Did you know that YouTube is serving over a billion video views every day? With that amount of entertainment, news, information and mayhem clogging up your customer’s computers, you need a more efficient way to reach them in the Goliath of online video and cluttered search engine results.

 With the growth of universal search, affiliates need to utilize video to get their products and services in front of potential buyers and the best way to do that is through proper optimization of their videos.

 Here are 5 techniques to get your videos pulling inside of YouTube and within the major search engines.

 1. Proper Titles. Writing a title that is compelling for both viewers and search engines can be tricky. Digging into keyword research is your best bet here, as long tail phrases are easier to rank for and often lead to higher conversions. When writing these titles, keep them to 65 characters with your strong keywords to the start of the title.
 
2. URL Leading Description. When writing your description there are a few things to note. The first is that by using http://yourlink.com, YouTube will automatically make a live link that can send viewers directly to your landing page, offer, or Web site. I recommend using this as the first thing in your description so viewers can easily click over to your site.

 3. Above The Fold Description. The next section of your description should read like a Tweet. Keep it to 140 or so characters, loaded with your key phrase and descriptive text. The reason to keep it short is that YouTube only displays about 160 characters of your description on a video page before the viewer has to click on the more information link. Keeping this introduction descriptive will entice the viewer to click your link while giving the search engines something to crawl and index.

 4. Rock Star Tags. Giving your video proper tags gives you leverage not only in the search results, but also in the related videos section on a video page. Try using long tail keywords and also look at videos from your competition. See where they come up in the results for your top keywords. A good rule of thumb is 6-7 long tail keywords for your rock star tags.

 5. Links and Embeds. YouTube videos are just like Web pages, the more links you send back to your videos, the higher they will rank in YouTube and Google. Another tactic is to embed your video on multiple sites. This means taking the code that YouTube provides for you and placing it on your blog, inside of appropriate forums, social networks, and other relevant sites. This is a great way to rapidly increase your visibility of your video.

 When creating videos, create them with an end goal in mind. Always perform keyword research and see what other videos are working. Now go out there and start capitalizing on the power of YouTube.

 
Greg Rollett is a Rock Star Marketer from Orlando, FL who blogs about Internet Marketing and Lifestyle Design at http://www.rockstarlifestyledesign.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 9 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/24376105/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-9
FeedFront issue 9 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article002334

Psstt…hey, merchant! Yes, you. The one with the great products and good conversion rates but no videos, yet.

I’m talking to you. And I am quite certain that I am not the only one trying to get your attention.

Although I actively post my own how-to and product demonstration videos on my site, it is always good when I can give my visitors a variety of videos. This includes videos made directly by the merchants.

The merchants are the ones with all of the products on hand and the knowledge about how to use them.

The number of merchants with videos available for affiliates right now is incredibly small, compared to the number of overall merchants. Less than 1% of the merchants I’m currently promoting offer video to use in my marketing efforts.

The format of the video is not all that important. Affiliates will find ways to work with YouTube, Qoof, or whatever you give us. If we can embed the video with our affiliate links it is all the better, but it is not necessary.

Some of the merchants who are ahead of the curve are giving us a variety of options. For my visitors who like instructional videos, I love the Sephora how-to videos on YouTube that show everything from how to get the “cat eye” look to which waterproof makeup works.

For general sales, products like the Little Giant Ladder come across much better in their Avantlink videos than in any banner or text links I could put up.

What doesn’t help me is a link from my site to your site where you show the video yourself. That has been done for years. I want your video to put on my own site where I know that my visitors will watch it and want to click the affiliate links.

If the video is available on your site, give me a way to embed it on my site.

Merchants, if you share our vision for the use of video in affiliate marketing and choose to make videos for affiliates; we will find ways to use them. Well-placed merchant videos can be the key to success for all of us in the upcoming holiday shopping season.

Tricia Meyer is the owner of loyalty site Sunshine Rewards. See her mix of videos at http://www.SunshineRewards.com/videoblog.

Download issue 2 of FeedFront at http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue2.pdf
Articles from issue 2 of FeedFront will also be posted at http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-2/

If you paid attention during your high school or college Economics class, you undoubtedly were exposed to the axiom of supply and demand. Video advertising must abide by this law just as a falling rock obeys the law of gravity.

We are about to witness a classic lab experiment of the economic law of supply and demand, and it will give any economics professor who is monitoring the online video advertising world enough lecture material to last a semester, maybe two.

Currently, there are billions of video-advertising dollars sitting on the sidelines waiting to stream into the Internet marketplace. Part of the reason, in my opinion, that the dollars are not already flooding into the marketplace is the absence of an Internet Video Advertising Standard.

We have had an advertising standard for regular network television broadcasts for many years. Many might agree that the standard is a 30-second commercial that plays at the beginning or end of a show.

It makes perfect sense for the ads to play at these positions as both spots take advantage of deep-rooted psychological triggers that are hard coded into the human brain. Tuning in early to a show pulls the scarcity trigger as the viewer does not want to miss out on any of the programming. Watching the ads at the end of the show is a reciprocal response since the viewer was allowed to watch free programming.

Ask Randall Rothenberg, the President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and he will tell you that the accepted standard for video advertising online has not yet been cast in stone by the industry. We are close, but not quite there. Some of the things that are part of the standard and must be decided are:

• Length of a video ad.
• Type of ad.
• How many ads within a given video.
• Manifestation of the ad (overlay, preroll, postroll, interstitial, etc.).
• Behind-the-scenes high-powered metrics for measuring ad effectiveness.
• Cross-platform ad buying allowing an advertiser to buy multiple websites at one location.

Once the online video advertising standard has been accepted by the marketplace, I predict a green tsunami of cash to wash across many of the websites that host great video content. The advertisers will be looking for high-quality video that is contextually connected to their products. The videos that offer solutions to everyday problems will do well. The ads that appear with these videos will be accepted by the viewer as helpful additions to the content.

Let’s talk about this in the world that I work in each day. My AsktheBuilder.com videos might appeal to any number of large brand advertisers. For example, consider videos that would be in my Plumbing category for just a moment.

As soon as the advertising standard is decided, the marketing manager at Kohler might call the Ad Sales department at YouTube and purchase all of the ad spots in the AsktheBuilder.com videos that have anything to do with plumbing fixtures and faucets. This is very likely as Kohler has the budget to do this.

Moments after the deal is struck, the phone at YouTube rings again. But this time it is Moen, another powerhouse plumbing faucet manufacturer, calling. Unfortunately, YouTube tells the Moen ad buyer that the entire ad inventory is sold. Moen reacts by finding another video-hosting site that features AsktheBuilder.com videos.

Oh, we are not finished. What about Delta Faucets, Elkay, American Standard, Price Pfister, etc.? Where will these companies buy video ad space to showcase their products within plumbing videos? My hypothesis is in videos that are hosted on other video-hosting websites scattered across the Internet.

There are at least two major dynamics at play in this situation. The one is the supply of high-quality video content and the other is the number of different places where this content is playing in syndication. In both cases the owner of the video content is sitting in the driver’s seat. The owner of content on the Internet is king.

I was quoted as saying that in the best-selling book, StrikingItRich.com, by Jaclyn Easton. But just a few days ago, a colleague of mine said the owner of video content is going to be the king of kings. Having survived on the Internet since 1995, I have to agree with this statement.

In the meantime, I suggest you move to high ground to watch what happens when the green tsunami crashes ashore.

Tim Carter is the author of the nationally-syndicated newspaper column Ask the Builder and the founder of AsktheBuilder.com.

Download issue 1 of FeedFront at http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue1.pdf.