Embedding videos on your website is a great way to engage people and give them the information they need. We all know that, from a user experience point of view, videos can be both informative and fun. That being said, how do we make sure they get the maximum exposure in the search engines?

Search engines, such as Google, need to be able to interpret what the video is about to correctly include it within their search results. One way to do this is to ensure that the content of the video is marked up in the body of a web page (uses coding that is recognized by the search engines). For instance, Google is able to recognize Facebook Share and Yahoo! SearchMonkey RDFa, but still has difficulty with videos that are JavaScript or Flash enabled. Using the correct code for the search engines is imperative if you want your videos to show up in places like Google’s own YouTube. As with all content you have on your website, traditional SEO practices still apply when it comes to videos. Make sure there is some descriptive, keyword rich text below the video, make sure there are unique titles and description meta tags for each of your video landing pages and allow people to post comments and share for social media and viral marketing efforts.

Of course, once the videos have been included on the site, it’s a good idea to tell the search engines where they are, so utilizing a video sitemap can be very beneficial. Once your Sitemap is created, submit it in Google Webmaster Tools or through your robots.txt file.

On June 8th, Google officially stated, “Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine.” The ramifications are obviously not being felt yet, but what should marketers do from an SEO perspective to prepare for what is one of the biggest updates to the Google algorithm in a good while?

In essence, Google Caffeine will facilitate faster indexing of much more relevant information. Now, more than ever, it is important to focus on adding as much new, unique and relevant content to your site in the hopes that it will have a chance of competing with the multitude of websites out there. Webmasters, in general, are much savvier at making sure their sites load faster and provide up to date information. Keeping your ear to the ground and optimizing for real-time search is imperative.

In general though, Google is still doing what they have always done which is to provide the most relevant information for a user’s search queries. The tried and tested methods of SEO are still firmly in place
(well-written, original and relevant content and quality inbound links) but even more tweaking is required now.

Most web designers and developers are savvy enough to know that building a website with SEO in mind is a lot easier than implementing SEO changes once a website has been up and running. What are some basic steps that one should employ when building their website.

Firstly, it’s extremely important to carefully plan your content and meta data well ahead of time, even before all of the aesthetic considerations. Knowing what the primary keyphrase is for all of your top level pages before you start to write the content will make it easier in the long run. Also, writing all of your titles, descriptions and keywords in advance will save on having to create them in the future. Content and meta data writing can be very time consuming, especially if SEO is an afterthought.

When developing your SEO strategy, you should also remember to actively seek out inbound links. Set aside some time to find industry leaders and hub pages that would bring you quality traffic and pass on some of that valuable “link juice” to the website.