Driving Traffic to Your Website With YouTube
YouTube is unquestionably the number one video website on the internet, and follows the Google in terms of search volume. Let me run some quick numbers to show how HUGE is YouTube as a source of potential website traffic. YouTube went from 0 to to 4,000,000,000 MONTHLY visitors within 3 months. More than 75,000 new videos are uploaded every single day and over 100 million videos are watched every day. In January 2009 a survey conducted in US shows that 147 million U.S. internet users watched an average of 101 videos per person. As of March 2009, YouTube reached 100 million viewers in US alone. YouTube ranks fourth in the most visited website in alexa.com statistics.
Those numbers mean only one thing, YouTube a huge source for potential website traffic. If you’re not using YouTube to market your website or your blog, you are missing a lot opportunities. YouTube is a powerful tool in promoting your website. But the question is how? Here’s how you can use YouTube more effectively in your internet marketing efforts.
Step 1: Create a video related to your niche
Create a video related to your niche and suited to the type of target audience you intend to create the video for. If your target audiences are teens or college students, colorful and “MTV” type video are the best to capture their attention. A D-I-Y videos are great if your niche is in household stuff. A more classic presentation will suit the professional and working market.
Think of a video that would tease and attract your target market. Your videos should be short but the message is clear. Avoid making videos of more than 5 minutes, as people are busy and look for instant gratification most of the times.
Make them curious, if you can, try to shock and move people out of their usual indifference. Make sure that you are clearly identifying yourself with the video. Your video should have your logo or your company name. You can place your website URL at the bottom of the video, so your viewer can follow you to your site.
Step 2: Go for strategic placement of your video in the Web
The best way is to get your video in the “Featured Videos” section of YouTube. Featured videos usually stay in this section for about a week and often receive hundreds of thousands views over the days and weeks that follow. With a strategic placement of your videos in YouTube will raise people’s interest and would get them to watch your video. This is where viral marketing would start to work. Your videos will be watched and passed on by more and more people.
Quality and promotion is important in this aspect.
Step 3: Build a backlink to your website
YouTube has PageRank of 9 out of possible 10. YouTube is good way in getting a strong backlink. By creating a full-fledged profile and including a link to your company website in it, you can transfer your increased exposure on YouTube to increased traffic to your site, or your blog, or to any other content that you have created. But you have to avoid a direct sales pitch on your video. Too much marketing is frowned by YouTube. Be subtle in promoting your site or your product.