If you have ever used the internet before chances are that you have come across a little site called YouTube. YouTube literally has millions of videos available that are viewed every day. Most YouTube videos are created for the purpose of entertainment and informational purposes, but YouTube is also used for promotional purposes as well. Web developers and bloggers ask me frequently about how to increase website traffic or how to increase website ranking. My first response is usually involves asking them if they have ever thought about using YouTube to promote their sites.
YouTube is one of the most popular free services that should be taken advantage of to drive traffic to your sites. Get creative and make a funny or useful video that creates some buzz. Chances are if you are able to create an enjoyable video, the viewers who liked your video will probably check out your site. This is huge because you are attracting free targeted traffic from a video that’s hosted on one of the most popular websites in the world.
Another plus of uploading a video to YouTube is the ability to embed a link to your website in the description. Some people may be thinking, “Big deal, maybe somebody will click on it.” If that thought crossed your mind you are only half right. The most important reason why you’re url should be included in the description is for a backlink.
Essentially, the more backlinks that a site has the higher that site will rank on search engines. Over the years Google has changed its algorithm to calculate the weight of a backlink, meaning that each backlink carries its own value and is variable. The value of a specific backlink is determined in part from the website where the backlink can be found. Having a backlink published on a website like YouTube allows you to create some very high quality backlinks for free.
On top of creating hype about your sitw and driving traffic to your website from YouTube, YouTube enables web publishers to add some interactivity to their sites’ very easily. If you have ever noticed the share tab while watching a video on YouTube and selected it a dropdown window should appear with an embedded code. The iFrame code that YouTube provides is great because if you want to add a video to your website or blog, all you have to do is copy and paste the code to your website’s html file and upload it to the webserver. And that’s it, the next time you look at your website the video box should be present on your site. If you want to resize the video window just edit the height and width of the iFrame code, and if you want to style the video in anyway it’s simple enough to do using some basic styling.
Overall, using YouTube to build traffic and implement interactivity to your website or blog is an excellent choice. Best of all it’s a free and easy to use resource that should be taken advantage of by all developers to help get listed on google page one.
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