Plan the following before you upload to YouTube…
- Name the File Correctly. This is perhaps THE most overlooked SEO mistake. By uploading file003.wmv versus DoorCountyMarathon.wmv you are actually hurting your overall SEO. Rename the file before you upload it to YouTube.
- Make sure your tags are relevant to your content. Seems obvious but this takes some thought to get into the minds of users similar to keyword discovery.
- The more tags the merrier. I see no penalty for using all your available tag space. I normally teach 6-7 Max, and that seems to work just fine.
- Spread your tags out among your clips. Adding more tags can help snag some long tail keywords.
- Use adjectives. Remember lots of folks are browsing, and they’ll use adjectives to find what they are in the mood to view.
- Have some category descriptor tags. It’s important to remember YouTube’s default search settings are Videos, Relevance, and All Categories.
- Match your title and description with your most important tags. Basic SEO practice applies here as well.
- Don’t use natural language phrases and waste tag space on words like “and” or “to.”
TECH NOTES ON EMBEDDING A VIDEO:
Normal YouTube URL for embedding a video:
<object width=”425″ height=”350″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID“></
param>
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param>
<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID” type=”application/xshockwave-
flash”
wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed>
</object>
Autoplaying your video:
<object width=”425″ height=”350″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/
VIDEO_ID&autoplay=1“></param>
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param>
<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID&autoplay=1”
type=”application/xshockwave-
flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></
embed>
</object>
Removing related videos from the flash player
<object width=”425″ height=”350″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/
VIDEO_ID&rel=0“></param>
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param>
<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID&rel=0”
type=”application/x-shockwaveflash”
wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed>
</object>
NEW FEATURE!
It’s not a big new feature but it’s certainly one that will come in handy:
YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video’s URL. It’s pretty surprising that this functionality wasn’t available earlier, as Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m05s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’
and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively.
Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aTkvjxGFQQ#t=1m05s