How to Use YouTube to Get More Visitors, Sales and Free Advertising for Your Website

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion and that is a lot of money. Google doesn't make random decisions but it saw forth that video was the future of the web. More than ever before more and more people have access to better video equipment and free video uploading services like YouTube. This has made virtually anyone with a video camera a home-grown director.

In this article I'll be showing you how to optimize your videos right from pre-production to broadcasting (if that sounds too technical, believe me even a 7 year old could do it and they already do!).

YouTube is now the web's 4th most popular website - ahead of MSN, MySpace, Wikipedia and also Facebook among countless other popular web destinations. Now being 4th most visited site has its own perks and the YouTube audience is very much receptive to new ideas and concepts through videos. So getting started won't be much of a trouble. You just have to connect the dots for your part of YouTube popularity. So let's get started.

Planning a video: Like every important thing in your business and life you should plan about what is your goal. Do you want your users to get a positive perspective of your product, website or blog, or you want your video to go viral or is your video targeted towards a more qualified viewer searching for something specific. Write down these goals and brainstorm about what you should include in your video. Will it feature YOU or will it be a screencast - it's upto you!

Who Shoots the Video: If you've got the budget then go for a professional production company in your local area. Alternatively, if you're on a shoe-string budget like many of the small business owners are then opt to shoot the video yourself! Remember, shooting videos yourself is quite fun and full of wonderful experiences.

Keep it personal: YouTube users love personal videos that are fun and short. While personal is good you should always prepare before-hand so that your videos don't look amateurish. If you're promoting your product, shoot yourself using the product and introducing the benefits and NOT features. People love benefits more than features. Show how you solved a problem with the product and how they can too. If your video is fun and informative and accomplishes a goal - rest assured, you'll have your fair share of views either through search engines or e-mails sent through the Share option.

Now that you've got all the above things right you need to take precaution that you get all the things right while uploading the video. The uploading process is pretty dead simple and YouTube accepts a majority of video formats.

Now once your video is uploaded you need to provide Title, Description, Tag and Sharing options. Now let us look at them one by one.

Title: Title is arguably the most important part of your video. Give the most appropriate title and not something that is deceptive as some users will mark you as spam and it'll degrade your reputation.

Description: Include your website URL on the first line and give a powerful and relevant description with your primary keywords places atleast a couple of times.

Tags: Tags are as important and sometimes more than the Titles. Include your company name, theme, product name in the tags. Don't over do the tags. use tags wisely to your benefits. Relevant and good tags can propel your video in Google's search engine result pages.

Sharing Options: You want as many views as possible so allow user comments, let users embed those videos on their sites and blogs and allow rating.

Other tips:If your business operates locally, put your city name in the tag. Also use your city and state name in the description area. Don't worry if you have a long description as it'll be picked up by search engines and may increase your chances for appearing for your describes keywords. For example, if you run a plumbing company in Raleigh, North Carolina put raleigh, plumbing services, plumber, north carolina in your tags and description wisely and NATURALLY!

Now comes one of the most fun yet difficult part - Promoting your video

Promoting: When your video is uploaded and broadcast you need maximum views in the initial hours so that it reaches "most viewed videos" page as soon as possible. So get rolling and promote it like madman.

If you've got high traffic websites put the video there. Ask your fellow bloggers to put the video on there blogs. Ask your employees to put it on their blogs. If you've got a mailing list then ask your customers to give feedback on the video in the comment section of Youtube - more User Generated Content! If you've got social and professional profiles at Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIN then put the link there and announce it to your friends and ask them to watch and comment.

Digg: Digg can provide huge spikes to your videos and can provide you far greater results than all your efforts combined! But you've got to have a decent presence over there. I had to gather friends and submit diggs for about 5 months before I got even a page on the front page. Digg has got its own culture, so watch out for Digg!

StubleUpon: StumbleUpon users are pretty good at increasing your views in a pretty short span of time. Try it for yourself and tell me how it went. But before that download the toolbar.

That is all to it for this time. My next article will be advanced YouTube video optimization. But before that go try these methods and let me know about them. And if you have any suggestions you are free to comment below!