In my last blog I talked about raising awareness of your web site or cause with off-site or viral videos. It is possible to use video to generate traffic to your web site with the aim of generating leads or converting your visitors to customers. If you are going to use video for this purpose there are things you need to include in the video:

• The message or purpose of the video must be clear.

• There must be a clear and compelling call to action.

• The viewer must be directed to a site or landing page where they can take action.

There are some basic problems with video that make video different than a blog or a web site for example. Nothing that you put in the video can be seen by search engines. Google does not find and rank the content within the video. Nothing in the script, the narration or the images can be ranked because as far as a search engine is concerned a video is invisible. YouTube, Google and other search engines DO search and find information to rank and find the video in the TITLE, DESCRIPTION and TAGS of the video. So all the Search Engine Optimization you would normally do for everything else you put up on the internet you should also do for your video. Be sure that the key words you want to be found for are in the title, description and tags. If the people in the video are important be sure they are listed in the description and the tags. It is a good idea to include the word “video” even in the title otherwise it may not be evident it is a video.

• Title: Under 70 characters, search engine result pages typically cut off anything longer.
• Descriptions: Make it enticing so people will want to watch but keep it short. Search engines will cut off anything more than 160 characters.
• Tags: Include tags you want to be found for. Also include names of people, products or brands that are in the video. Include the word “video” in the tag.

Another problem for driving traffic to your site is that you cannot put a link in your video. You can of course put a link in your video, but it is not a hot link. The viewer cannot click on it and go to your web page. Although on YouTube you can put in links to other videos. The best thing to do is to put your link in the first line of your description. On YouTube you need to put the entire URL including the “http://” for this to work. If the URL is long put it through a URL shortener first.

Use a video platform such as YouTube that makes it very easy to share, link, and embed your video. You want people to spread the video around but you also want the title, description and tags to stay with the video and this is the case with YouTube. You will need to promote the video just as you would anything else you put on the internet. Submit it to social sharing sites so that others can find it and encourage others to share the video.

Above all remember what you want the video to do. After watching the video you want the viewer to go to your site. If that is not clear those who want to visit your web page will be denied that option. Of course you should not be obnoxious about it but being too subtle or coy is not a good strategy. Always make it clear what you want the viewer to do and how they can find your web site.

You can download a Free e-book about different types of online videos and how to use them on the internet. Just follow this link for: 10 things you can do with video on the Internet.