Reverse SEO lands jobs. For good or bad, what you say, do and write can and will affect your reputation. That is why it is so important to make sure you manage your online reputation. It is a direct reflection of your personal brand. Just like a corporate brand, this is how and what people think of you. Reverse SEO can help emphasize your positive and hide away the negative.

We all make mistakes. Maybe you posted a photo you wished you hadn’t, or had a heated disagreement about politics on Facebook that, in the light of morning, was over the top. Unfortunately, the Internet never forgets, and while you can try to delete that information, it is often stored in a search engine's cache, and can be found later through basic searches.

This is really important for job seekers. Over 75% of HR professionals have reported hiring decisions being positively influenced by a candidate’s online reputation; conversely, 60% of human resource professionals have rejected a candidate for negative online information.  Silly Facebook pictures, an offensive comment, or even someone else who posted negative or incorrect information about you are not worth losing your dream job. Reverse SEO will help you hide the negative and accentuate the positive.

Online reputation is becoming so important that some universities are even providing seniors with a six-month subscription to an online reputation management service, and helping them overcome their negative online content. By using reverse SEO we can produce more content that will distract away from any negative online slip up’s.

Here are three reverse SEO tips to help with your job search:

1. Buy your name as a domain name, and post a single page that serves almost as a resume. Use it to point to your other positive content, like a blog, your LinkedIn profile, or a YouTube channel. If you share a name with someone else more famous, or have more than a few negative content problems, you need to make sure you buy the name you want to be known by professionally. — maybe your full name (William Smith, not Bill Smith), or first, middle, and last (William Henry Smith).


2. Sign up for several social networks with your "professional" name. Get your vanity URL (a URL that includes your name) on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks, as well as blogging platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger.com.


3. Make sure you're putting positive content on your networks. It's not enough to just create the networks. You have to give the search engines something to index. The more content you create, the more the search engines have to index. As you create more new stuff, the search engines will push down the old stuff off the front pages, and out of sight of the hiring managers and HR professionals.

Reverse SEO is not a miracle maker, but it can definitely help. Negative search engine results will not completely be deleted, but they will most definitely be hidden. 89% of search engine activity is proven to derive from the first page of a search engine anyways. If you can push bad information further down on a search engine, you can eliminate any bad online reputation that may damage perception of your personal brand.

Video SEO is the newest tool in your branding toolbox. Whether the brand is for a small business or your own personal brand, search engine optimization can help you to create the best brand in today’s market. Search engine optimization is crucial to your online reputation. That is why it must be managed. Video SEO can help to maximize positive personal or business feedback through search engines.

The goal of regular search engine optimization is to win all searches on the three main search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Using video SEO is one of the most effective techniques you can use, because video is growing more and more popular, thanks to faster broadband, and smart phones that can play mobile video.

Using Video SEO for your personal brand

Before looking at your ranking on search engines, you must first check out your personal brand. Some people who are focused on their personal brand are using video resumes as a way to boost their personal brand and help with their job search.

But you want your personal brand to signify quality and excellence. The same is true for your resume. Although you can create a homemade video resume on your cell phone, why would you want to? Remember, your brand is one of quality and excellence, so be sure to use the right equipment, quality cameras, and proper video editing software. Better yet, hire a professional video resume firm such as www.videoresumeservices.com.

Post your video resume to video sharing networks like Video Resume Services, YouTube and Vimeo. Post these to your blog, LinkedIn, and your personal blog/website. Not only will this give employers something to refer to, but the video SEO will boost your page's search engine rankings, making sure this is the information potential employers find.

Using Video SEO for your small business

Small businesses can sometimes overlook the value and benefits of video. Not only can a video boost your company's search engine rankings, but some solid video SEO can push any negative press (and even your competitors. . .) off the front page.

You can also create a video blog to help with your video SEO. Rather than just write a blog post or web page explaining a feature on your product, or giving a tour of your facility, post some demonstration or tour videos to show to people. For example, Blendtec's "Will It Blend" videos have boosted their sales by showing how tough and durable their heavy-duty blenders really are. Not only have the videos gone viral in many cases, but the video SEO has been immense, pushing Blendtec up near the top of the Google search rankings.

One friend of ours even went so far as to create a weekly video show talking about the different developments in his industry. Not only did this add to his video SEO, but it established his company as one of the industry leaders, since he was reporting on a lot of news that the non-insiders were never hearing about.

