Yes! The weekend is here!

For most, it’s time to unwind and breathe easy for a couple of days… but not for me. This weekend I plan to shoot a few instructional videos for a new program I am putting together. I’ve decided to finally launch my new viral marketing campaign.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that video marketing can be one of the best methods of driving free traffic to your Website.

Did you know that according to eMarketer, millions of Web site owners today are turning to video to enhance their Web marketing strategies? It is what the people are asking for, so companies are responding to the demand by offering video Web pages.

I’ve managed many Web projects for so many different companies that I’ve lost count. But one thing I do know is that many of them felt ‘video’ was the next big thing and with video they could sell their prospects in a new and more exciting way.

I remember one client saying "it’s like having a sales person on the floor".

I would have to agree with all of them in this respect. But I would certainly use video for much more than just adding multimedia to my Website.

You see, today there is a very important role that video plays in other areas and SEO is one of those areas. Those of you that don’t take advantage of this new technique could end up losing ground in the never-ending battle of the search engine wars.

That’s why I’ve decided to add video to my Website and further my reach by launching a small video marketing campaign designed to attract all kinds of new traffic. This new traffic will come by way of Social Media platforms like YouTube, MSN, Google and Yahoo Video as well as many other Social Media Outlets.

I’m sure most of you have already heard about the importance of video, but for those of you that haven’t… WAKE UP. You have to realize that you’re missing out on an extremely valuable marketing opportunity.

It seems that search engines (especially Google) have started ranking Websites with video a bit higher than other Websites. Now this is pure speculation in all honesty – it’s not like anyone has REALLY cracked the search engine’s algorithms - but I’ve personally tested this theory myself and the rumors appear to be true.

I’ll explain what happened in my test.

I have a client that, like so many others, decided video could become a valuable marketing tool for luring prospects to his Website. He wanted to add a video of a woman discussing (Selling) his main product. The video would show the benefits of using the product. He spent very little money on production, but the video turned out great anyway, so it didn't matter.

The video was shot in the form of a ‘How To’ video. It explained how to solve the person’s problem, but the way to fix the problem was by using the client’s product. Now I won’t reveal this client’s name because he doesn’t want people knowing his information. He is in a very tight niche, has almost no competitors and he wants to keep it that way.

But I don’t mind sharing my findings with my loyal readers and since the info is for you to use with your unrelated niche - he doesn’t mind either.

Now, adding video for his Web site visitors was a good idea, but I knew there were other benefits. It would also improve my SEO efforts. So, I made sure that I used his keywords in the video’s title and named the video using his keywords. I also made sure that the name of the HTML page itself had his keywords in it.

I optimized the page the video was displayed on and before long it was live for the World Wide Web to see. I thought to myself "if this works... I have lots video of my own to start creating".

A few weeks went by and his video was really getting a lot of views. What I didn’t realize was that other Websites were beginning to link to this video. Before long, he had about 30 different Websites linking to his video page and was getting about 50-60 extra visits per day from it.

What was even more exciting was the fact that these links were starting to give him some serious ‘Link Juice,’ and he was climbing quickly in search engine rankings.

At that point I started submitting the video to all of the major video sites. I waited to do this because I didn’t want everyone linking to THOSE sites. I was greedy and wanted the links all to myself. Once I had enough links pointing to this page my client got the #3 position for his keyword and the traffic started flooding in!

THAT was the right time to start submitting his video to the Social Media channels. I flooded the Web with the video and he began to get more traffic to this one page, than to his entire Website. This was a home run! Needless to say the client was very happy with my services (he’s since, referred my services to 3 other companies).

With that said… I don’t believe that the credit was 100% mine. You see, search engines can now spider ‘video’ itself. That’s right! They can literally scan your video and suck out the content, then transcribe it (including your keywords). This video mentioned the keywords plenty of times and although it hasn’t been proven yet, I believe that it played a very important role in the success of this campaign.

VIDEO, VIDEO, VIDEO!

I can’t stress it enough. Video is quickly changing the way Web marketing works and it’s not just the SEO channels that are benefiting from this. There are plenty of other ways that video can help boost your sales.

Do you realize how many of today’s Web gurus have converted their long sales letter copy to video? Why do you think this is?

Well I’ve personally experienced a 30-40% increase in conversions by turning many of my client’s landing pages into ‘video’ landing pages. Now creating a video landing page that actually converts isn’t always so easy so you might want to get help with this, but it certainly is worth it.