If your videos are not optimized to match what people are searching, there are good chances of your videos getting lost without reaching its intended audience. That serves no purpose at all.

Videos are emerging as the most viewed content-type on the Internet, surpassing webpages and audio in the number of viewership counts and the margin is increasing every day.

People are no more interested in reading articles or blog posts as they find watching moving pictures more appealing. So it is no surprise to find videos as one of the most shared content-type on social media.

YouTube being the second largest search engine after Google, over 100 hours of new video is uploaded every single minute. And for generating better viewership count and drive in more traffic to your offers, your videos must come on the first pages of YouTube and Google Search. The answer lies in Video Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

There are three approaches to video optimization. It is important to go for all the three approaches. Following are some steps related to each approach.

1. Video search engines that crawl your site: These search engines are a fraction of your total market opportunity, however they are worth pursuing. You get different optimization options including:

The video file itself. It is here to accommodate a title, summary/description, and some related keywords/tags. It needs mentioning here that the number of search sites that look for these data is a small number. However, it does not take very long to enter these data. You can customize the content incorporating title, keywords, meta description and on-page text, etc.

Keep your video files in one directory. The crawler finds it easier to find the files this way.

Stay away from flash video players. Search engine still do not find Flash too friendly.

Make use of a Video Sitemap. This helps the crawlers to find your videos easily.

2. RSS or MRSS feeds accepting Video Sites: Here you submit a RSS or MRSS feed to a third party site. The approach should be to incorporate a title, description, keywords, thumbnails, a category and a full transcript. Video search site finds a full transcript as a good fodder to chew upon.

3. Video Upload Sites: These are the sites that let you upload your video to them.

For better optimization of the video, make use of the following steps:

· Enter metadata again after getting there. These are title, keywords and a description.

· Give links to related content and videos on your site.

Other Video Optimization Tips

· Create compelling content. Quality content is the most important tip you should follow. To go viral, there is need for viewers to start loving it.

· Create videos that support the message you want to deliver.

· Include the word video on a regular basis right through any metadata so that users searches including the word, results in better chances of it coming up on those queries.

· Pick a preferred format, such as .mov, .avi, or .wmv.

· Keep the length reasonable. For videos that are too long, there are chances of users finding the video boring.

· Give your video a keyword rich, but catchy title. It is a single-most factor to attract the user’s interest to the video.

· Use thumbnails for users to decide the videos to watch.

· Allow Users to rate your video.

· Commercial content should include a «watermark» to indicate origin.

· Use keywords in the filename and URL.

· Use appropriate keywords in the link text for the file.

Publicizing Your Video

Here are some more points that can help in promoting your video:

· Put your video everywhere.

· Publicize your multimedia files with appropriate RSS or MRSS feeds.

· Make use of social bookmarking tools for better visibility of videos.

· Put offers of embedding your video in other sites.

· End the video with a send to a friend option.

Simply uploading videos is not going to work much for you unless they are optimized. As shown, there are many factors involved for optimization of self-hosted video that needs to be considered.