Video & Podcast Internet Marketing

Using todays technology, you will be surprised at how straightforward it really is to create persuasive and interesting video material. The use of video related marketing can generate much better publicity compared to that garnered by normal website marketing using more accepted methods. A further round of online exposure will be obtained by utilizing that original video as the source material for a Podcast.

Recent data show that 38% of online searchers within the USA are also expressly using Video Search on a regular basis. YouTube has become the 2nd biggest Search Engine after Google. In 2009 YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the world’s number 2 search engine (if you consider YouTube’s “integrated search” as an everyday search engine). YouTube continues to be a prominent contributor for Google, creating an average of 2.73 billion searches monthly within the U.S. in 2009.

Google has also started to return video results on its standard website searches. If a business is really the only one to “have possession of” a unique niche or ‘long tail’ key phrase results with video content, they have a first rate chance to be on the first page of a regular Google search. This has inestimable importance and represents one of the most reasonable ways that most local businesses can expect to generate free (non PPC) page one results in Google at the national level. Of course, when Google returns a video result, it also includes a thumbnail of this video which means that even although the link might not be at the top of the page, a far higher percentage of people will click it because of the image.

To make an effective video it would be best to record a 4 or 5 minute long ‘live action’ segment – you may additionally want to consider adding in some powerpoint slides to really present your ideas clearly. Include some royalty free music into the mix to make the video appealing and dynamic. You should also try to design a strong presentation using a method whereby you show the Features, Advantages and Benefits to your prospective customers. In other words, you not only explain what kind of services and products your site offers, but also outline the important benefits your site visitors can anticipate.

Your next step is going to be to attract as many visitors to your video page using backlinks in the exact same way you would promote a regular webpage. For instance you could build links to your video from content you posted to the most important Web 2.0 sites as well as Backlinks from other high Page Ranked websites. You may additionally consider submitting the video to the social network sites and post its link on targeted forums. You will even get excellent high page ranked Backlinks by using the “Channel Comments” within YouTube itself. Another way for getting wide exposure for the video should be to submit it to the other major video websites so that the related keywords, metatags, and categories can be listed in each one of these key video search engines.

After you have completed your video presentation it is easy to then use that very same material to design a Podcast. Once again, this Podcast can be submitted to various Podcast aggregator websites. The concept should be to expose various alternative ways to broadcast your web content to as many outlets as possible.

Online marketing is constantly evolving therefore your approach has to change with the times. The summary above represents most of the current ‘best practices’ on getting the most out of your online Local Business promotion, but your methods should evolve as new search engine marketing alternatives emerge.

Neil Walker has experience generating Small Business Internet Sites that rank well in the search engines. Hyberian Digital Image is the leading source for Search Engine Placement and Custom Image Design. Click on this link for more information on Search Optimization.