Search engine optimization experts have found that video is one of the most effective methods to reach front page listings for their clients. With companies like Flickr beginning to offer video sharing, and Google's purchase of YouTube in 2006, you can see that video is only going to grow in popularity, which means this is one ship you do not want to sail without you.

As video SEO becomes easier for marketers to distribute for consumer view, it is becoming a necessary tool in online marketing campaigns. If you can create an exceptional brand and boost it through video SEO, your efforts will pay off time and time again.

Local SEO (search engine optimization) can actually help with your national reach if you are trying to  expand beyond your local online footprint. Local SEO involves improving your local footprint by pumping up your information on different local and community sites.

If you have enough of these local listings, you may even be able to start appearing on some regional and national searches too. Here are a few local SEO tactics you can use to help.

Google Local

This is the must-do for anyone doing local SEO for their business, store, or restaurant. As more people give up Yellow Pages and start searching online, it is a good idea to promote your Google Local listing. For one thing, it is free, not like the Yellow Pages listings. (Plus, there can be two, three, or even four Yellow books in your city, which can be a complete waste of money.)

Next, the more information you include, the better. You can link back to your website, list the different credit cards you accept, include a map to your place, and quickly update your information if you move, rather than waiting for a new Yellow Pages. By starting with Google Local, you are letting Google know you are an official business and one that should be included in their search engine rankings.

Review Sites

User-generated content is the new big thing when it comes to online credibility, which means review sites are great for local SEO. On sites like Yelp and UrbanSpoon, users can leave reviews of their favorite restaurants and bars.  Yelp also offers reviews of mechanics, doctors, and dentists.

Find your business on these different sites, and customize the listings, as you did for your Google Local listing. Include every piece of information you can, and then monitor them every couple of weeks to see what people are saying about you. If someone leaves you a bad review, do not fight back, get into an argument, or drop the hammer on them. Respond politely, address the problem, tell them you will fix it, and offer something in exchange. Not only will this help your local SEO, it will possibly win back a dissatisfied customer, and help others see that you take care of your customer.

Location-based social networks

Sites like Foursquare and Gowalla are gaining a lot of users. The smart restaurants and retail stores are jumping on the bandwagon and participating in these networks. It helps local SEO, because they attract local visitors, but also thanks to the backlinks from the sites to the restaurant's website. Remember, backlinks are key in local SEO and national SEO, so the more you can create, the better.

Microsites

A microsite is a single page that has been optimized for local SEO, and points back to your regular website. This is an excellent strategy for multi-site businesses, because you can purchase domains geared specifically for the different cities you have sites in. Buy domain names with your city's name and best keywords — TopekaDogGrooming.com or DallasCoffeeShop — and create a single page for that domain. Use the same keywords in the URL throughout the page, and then link it back to your main site. While this will help local SEO for each microsite, this can have a huge impact on your national SEO as well.

Blogging

One of the most important local SEO strategies is a blog. Since search engines love websites that are updated with new content on a regular basis (not just changing old content), a blog is a great way to supercharge your local SEO efforts. Plus, if you are blogging about national issues or a national industry, your blog could eventually break into the first page results for your particular niche. What will ultimately help is by pointing backlinks from these other tactics back to your blog. Be sure to incorporate your blog into your main website so you can take full advantage of all the local SEO tools we have described here.

Who uses reverse SEO? Is it a necessary part of a business' online strategy? Why would a business need to use reverse SEO as part of their marketing efforts?

A restaurant may need reverse SEO if one malicious patron has a less-than-perfect experience, and puts a lot of time and energy into ruining the restaurant's reputation. While we believe the Internet has been the great equalizer in democratizing information, and "leveling the playing field," so to speak, it has also made it easier for cranks and nasty people to cause mischief and pain to people who do not deserve it.

Why would restaurants ever need reverse SEO?

We have seen a number of restaurants who had one person who, whether they had a bad day at home or they are just generally unpleasant, try to harm the livelihood of a restaurant by creating problems for them. Spreading rumors, making up reviews for visits that never even happened, and purposely giving negative-but-untrue ratings on restaurant review sites are all things that have been done to restaurant owners who never served a bad meal.

While management and the regulars know these problems never actually happened, someone who finds the restaurant on search engines or review sites will not. Since they will base their dining decision on what they read from other users, these visitors will choose another place, all because of one angry, anonymous person who wants to make someone else's life miserable.  The restaurant owner has no response other than to engage in reverse SEO.

What are some basic reverse SEO techniques?

