How to Get Traffic to Your Site or Blog with Video Marketing

16 Mar 2009

How to Get Traffic to Your Site or Blog with Video Marketing

Author: Jim | Filed under: Traffic Techniques

Welcome to the first of many posts, brought to you exclusively from theNetFool.com, focused on getting the maximum amount of traffic to your website or blog. You can access all of our traffic tips by checking out our traffic techniques section of the blog.

Today, I’d like to talk about one of the increasingly popular methods of funneling thousands upon thousands of unique visitors to your website or blog. Video marketing is a technique that has been historically thought of as a bit too under-developed to really work. However, over 2008 and onward into 2009, site owners have not only seen video traffic become a viable resource for new visitors, but it has become an accelerating traffic trend that has made many entrepreneurs millionaires overnight.

Why is video marketing, or even video blogging (vlogging), such a great alternative to plain ol’ text anyway? I have found that with video, not only do you have your content on your website, but you can have your thoughts, opinion and brand name spread all over the internet… we’re talking embedded on random websites and streamed from the source. Video blogging has caught some major traction as of late, and using video to market your website has become just as popular.

There are two primary means that I see as extraordinarily useful in video marketing to gain traffic: search engine optimization, and YouTube popularity. Let’s dissect each method and get you in the know.

Video Marketing for Search Engine Optimization

Many search engine optimization professionals pour hundreds of dollars into getting top-tier placements in the Google search engine for various keywords. I would have to say that one of the roots of internet marketing is in obtaining high Search Engine Results Pages (or “SERPs”), so that your website is one of the top search results for relevant common phrases that people search through on a daily basis. Gone are the days that content-rich websites rule the boards here… it’s been typical now to see videos appear as the #1 or #2 results under high-powered keyword search results.

HINT: You MUST have a link back to your site in the “description” section of all videos!

How can you use video marketing to get that high search engine result? There are plenty of ways… and I would recommend promoting your videos just like anything else that you would. This means creating articles and using article marketing to target the keywords that you think will hit for your video. Additionally, you could create some profiles on places like HubPages and Squidoo to get more links pointing to your video. There are ton’s of methods that all involve getting extra links to your video, and you always want to link up to the video using a targetted search term that both lacks competition and has plenty of search volume. Heck, if you’d like to learn a bit more about “friendly marketing,” check out the article I wrote a while back on some ordinary methods to get extraordinary traffic.

Finally, by getting enough backlinks to your video, you will start to appear on organic Google search engine results. With this, you’ll start seeing the traffic roll in! Need a hand? I actually use a program called Video Post Robot to get my video uploaded to dozens of video-upload websites (i.e. YouTube, MetaCafe, etc.) at once!

Getting Noticed Through YouTube

Yes, I have YouTube as an entirely separate entity for getting traffic to your website. Why? Well, it is really like the difference between getting a high search engine result on Google versus Yahoo or MSN… it’s the king! With over 60 million unique viewers every month, rest assured that YouTube commands something like 90-95% of the online video scene. YouTube is optimized for 18 different languages and has a large presence in the Asian marketplace… not only this, but it’s the fourth most popular website in the entire U.S! What this means is that you can get an insane amount of traffic to your website if you have a popular video on YouTube (with a link in the video’s description to your website, of course), so let’s see how we do this!

Getting lots of hits on YouTube is easiest done if you can land a video on the front page of YouTube. There is a specific algorithm that determines which videos make it, and it is largely based on the videos that gets the most views, favorites and comments. Again, getting on the front page isn’t the only way… but it certainly makes it easier!

First off, your video needs to be new and fresh. Much like any social bookmarking service like Digg.com, YouTube will give your video a higher ranking if it is brand new… because it is seen as more relevant and well-liked. Therefore, I would actually recommend re-submitting your video to YouTube if you don’t hit it off right from the start. This is an area that video has a huge advantage, because no service can track whether you are re-submitting the same video correctly… whereas re-submitting a text article to a network is caught easily.

Next, you should focus on creating a power profile. When YouTube determines which videos will appear on their front page, it is typically a function of how popular said user’s profile is. How many friends have you made on YouTube? How popular are your videos typically? It will be much easier for a consistent user to get a video on the front page of YouTube than one that just signed up… though not impossible.

Finally, from each visitor that you get to your video, you should ask them to favorite it, comment on it, and rate it five stars. These ratings aren’t just imaginary… and they are actually used to determine the popularity and relevance of various videos. Not only will this help for the front page of YouTube.com, but it will rank you up higher in YouTube’s own video search system. Nobody knows for sure which is more heavily weighted (views, favorites, ratings or comments), so make sure that you go for all four!

How can you get traffic to your YouTube video to make it all possible? Again, there are literally hundreds of marketing methods… so it is up to you to decide. I would recommend to start by simply sharing the link with your friends. Then, you could even use a different social media website (Digg or StumbleUpon are my favorites here) to link up to the YouTube video and get a rush of traffic when you need it most.

Bottom Line: Video marketing is an increasingly popular way to get tons of traffic and popularity to your website. Even if the video isn’t originally hosted on your site, having a third party directing loads of traffic your way can be a huge boost to your daily traffic… and is typically a method that also will rank high in Google. There’s no two bits about it: the future of the internet is in interactivity and video, so get in on it while the industry is relatively young!

-Jimvesting