5 Tips for Adding YouTube Videos To Your Website

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Perhaps you've created a video that you want to add to your YouTube, but you don't know how to make sure it works in your website's favor. This tutorial will tell you five tips to get your video noticed by visitors and search engines, and become an asset to your website or business.

Metatags Aren't Just for Websites

Although most developers consider metatags to be important for websites and search engine optimization (SEO), many don't realize how serious they are for videos that are submitted to YouTube. The Title is extremely important, just as it is for web pages. An informative title allows people to find your video when they search YouTube, and your title should include those keywords that you find most relevant to the topic of your video. YouTube even has a special Keyword Tool to help you out.

Just like your page's normal metatags, the Description tag is where you can write a short paragraph that defines the specific subject matter of your video. Again, this will help your video's ability to be found, so make sure to include some of your keywords, and use specific terminology relevant to your video's subject matter.

Tags, similar to those used in Content Management Systems (CMSes) such as Drupal or Joomla, are also used by YouTube to facilitate the ability of users to find your video among the hundreds of thousands that are submitted every day. They should be very similar to the keywords you selected when you were creating your Title.

Thumbnails Are Very Important: A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

If you are a YouTube Partner, you are able to select a specific thumbnail for your video. It won't cost you any money to become a partner, but you will have to upload videos regularly, and have some decent exposure for your videos--and you have to fill out an application. Partners also get to make money from their videos, which is another benefit of joining the partners program.

A Branded YouTube Channel Is a Step Towards Success

Often, having your own branded channel on YouTube can be a real traffic booster. You can create your own channel by starting here. Your channel page allows you to add links to your website, allows people to contact you, share your channel with their friends, and add comments to your channel. Additionally it allows you to reinforce your brand or website's identity.

Creating a branded channel isn't difficult--it mostly involves uploading a background image and a professional looking profile picture. You are able to customize the colors of your channel to match the colors of your website, and YouTube has created an introduction called Creating and Customizing a Brand Channel that will get you up to speed in no time!

Social Networking is Vital To YouTube Success

Once you have uploaded your video to YouTube, have added the appropriate metatags, and have created your own channel, it's time to publicize your video in the more traditional ways--through links from your website, and more importantly, through the social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. By sharing your video from your Facebook site, or through your blog, you expose it to more people who can share it with their own friends, and those people can share it with their friends. Viral doesn't just apply to uberly popular videos like the laughing baby, which has over 143 million views.

Comments Can Be Your Friend, or Your Worst Nightmare

Once you have published your video, and have used the other tips we have provided, your video will begin to receive comments from viewers. Some of them will be a discussion about the video itself, others may be about your business, or even you personally, and others may be spam. While it's easy to accept the positive comments, and to engage those viewers who have taken the time to respond to your video, it's often more difficult to remain silent when the negative comments come in. They may or may not be relevant to the video, but often it takes a very thick skin to deal with them in a professional manner. Keep in mind that your replies to those comments, and the way you deal with them, will reflect on you, your website, your channel and your business. Keep it civil, and don't let yourself get drawn into a debate or argument.