First, ask customers and regulars to post positive reviews that will push the negative review down the search engine pages (this is the actual definition of reverse SEO). These positive reviews should be truthful, should talk about what the patrons truly enjoyed (i.e. don't write it for them). They can also address the crank directly and talk about how their own experience was so much better. The more people do this, the more new visitors can see that the negative review is either a rare error or the angry rantings of an Internet troll.

Another reverse SEO technique is to ask patrons to leave positive comments on other restaurant review sites, Google Local, and even Twitter and their Facebook page. All of these positive reviews should link back to the restaurant's website. This will help it rise higher in the search engine results, and push the negative review further off the results page.

It is important that you not engage the complainer, especially when you are angry, because this will kill your reverse SEO. Remember that the one thing these people are looking for is attention. By responding to negative comments with anger, you give them exactly what they want, and they can continue to complain and publish bad information. These responses be found in the search engines.

The owner should also refrain from creating fake reviews. Owners and managers who post fake reviews will often find themselves on the other end of a bigger backlash than reverse SEO could repair. Many  patrons will forgive the occasional error, but when they think you are lying to them, they will desert faster than a dropped plate.

We do not encourage writing fake reviews to counteract any negative review a restaurant may receive. After all, a customer may have a real complaint that should be addressed and dealt with. Negative complaints posted by a competitor, reverse SEO may be the best solution.

Practicing online reputation management is a must for any public relations professional who believes his or her company may face a corporate crisis in the future. As our news gathering and reporting moves online, online reputation management is becoming more important. Now, news stories and blogs are being indexed by search engines, and many times, if a company makes the news, that can sometimes be the first item found in the search engine rankings.

Proactive PR is important for online reputation management, because it means you are creating positive search engine results, which can keep negative search results from ever appearing. You can focus on positive content-generating activities, rather than putting out fires via reactive management.

Here are five ways to improve your online reputation management.

• Start a blog. Fill it with as much positive information as you can find. News releases, product and service descriptions, customer questions, employee interviews, and anything else you can think of. The more content you can create, the better your online reputation management efforts will be, because you will have a central location you can direct people to.


• Create a Twitter profile and a Facebook page. Fill your networks with customers, journalists, and anyone else who would have an interest in your company. Answer customer care questions, link to your blog posts, and be a valuable resource to anyone you interact with on these networks. An important part of your online reputation management will be to create positive relationships with people. This way, if something ever does go wrong, you'll have a group of people who are willing to support you, or at least forgive you.


• Use your own face and name on your company's social media profiles. While this may not be possible for a large corporation, it's crucial for a small business. An important part of your online reputation management will be to put a personal face on your corporate brand. People will be able to relate to your company more easily, which will make your online reputation management efforts much easier.


• Join a niche social network for your industry. Start communicating with people on the network, especially answering questions and providing information. You can help your online reputation management by becoming a trusted resource among your industry peers and customers. Form relationships with people on the network, make referrals to people inside and outside the network, and work to become a regular, well-known presence in the group. If there is a crisis that hits the media, you may end up finding allies in your industry group who will speak favorably about you.


• Good online reputation management includes effective search engine optimization. Do all of these other steps with an eye toward SEO. Your ultimate goal is to win all searches on the big three search engines — Google, Bing, and Yahoo — which will help keep negative entries off the front page. If you're already sitting on top of the mountain, it will be harder to unseat you. But if you aren't even on the front page when an incident blows up, you'll have a hard time getting to the front page let alone the top of the results. And the longer you wait to begin, the harder it will be.

It's important you begin your online reputation management efforts immediately. If you ever find yourself in a crisis, and the news results hit the search engines, it's too late to start thinking about online reputation management. You'll be playing catchup for days, weeks, and even months later, trying to overcome every news story, blog entry, and tweet that other people have been posting while you're still setting up your first Twitter account.

The key to online reputation management is to do it before you ever need it, and to create a positive online brand. Follow these five steps and you'll be ahead of the game.

Local SEO (search engine optimization) is one area of search marketing that many retail stores and restaurants neglect. It's unfortunate, because the ones that embrace local SEO can see a greater payoff than those who ignore it.

Local SEO basically means you are making sure your restaurant, retail store, practice, or service can be found on search engines. Many people are beginning to use search engines to find local services, like restaurants or plumbers, rather than the Yellow Pages.

Go to Google and type in your city and the type of service you offer. Did you appear on the list? If not, then you need some local SEO, stat! More people are doing searches on Google, and if you don't appear at the top of the page, you've lost. There are three local SEO tactics you can use to insure it is your store or service customers find, rather than the competition.

