Make Your Videos Rank on the Search Engines - Make it Easy to Get Spotted
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You wouldn't dream of not having a site map page for the text on your website. What about a site map for videos? The site map itself would be in text, of course, which is easier for the search engines to index, and you could include a few words describing each video. As mentioned above, it's a great opportunity to make the most of anchor text. You will want to keep the video site map under 1,000 links, so if you have a huge library of videos you may have to plan your map carefully.
What should you do if you're a publisher with lots of time-sensitive content? If your videos follow the headlines, as would be expected for a news organization, you might want to use a paid search campaign to lure web surfers to your site. It's very difficult to get to the top of the SERPs within 72 hours for most keywords with a strictly organic SEO campaign -- and that's the time frame a news publisher needs to achieve after a big news event. But a PPC campaign can get you where you want to be -- in front of people searching for timely information -- much more quickly.
Remember to use keyword research tools. They work perfectly well for text content, and they will work just as well for video content. Be willing to expand the tools you use. For example, YahooBuzz is worth a look if you aren't checking it already.
While you're likely to have better results with broad keywords when you optimize for video than text, you shouldn't forget your favorite niche keywords. If you include those as well, you'll be optimizing for both the long and short ends of the search tail.
If your site is set up for RSS feeds, make sure to include your videos as part of the feeds. You can even do more than just an RSS feed for your videos. If they're likely to be of wide interest, you should also look into doing an Atom feed, iTunes feed, and/or MRSS feed. If you have several shows with episodes (like an ongoing podcast or TV series), you will want a separate feed for each show. If you simply have a collection of videos, one feed should do the job just fine.
In addition to the video search engines and regular search engines, you may want to submit links to your videos to the social search engines. For example, Dabble is a social bookmarking site that is specifically dedicated to video. Searchles lets its users bookmark both text and video; it makes it very easy for users by running the video right from its own website if the video is from YouTube or Google.
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