According to the latest survey I conducted regarding corporate employees and their access to YouTube while on the clock, over a third of respondents indicated that their companies block access to the popular social media site for various reasons.

(You can download the complete report from the MarCom Writer Blog – no registration required.)

Blocked access to YouTube means that if your client or company is running a viral video campaign, not everyone is going to see it.

So, it pays to 1) optimize your videos for search and 2) include links to your videos in online and offline marketing collateral.

Optimizing video for search

According to various experts quoted by Amy Edelstein in her article for SearchEngineWatch.com, the top tips for optimizing your videos include:

• Naming your files accurately, with keyword rich filenames. For example: October-space-shuttle-launch.mov rather than 345654-lb.mov
• Optimizing the  content on the Web page that launches your video
• Adding a keyword-rich Title tag and description
• Capitalizing on anchor text opportunities

When uploading your video to YouTube, give it a descriptive name that includes keywords so that the video listings show up in the SERPs for those keywords.

Building links to your videos

To build traffic to your YouTube videos, include links to them using both online and offline tactics. For example, include links to videos in your print and/or e-newsletters, blog, Website, press releases, print ads, and even your direct mail if applicable.

Also consider Google’s Business Center, which now lets you upload two YouTube clips to your business listing, and social media sites such as Squidoo– whose interface allows you to very easily embed YouTube videos.

 And, don’t forget to ask your fellow bloggers to include clips on their blogs!

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Dianna Huff, principal of DH Communications, Inc., is B2B marketing communications consultant and SEO copywriter.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Organic SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.