Three Local SEO Tactics You Can Do Now

1. Optimize Your Google Listing: Go to Local.Google.com, and search for your business. Click the "More Info" button on your map listing, and then click the "Business Owner?" link at the top of the page. Follow the instructions, and give as much information as you can. By filling out this information, you're providing all the Yellow Pages information, and more, for a big local SEO boost. Plus, as people leave comments on the different review sites (see below), they will appear here. This makes Google a one-stop shop for people trying to find out more information about your business. After you do this, go do the same for Yahoo Local.



2. Social Media is Great for Local SEO: We just read an interesting SmartBrief survey of social media use by restaurants. The survey says that 81% of restaurants are using social media of some kind, compared to 60% in other industries; 52% of restaurants have seen more positive mentions as a result of their social media presence; and, only 3% of responding restaurateurs don't use Facebook.
   
   While we don't have the space to tell you how to use social media, we can at least tell you to get a Facebook page, and to use it. Whether you own a restaurant, a plumbing service, a chiropractor's office, or a second-hand clothing store, you need a Facebook page. For one thing, Facebook is indexed by Google, which helps your  local SEO efforts. For another, you build relationships with customers through social media. As they talk about your place on their social media accounts, you get another boost to your local SEO campaign.



3. Use Review Sites for Local SEO: Sites like Yelp.com and CityScape can give you a local SEO boost as people review your store or service. Encourage your customers, clients, or patients to leave reviews about you on these review sites. While you don't need to obsess over them and check the listings daily, it's a good idea to check them at least once every 2 - 3 weeks and make sure you're getting positive reviews.

How Do Negative Reviews Affect Local SEO Efforts?

We're not sure if the Internet has a sense of humor, but if it does, you'll see it when someone posts a negative review of your business, and that is when your business will appear at the top of the search rankings.

Don't panic if that happens. All is not lost. In fact, this may work to your benefit. If you receive a negative review, your first instinct is to either get it removed, or to give your own negative response of the reviewer. Suppress that urge, and instead, leave a positive response. Thank the people for visiting your business, explain how you're going to fix their problem, and then fix it. Then, as new people see their complaint, the very next thing they'll see is that the owner took care of a complaint.

"Ah," they'll think. "This place cares about its customers, and takes care of them. I want to do business with a place like that."

These local SEO techniques, social media, review sites, and optimizing your Google and Yahoo Local listing, can greatly improve your search engine rankings, which will lead to more customers and increased sales.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial for any nonprofit that wants to have an online presence. This is not just limited to for profit companies that are trying to market themselves.  It means more than just building a website and assuming your organization will win search rankings. You need to practice SEO in order to place higher than other nonprofits with the same name or in the same arena.

Take a quick test: Google these three search terms: your organization's name, your organization's name and city, and your organization's field and city. For example, "Tampa Humane Society," "Humane Society, Tampa FL," and "animal welfare Tampa FL."

Where did your organization rank? If you do some proper SEO, your site should appear at the very top of the search rankings, or at least the top 5. If your SEO efforts are lacking, your site may not have even appeared on the first page. We have seen several nonprofits whose websites are outranked rather severely, even by newspapers that wrote a single article about the organization. Obviously this will not do for nonprofits that are trying to increase donations through their online efforts.

One SEO technique for nonprofits is to publish your newsletter on your website. The easiest (and best) way to do it is to publish each individual article as a blog post. This helps your SEO by giving additional content for the search engines to find. The more content you create, the better your search engine performance. You can still publish your newsletter, but recycle the content and use it in more than one location.

Another option is to publish the entire month's newsletter on an a separate web page. This will keep each article on one page, which will make it easier for your web programmer, but will not give you as many SEO benefits as the blog option. Remember, good SEO is based on frequency and recency, meaning update a lot, update often. If you can republish your articles as blog posts, you will have better SEO results than if you publish a single page newsletter.

Another SEO technique is to purchase a domain name that includes your field and city. This is one of the best ways to improve SEO rankings. Get a unique, local domain name — "TampaAnimalWelfare" or "TampaFloridaAnimalWelfare" — and create a single page with basic information about your organization, with links back to your main website. Be sure to use keyword-rich content in order to win the searches for that particular term. By creating a microsite like this, you can have a powerful backlink to your main website, which improves its rankings.

