Baseball, Beer, Travel, and Running

There was a recent discussion on the Yahoo Videoblogging discussion list about hiring SEO services to get your videos more views. While there might be a case for this, there are a number of things you can do quickly to help get yourself more views (and a little search engine optimization) without paying someone else. Online marketing guru Jim Kukral, host of The Daily Flip, asked me if I'd shoot some video explaining the tips, so here's part one. They sound like common sense when you hear them, but that's largely because they are. Most people who complain about their video views aren't following most or all of these guidelines, so here's part one...

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Tips 1 - 5:

Be interesting - This may be the most important tip of all. If your videos are lame, no one will watch them no matter what else you do.

Write good titles - When you post a video online, the best way for people to find it is through the text related to the post. Titles are the foundation of good text. If you write a succinct clear title, people will find it easier to associate your video with what they are looking for.

Include text on the page - A good title isn't enough, you also need supporting text. If you don't write good supporting text, search engines won't index your video well and it won't be found easily for related searches.

Get an Email Subscription - Many video bloggers swear by using RSS with enclosures as the primary means of acquiring subscribers. While that's an important option, it's also important to simply provide an email subscription for those people who want to be reminded when you have something new.

Embed the video - Make it easy for people to watch your video by embedding it on the page you write about it. Don't make people download the video. Don't make them open a new browser window. Give people what they want in as few steps as possible.

BTW, subscribe to The Daily Flip, there's even better stuff than this.