What is the best way to get your YouTube Video to rank? There are a thousand sites that are out there to try and convince you there is an exact science to this, but there is only one way to truly make your video rank, which is to pay for it…Which we don’t want to do, so here are a few quick and easy optimizations to give your video the best shot at ranking on YouTube

1)      Do your keyword research for your video title

1. Don’t just title your video something random, make sure you use relevant keywords to that are about the video
2. Check your keyword tool to make sure that the keywords in your title will generate traffic

i.      A great video is a great video, but is it really that great if no one can find it?

1. Make sure you check-out the autocomplete function for YouTube video search for video title ideas

i.      This is the easiest way to do keyword research for your video, just start typing in adjectives about your video and let the autocomplete function guide you

1. When creating the title, add keywords to the front of the title as they are deemed more important by the engines
2. Keep your title under 60 characters, titles are truncated around this number

2)      Add a transcript to your video

1. Always add a transcript to your video for closed captioning purposes

i.      Transcripts are crawlable by the search engines and therefore with transcripts for the videos, there is more content on the page/channel

ii.      The link contains the specific guidelines for how to format your videos transcript (http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=166810)

3)      Only use the top ten most important tags for your videos and keep under 120 characters

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YouTube Rewind 2010: Year in Review

I thought for my last post of the year I’d give you something fun to read. After all, I know you’re all getting holiday-antsy. Yep, we are too. Multiple cookie breaks throughout the day, quick MI Ave runs during lunch, a YouTube video or two to end the day…so here’s something fun for you to take a look at. And if you get caught watching videos at work, I’ve provided some educational tips to YouTube Search as well

This week, YouTube announced their top videos of the year. You may have seen some of these, and some may be new to you. Either way, check it out. My all-time fave is still David After Dentist but I think that’s a few years old….

Now for the educational part…
If you still don’t think video is an integral part of a marketing mix as we begin 2011, you are mistaken! During 2010, over 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed. 700 BILLION! People are watching video, folks, and  if there is any opportunity to add video to your website as well as to YouTube, DO IT. In fact, since YouTube is the second largest search engine right now, and it does have its own algorithm for ranking videos, you should also do the following:

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• Create a customized channel with your company name and look and feel to be consistent to your site or other marketing materials – but give it a kick! Have fun!
• Upload all your videos first and use the Embed functionality to showcase them on your site. This allows YouTube, not your website, to host the video (less bandwidth and hosting expense for you) as well as the ability to have more people view them – one important ranking feature that is part of the algorithm