If you have offices in more than one city, use this technique for each city, county, and state. Or if your field can be defined by many different terms — animal welfare, animal protection, animal care, animal shelter — then use each term with your city. The more pages you can do this with, the better your search engine placement. You can purchase inexpensive domain names from sites like GoDaddy.com, and they will often provide you with a single page for free.

A final SEO technique is to use videos as part of your marketing. Messages from the CEO, videos of special events, speeches, and fund raising events. Host your videos on YouTube, create your own YouTube channel, and embed the videos in blog posts or web pages. Not only are videos some popular content for search engines, but it is another way to get your audience and donors engaged with your organization, and to deepen the relationship.

While many nonprofits do not like to think of themselves as a business, they need to remember that they are competing for discretionary dollars, not only with other nonprofits, but with restaurants, movie theaters, bookstores, and TV. The sooner nonprofits start approaching their fund raising and development as a real sales and marketing effort, they will begin to see dividends from their SEO efforts.

Online reputation management is becoming important to the job search process of recent college graduates. In fact, it's becoming so important that Syracuse University is giving this year's graduates a six-month subscription to an online reputation management service.

Syracuse University has realized your personal brand — your personal online reputation — can affect how you are seen by employers. They want their graduates to practice good online reputation management, beyond the typical "don't post nude or drunken photos of yourself on Facebook" advice that is normally given to college students.

HR Professionals Consider Online Reputation Management In Hiring Decisions

How important is online reputation management? A recent study of HR professionals and hiring managers showed that 70% of human resources professionals and hiring managers have rejected a candidate based on negative information they found online. That means what you put on Facebook, your blog posts, and even your tweets all play a part in your online reputation management. Post inappropriate photos and messages, and it can hurt you.

Similarly, 85% of those same people said positive online reputation management by the candidates influenced their hiring decision "to some extent," while nearly half of them said that a strong online reputation influenced their decision "to a great extent." Think of it this way: if you and another person are competing for the same job, the hiring manager is going to make a decision based on how well either of you present yourself online.

In other words, people who practice positive online reputation management can boost their chances in finding a job. If you want to get your dream job, make sure your personal online brand is clean, and supports what you have said about yourself in your résumé.

Monitor Your Online Reputation

In some cases, your online reputation management may be a matter of reverse search engine optimization (SEO) — pushing down negative results that already exist on the different social networks.

If you made a couple of bad decisions, that does not mean you've doomed yourself to a life of underemployment because you posted several. . . Spring Break photos on Facebook. By deleting the photos, and then posting a lot of positive content in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, you can reverse SEO your negative information off the front page.

Another tip is to  use your full name, including middle name, on your résumé so when a hiring manager searches for you, that is the name that will pop up in the search results. If you create a positive online reputation for your full name while working to push down your negative results for your shortened name, you can help minimize the effect of posting negative information. (Check out some of our other posts on reverse SEO for other ideas.)

Brand-Yourself.com has a free Google grader that will check your top 10 Google search results, and give you a grade based on the number of results that are about you. (We scored an A+, 10 out of 10, but then, we do this a living.)

But another step of your online reputation management should be to check out your own Google rankings. Search for your own name — use your full name as well as your shortened name — and see what pops up on the second, third, and fourth page.

If you have done a good job at online reputation management, your name and past glory will fill up the pages. If you have not, you will either find all the embarrassing stuff you hoped no one would ever see, or your name will not show up at all.

If you want to have a positive influence on your job search, be sure to practice positive online reputation management, and make sure you are putting the best possible information out there for hiring managers to find.

Reverse SEO (search engine optimization) is an important part of reputation management. The things you say, do, write, and pose for can all help or hurt your online reputation. We are starting to see some trends that people are taking their online reputation more seriously.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released a report, Reputation Management and Social Media, that showed the continuing need for reverse SEO. They found that 57% of adult Internet users have searched for themselves online, which was an increase from 47% in 2006, and up from 22% in 2001. People are paying more attention to their online reputation.

Second, 71% of social network users ages 18 - 29 have changed their online privacy settings on social networks like Facebook. This was a first for the younger generation, as it has been the older generation who worried about online privacy. Privacy settings are an important part of reverse SEO, although privacy does not eliminate the possibility of inappropriate content being found.

Third, 12% of social network users say they have posted updates, photos, or videos that they later regretted sharing. While Pew says "just" 12% of users regret sharing some content, when you consider that 96% of Generation Y (81 million people) is on a social network, that is still a potential of 9.3 million people. So you can see where reverse SEO can be useful.

