are available online to keep as many sites updated as to what I am writing about on my blog.  That way, my site can be found easily as well as indexed quickly by the search engines.

I also make sure that I take the time to learn any of the new social media marketing strategies as they come out.  My site has already benefited from the many social bookmarking services online and I see that this will be a future marketing avenue for me and my sites in the future.

I have never really been a fan of writing.  Sure, blogging here takes just a few minutes, but quite honestly, I even find this a bit painful.  I especially hate to write long articles.

If you are familiar with website promotion, you will know that many experts recommend that we use article marketing to promote our sites.  An article that you would use for this type of promotion is typically 500 or more words, which is way too much for me to write.  I have done a couple in the past, but they were the most horrible things that I have ever done in my life.

Instead of writing them myself now, I have hired an SEO copywriting service to do it for me.  Not only can they do it faster, but at the prices they charge, it is really not worth my time to do it.

I have also been looking at the other services provided by the SEO Service UK firm and I will be using them in the future to make my job easier.

The other day, I was writing about hamster care for my daily article submission. I always try to write about things that I am knowledgeable about, and since I have had hamsters my whole life, I thought this was a good topic for me to write about.

I know that writing articles has really helped with me SEO. It has made such a difference that even I am amazed. And, it takes a lot to amaze me. Promoting my sites has been going very well and I am learning so much, both by promoting and by writing different articles.

In my articles, I always have a one way link back to my website and I find that this has been really effective in driving traffic back to my site. It is a learning experience for me, but luckily, I am a fast learner.

Now, a website with no marketing is no more than a speck of dust floating through space – chances are that no one knows that it is there.  Now, if you were to market your website a bit, you would find that people and search engines would begin to notice the site and your visits would skyrocket.

How do you go about promoting your website?  The trick here is to engage in a little link building to let everyone know that you are there.  Some of the most common link building ideas include directory submission, article writing, and forum posting.  While these methods will help you to get some traffic, there are other things that you need to do to get noticed.

You will find your search engine rankings and traffic will increase if you have some high value links pointing back to your site.  A good way to do this would be to contribute constructive (and useful) comments on blogs that are related to your niche.  You could also use social marketing and get other people to bookmark your website – and you might luck out and get links from people with high traffic profiles.

Just be sure that your link building strategies are not spammy in nature – if they are, you will cause more damage to your site and reputation.  Just be sure to build a few new links everyday – and you will see traffic heading your way.

Internet marketing is about so much more than just selling your product. In fact, you can market anything from goods and services to websites and articles. I have been learning so much and I am feeling quite satisfied with myself.

Many local colleges offer computer classes and I went looking for this. I found what I was looking for and it surprised me. I did not want to know how to use a computer, but more to find out how to use online media in business.

Most people would never think of something like this, so I was very surprised that there was someone out there who could help me learn what I wanted to know. The class was a bit pricey, but higher search engine rankings were guaranteed by the completion of the class.

I also learned so much about things like article marketing to aid in the promotion of websites. I have not completed the class yet, but I feel that I have already gained so much knowledge and have seen the benefits of it already.

I am sure that many of you have heard the saying that it is what is on the inside that counts – and this saying is true for websites.  Sites that have only their main page promoted tend to miss out on lots of traffic as it is usually the content of the inner pages that a visitor to your website is looking for and may miss in the results from a search.

The way you can make sure you do get some deep links to your site is to be sure that you submit your site to a deep links directory or two each time you are submitting your sites to web directories.  It will not amount to a lot of inner links, but even a couple will make a big difference.

You can find many directories that allow you to submit inner links in these 8000 web directory listings that is provided free for your use.  You can find places to advertise your website there no matter what your budget (yes, there are free links) and it is an invaluable resource to any Internet marketer.

So, don’t forget to market your inner pages too – they are just as important (and in some cases more important) than your home page.

I have had websites for quite awhile now and I spend a lot of time promoting them.  For me this is something fun that I like to do – and it may sound weird, but it is what I like to do in my spare time.

My skill at submitting the sites has improved – I can do quite a few sites at once.  It is hard to distract me when I am in the "zone" – I really focus on what I am doing. 

Today was a little different.  I was submitting my site to a human edited directory and I noticed they had a blog.  Thinking I needed a break, I decided to check out this directory blog – and it was really good.  It explained some of the trends in the directory industry as well as other SEO information that I found useful.

It is an hour later – and I am back promoting my sites.  I think that is the first time I have ever been distracted while promoting sites – I hope it doesn’t become a habit.