Posted on February 18, 2009 in SEO and Internet Marketing

YouTube is the 4th largest web property on the internet and the number of searches performed on it is second only to Google. It attracts hundreds of millions of users a month, and 15 hours of new videos are uploaded every minute.

With that potential reach it's no wonder that many businesses large and small are trying their hand at reaching this audience. YouTube Product Manager Matt Liu recently shared some tips for using YouTube effectively at the Search Marketing Expo in the US.

Improve your ranking

Liu encourages users to "Take advantage of what YouTube has to offer" but admits that it can be difficult to get your video noticed amid the mass of new offerings uploaded every day. Some simple things that can improve your rankings include:

• Use an accurate and descriptive title.
• Your video description should be accurate and unique, and use complete sentences.
• Keyword tags should likewise be descriptive and accurate.
• Avoid keyword stuffing to try to attract more viewers - it will backfire.

Be involved with the Community

YouTube is more than just a video search engine. With strong social networking options creating a loyal and active community, the opinion of this community can make or break your video campaign.

As with any other community on the web, your best results will come if you actively participate. Share videos with other members, create your own channels and fans, experiment with annotations, video responses, and thumbnails.

Use the Tools provided

Liu also mentioned other aspects of YouTube that marketers should pay attention to.

Embedded videos should be more discoverable, so that people post your YouTube videos on their own blogs and other sites, which in turn lead  people back to your YouTube profile and your other material.

Also, YouTube Insight  is a video analytics tool that launched last year. This lets you see demographics of your viewers and find out where your videos are posted and who posted them. A few months ago a new feature called "Hot Spots" was added to let you pinpoint the specific parts of the video that get viewed the most.