So I’ve begun reading a rather informative book, YouTube and Video Marketing, by Greg Jarboe, and for those interested
in video optimization, I just came across a small section that I thought I’d pass along.
Actually, it makes sense to start with a couple of definitions, according to Jarboe:
Video SEO: optimizing video for Google Video and other video search engines.
YouTube optimization: optimizing video for YouTube.
Video optimization: optimizing video for both YouTube and the search engines.
These distinctions are important for a couple of reasons. Jarboe provides plenty of statistics on where and how video is found, but his main point is that YouTube is far and away the most popular place for watching video. Further more, a large percent of video searches are done on YouTube.
This is important because it means that only a small percentage of video searches are done within video search engines, like Yahoo Video or Google Video. The implications: video SEO (optimizing video for the search engines rather than YouTube) is worthwhile but optimizing videos for YouTube is just as important if not more so.
The big point here is this: when you place video on your site, optimize it for the search engines, but definitely upload it to YouTube and optimize there as well (more on this later, after I read further in Jarboe’s book). This gives you the best of both worlds – video optimization.