Using internet video as part of your search engine optimization efforts can be an excellent way for you to expose your brand to users who may not have been familiar with your products or services. With Google’s Universal Search, you can expect to see a greater number of video results occupying the search results that are served up by Google.

Marketers and web designers are continuing to experiment with video as a means of intercepting their target markets. As a result, we are seeing more video laden content surface on the Web. Just how important is video content on the Web? Well depending on the data you review, the results vary.

As is the case with a lot of the content on the Web, a lot of the video out there is lacking in informative content. Alternately, there are a lot of great “How To” videos out there, but there is a lot of video footage that is really just junk and an interruption to those looking for relevant information.

To avoid wasting your audience’s precious time, consider the following guidelines when planning to optimize your site with video content.

Make certain that your video clips are informative and relevant – Ensure that your video provides useful information. Videos that provide step by step procedures are great, videos that express a general opinion about a specific topic can be very useful too. Videos that have little to do with your brand or service offering or are vague in nature will just confuse your audience. Save the viewer the trouble and don’t upload a video just for the sake of uploading a video.

Give your video clip a memorable title – Video can be used to attract visitors to your site. One way to entice users to view your video is to give it a title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand.

Use video as a portal to other related content on your site – Upload a couple of videos to video portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other video clips on your site.

Optimize your video clips for important key phrases – You may want to optimize your video for specific terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your video with these keywords, consider naming the the video with these terms in mind.

Provide transcripts of your videos – HTML content is, at this time, still a favorite with the search engines. If you want your video clips to rank well, you need to offer the search engines something to index and rank. You should surround your videos with on page copy that can be indexed by the search engines.

Limit your videos to five minutes or less – there is nothing worse than a mind-numbing video that goes on an on. If you have good video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it down into smaller pieces and tag each clip accordingly. Not only does this make for more pleasurable viewing, it also keeps the user looking for more.

Make use of a video sitemap – For video that is native to your website, make certain that users and search engine spiders can locate your video content. The most efficient way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap. Use important keywords in the anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.

Brand your video clips with your logo – Video is an excellent tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take full advantage of this by incorporating your brand in your videos.

Offer the option to embed Your video – Allow users access to the necessary coding that will allow them to embed your video clips on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing

Allow users to rate your video – Video clips that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to mark as their favorite and save. The search engines will pay more attention to this when ranking these videos.

Internet video is becoming more important as a mainstream aspect to search engine optimization. The best way to optimize your video content is to think about the users you want to engage with your video. Be smart about it, consider your audience, their language and their needs.