Well here we go, you’re on your way to going “Google Free” with your online marketing campaigns.  As I mentioned in the previous post; ranking on Google is great, but why not try to get yourself into a position where you don’t even really need to worry about your rank on Google! Think of how liberating that would be.   Well by reading this post you are on the right track. So lets jump right into the first ingredient in my  “Google Free” plan.

The Unstoppable Power of VIDEO!

You’ve already heard it a million times before.  Video is an enormously powerful way to market online.  And of course this makes logical sense and the majority of people have now been raised with television and in many ways prefer to learn and take in information via video.  So the question is “why aren’t  you making the most of online video?”.   If you need any more convincing pay attention to the following interesting statistics.

– “89 million people in the United States are going to watch 1.2 billion online videos today!” (ComScore)

– As of August 2012 87.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. (ComScore)

Just think of the audience you could be either reaching or missing out on if you aren’t utilizing Video.   Now I know You-Tube is owned by Google, but we’re talking about avoiding having to worry so much about ranking on Google search. Making the most of YouTube and numerous other video sites are a key way to accomplish this.

One  thing you may not have realized is that YouTube is the worlds second largest search engine!  Still not convinced of the power of online video?  Consider this interesting statistic I found.

“Watching a minute of video is the equivalent of reading 1.8 million words” – Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research

People watch video for a very important reason.  Because they can consume so much more information than text or even pictures ever could. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is worth 10 times that!  Now if you are still reading this and haven’t already ran off to watch some online videos lets talk about how we can harness that power and use video effectively online to reach our goal of being“Google free”.

Optimize Optimize Optimize

A key point to remember is that YouTube and other video sites are essentially search engines.  Therefore an important part of your video marketing strategy should be to concern yourself with optimizing your videos for search.  Here are some quick video optimization tips to get your video seen!

– Keywords in your video name: Just like you need to optimize the <title> tags on your website or blog to help your SEO, you also should optimize the title of your video by incorporating your target keywords.  For examples your title could be

“ Donkey Taming – Learn to become a Donkey whisperer in 5 mins!”

Notice how the keyword “donkey taming” is right at the beginning. Then the word donkey is repeated again.  Also all the keyword targeting in the world won’t help if the title of the video doesn’t draw in your target viewer to actually view it.  So try to show the user both the benefit and the time involved in one hyper effective “supertitle”.

– Utilize your description: Make sure you have your target keywords included in your video description as well as any URL’s you would like to have associated with the video that will benefit your overall marketing plan. Also be sure to include your keywords in the videos “tags”.

– Have a call to Action:  I will discuss this further later on but you should always include a call to action, not just in the video but also in the description. Have a BOLD call to action that draws attention like …

“VISIT DONKEYPOWER.ORG TO RECEIVE EVEN MORE AMAZING DONKEY INFORMATION”

Never forget that the best way to get people to do what you want is to simply ask them to. So use calls to actions in your video description and frequently in your videos.

– Optimize using transcriptions: Did you know that YouTube includes a transcription with every video.  Did you also know that you can edit that transcription to ensure that it is correct.  A correct transcription is an important part of optimizing your video as YouTube looks at the transcriptions to determine a videos relevancy.  Another great tip that I sometimes use is to have a brief summary of the video in the description (Along with a great call to action of course).

Guess what! there are many more great tips just regarding Online video alone that you can use. Stay tuned for my next post where I will discuss even more helpful tips to build up your online video marketing strategy as part of my “Google Free Marketing Diet”.