You’ve probably seen certain sites show-up a lot in Google’s results: Wikipedia, media sites, LinkedIn, etc.

Why is this? Well, sites like these have considerable trust with Google thanks in large part to a crazy amount of backlinks. As a result, pretty much any content that’s created on these sites can rank pretty well with just a little bit of work. I call it OPP (Other People’s PageRank (and yes, the last P, well, that’s not that simple)).

Anyway, YouTube - a Google property - is one such site. So, here are five steps to help you leverage YouTube for great search rankings.

1) Make sure your keyphrase is in your video title and description.
2) Make sure your keyphrase is in your video tags.
3) Embed, embed, embed. The more sites that embed your video, the better. Very important.
4) The page in which your video is embedded should have your keyphrase included, particularly in the title tag.
5) Backlinks. Equally important to No. 4 is getting backlinks to the page on YouTube with your video. I also think links to a page with your video embedded helps quite a bit too.

That’s it.

Like anything on Google, the work you put in is equal to the competitiveness of the niche. Something easy will take less work and vice versa. However, leveraging the trust Google has in YouTube (and don’t forget Google has a stake in YouTube’s success, so the benefits should be everlasting) can help you dominate rankings for your targeted keyphrases.

It also helps to underscore the importance of creating video and putting it on YouTube. If you’re keeping content on your own solution or site and not adding it there, you’re losing the search war to someone who is. I also don’t think video solutions like MySpace have quite the same punch. Now go forth and video record.

Cheez StuffHRSEO Xtra JobCentral (Sponsor) Wiki Get Hired Facebook MySpace Twitter RSS Blog Posts by eMail Mailing List Social Bookmark Thisdel.icio.us Digg it Give a Link iFeedReaders Netscape Newsvine RawSugar reddit Spurl StumbleUpon Wink Yahoo MyWeb

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under video, seo, google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.