Given its effectiveness at reaching audiences, it’s no surprise that video marketing has been around for decades. This informational tool combines pictures, video, audio, and music in a way that engages viewers. In fact statistics show that customers are up to 85% more likely to buy after seeing a product video. Ease of access and low barrier to entry has made video marketing more popular than ever before. Including multimedia on your website makes it more relevant to users, thus more relevant in search engine results. Prep your video to yield the best results possible by following this handy guide. Creating Video Set the Bar High. The quality of your video matters a lot, so keep the standard high when creating it. Include information that is highly relevant to your audience, and that will make them want to share it with others. Use high quality stock photos, helpful interviews, interesting graphics, and natural transitions. Use a Shorter Format. People who watch videos online behave differently compared to, say, someone watching an infomercial on T.V. Web surfers tend to watch shorter videos, and can easily click off of a page if they find it boring or irrelevant. For that reason, shorter video formats usually do well with online viewers. If you have existing promotional video, consider making it into a series of short videos. Each one should be two to four minutes long. You can do this with programs like Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premier Pro , and Final Cut . Of course, this might not apply to all situations. You might have video that you want to keep in one piece, like a video tutorial, so use your own judgment. Search Optimization Make Video Visible. Research has shown that video performs best when both embedded on the main website and hosted on YouTube. Video hosted directly on your website is a strong draw for traffic. You utilize Google’s network and gain stronger search rankings by also hosting it on YouTube. Uploading your video to both YouTube and your website makes it work twice as hard. Add Meta Data. It’s not uncommon to see videos on YouTube with blank descriptions and no tags. In terms of SEO, this is a wasted opportunity. You should always include a keyword-rich description and use appropriate tags. You should also use keywords in the title of the video if appropriate. Use informational keywords to gain credibility for your video (instead of transactional keywords, which people search for when they want to buy). Notice the keywords included in this description, including cities and services offered. Make a Transcript. Creating a video transcript for longer video serves two purposes. First, it’s there for those who would rather read than watch the video, or who would like to find a specific piece of info without having to watch. Second, it’s more useful content to add to your page, which search engines are always looking for. Avoid Flash. Flash isn’t compatible with iDevices, so consider using HTML templates instead, unless your page is otherwise optimized for iOS and has a video thumbnail image. Use Appropriate Markup. Using appropriate markup for your page will get your video a rich snippet in search results. Use schema.org to find the markup to use. If you have WordPress you can also use the All-in-One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin for your blog. Among other things, you can use schema to create a video sitemap. A sitemap is a document that tells search engines all about the pages on your website. A video sitemap tells search engines to index the videos on your page. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you can also create a video site map this way. Include a title, description, and thumbnail for each video. Without the sitemap, the search engine might index the page the video is located on, but not the video itself. Rich snippets display the video thumbnail with a title and description. Top Off With Social Media. When you’ve got your video prepped and ready to go, share it all over your social media outlets. The first 48 hours of a video release are most critical for social media engagement. You might want to share it on Twitter multiple times throughout the day, or during the times you know your customers will most likely see it. And of course, make your video content shareable with very visible social share buttons. The rampant popularity of YouTube has shown just how powerful video is for catching people’s attention. Video marketing packs a powerful punch, and can contribute richly to your company’s bottom line. Never has it been easier to make a case for your brand in just a couple of minutes.