As you are probably aware Google has brought YouTube for a substantial amount of money. The reason Google spent so much money on YouTube is they understood how important videos could become in search.

Google even now include videos in their universal search, with many YouTube videos appearing in the natural search results. Videos are popular for users as they are much more interesting to click than the tradition text adds.

But how do you generate the most traffic from your videos? Below I have given a few tips:

• Tip 1 Add some Text to the video page – As Google cannot read and understand the video you should always surround the video with appropriate text describing the videos content
• Tip 2 Optimise the URL of the video page – Always try to ensure that your videos are placed on a relevant URL as this will increase the relevance of the video
• Tip 3 Submit your videos to Tubemogul.com – Tubemogul.com is a free service where you can upload your video once and they will syndicate the video to all the top video sharing sites. This is a lifesaver, and will help you obtain more traffic for little effort
• Tip 4 Submit your video to social media and social networking sites – You should promote your video on facebook and twitter amongst other popular social networking sites, this will enforce the pages in the search results
• Tip 5 Link Building – As with everything in SEO you have a better chance of your video appearing in the Google search results in you have performed a strong link building campaign to the page
• Tip 6 Be specific – A simple tip here, create a specific video not a generic one. Google has only recently started displaying videos in the search listings, so creating a video competing against generic terms probably will not work
• Create a Video Sitemap – Google now supports video sitemaps. I would strongly recommend adding a video sitemap and submitting the video sitemap amongst your other sitemaps through webmaster tools. For specific information on video sitemaps please review the the official post from Google

I would not suggest you spend too long optimising your site for videos, as their simply is currently not enough return on video optimisation as SEO. I would however strongly recommend you use Tubemogul.com to speed up the process of getting your video out there.

Having videos on your site is also a great idea as it seperates you from your main competitors which can only be a good thing.