Do a Reverse SEO Audit

Your online reputation can take a major hit if you have posted something you wish you had not. In many cases, it may just be an unflattering picture or an angry comment to a friend. But, in many cases, it can be an inappropriate photo or video. While that photo or video may not be found today, chances are someone may find it while doing a search for your name.

Do a quick check for your name on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. What do you find? Hopefully it is all positive, and the information portrays you in a flattering light. But what if you find something you posted a few years ago, right at the top of the search rankings. Reverse SEO is the art and science of pushing that information off the front page. You do it by placing more positive content at the top of the search engines, which pushes the other information down.

Fix Your Online Reputation With a Reverse SEO Campaign

The best place to start your reverse SEO campaign is by first deleting the offending content. If it is on Facebook, untag your name from the photo, and delete it. If it is on your YouTube account, take the video down. While this will not completely eliminate the problem, it is a step in the right direction.

The next step in your reverse SEO campaign should be to produce more of the same kind of content. No, no, not more inappropriate photos or videos, just nice, normal photos and videos. Post as many as photos as you can on Flickr and Picasa, and videos on YouTube and Vimeo.

The third step in your reverse SEO campaign should be to create as much text as possible. Blog posts, forum discussions, Facebook status updates, and Twitter messages should all be a part of your reverse SEO repertoire. Google indexes all of these types of content, so you should try to provide as much of it as you can.

Just remember that a reverse SEO campaign is going to take some time. This will take more than a day or two to fix. If you are aware there is a problem with your online reputation, then you need to start fixing the problem right away, and keep at it for as long as you can.

Of course, the best way to manage your online reputation is to not post the inappropriate content in the first place. Then you will have nothing to worry about.

Video SEO (also known as video search engine optimization) is an important way to boost rankings for companies trying to rank higher on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In fact, video SEO is becoming more important as more and more Internet users are watching online video.

According to a recent report from TubeMogul.com, nearly 40% of all video streams were referred by Google, followed by Yahoo (5.6%), Bing (2.3%), and Facebook (0.4%). The rest came from direct traffic. So, if you want to succeed at video SEO, Google seems the best place to be. However, don't forget Yahoo and Bing. Even though their ponds are smaller, that also means it's easier to be the big fish and win the video SEO battle on those two search engines.

You can do some great video SEO just by getting backlinks to your videos through social media promotion — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — and then making sure you have backlinks from your video site to your regular website or blog. These backlinks can improve search engine rankings for any site you do this for.

Why is Video SEO Even Important?

A few years ago, videos were these huge, impossibly cumbersome things that you could only share if you had special video players and broadband Internet, which only a few lucky people had. Video SEO was largely unnecessary, because people couldn't watch videos very easily.

But, we're seeing a confluence of events that make video SEO necessary: more people have cheap broadband, videos have gotten smaller, and it's now possible to stream videos on mobile devices..

According to ReelSEO.com, 80% of Internet users are watching online video around the world. Part of that is because Generation Y (people between the ages of 11 - 27) outnumbers Baby Boomers, 81 million to 78 million. So we're starting to see more and more people use smart phones and mobile devices to watch online video.

Where Should I Do My Video Search Engine Optimization?

There are several free video sharing sites around, all of which are excellent candidates for video SEO. Of course, there's the big dog, YouTube. So many people are aware of YouTube, it's a must-submit for any of your online videos. But smart search engine optimization pros also use other video sharing sites like Vimeo, Viddler, or PhotoBucket. There are dozens of video sharing sites that make video search engine optimization easy.

Just like the difference between Google and Yahoo/Bing, when it comes to video hosting, YouTube has the biggest audience, but it's harder to get seen. If you host your video on a smaller site, like Vimeo and Viddler, you have a much better chance of being that big fish in the small pond.

Consider Specialized Sites for Video SEO

We also like specialized sites like VideoJug.com for how-to videos, ScienceStage.com for science, teaching, and research, and Blip.tv for independent television shows and movies.

These three sites alone are great video SEO sites, because you can show off your home repair or cooking skills on VideoJug, demonstrate your radical new theories on virus morphology and jelly donuts on ScienceStage, or introduce people to your new web TV shows, which showcase your writing/directing/acting/wicked video uploading skills to viewers on Blip.tv (we liked Coma, Period).

As videos become easier for marketers to produce, and easier for consumers to, well, consume, video SEO is becoming a necessary part of any online marketing campaign. Just remember to create videos that are short and easy to watch, fun and interesting for viewers, and hosted on one or more video sharing sites. You'll see your efforts pay off time and again.