You Tube and SEO

Many of my SEO clients look at me like I'm crazy when I suggest they enter the You Tube arena for SEO purposes. However, when you're targeting a very competitive set of keywords, any little bit can help. Here's how.

If you don't have a YouTube account go get one. Then since most of you are real estate agents, go make videos of real estate for sale in your area. Post them to You Tube using the proper keywords or tags, whatever YouTube calls them. Then just hang tight. It may take a few months, but more likely than not, your videos will start showing up in the Google SERPS (the results page after performing a search).

Not only will your videos start showing up in the results, but you can then embed the videos on your site's pages. Which to me seems like a great deal, because you do not have to store the videos, or use your precious bandwidth to host them. Also You Tube then links to the pages you embed the video on. So you get free incoming links. Anytime you can do that, you're ahead of the curve. For example I did an Emerald Isle fishing report back in January of 2008, and included a You Tube video. Now when you Google "Emerald Isle Fishing" my videos usually show up somewhere on the first page. Even though my site doesn't rank for these terms, my videos and the You Tube page with a link to me does rank, and to me that's better than not having any representation in the search results.

If you really want to take advantage of this, you can purchase a simple video editing program to add text like your website address or phone number to the videos. I'm convinced that You Tube can be yet another powerful, free, and easy to use trick in my SEO toolbox.