Did you know millions of people watch YouTube videos online every month?

These days, taking the time to watch YouTube videos online has become a standard part of the average internet users day. Over 60 million people visit YouTube.com each month just to watch a YouTube video. Don’t you think that you should try to get a few of those eyeballs looking at your site?

YouTube is more than kids lip synching. It is a new form of online marketing – internet video marketing.

Even before Google bought YouTube, it had become a mega giant in the internet world. Google saw the future and bought YouTube. Shortly thereafter, Google launched their Universal Search. Universal Search combined the ability to search for local information, videos, and websites. Google has essentially made YouTube a significant part of the search results.

This means that your company can rank in the search results with either your website or a YouTube video. Video marketing is not complicated or hard. Let’s take a look at what you need.

You may already have something you can use for video marketing.

At a basic level, internet video marketing is simply having a video. Does your company have a commercial it has produced? How about a video presentation of a key officer? Maybe a fun flash piece that you have on your site, or even one you use to have on your site that you no longer use? All of these can be easily converted into a video for YouTube. Convert these files into the acceptable files for YouTube (.WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG) and you have an instant YouTube video.

Creating a new YouTube video for internet video marketing.

If you do not have video laying around that you can use, making your own video is not hard. You need a video camera, editing software and optional tripod. Shoot video of something about your company. Even better, shoot video of something that has to do with your target keywords. If you are a candy company who wants to rank for “Chocolate Covered Strawberries”, shoot video about how your company makes chocolate covered strawberries. You only need a few minutes of video.

Most cameras now come with editing software, although you can find free video editing software online. Use the video editing software to add opening and closing credits (be sure to put your company name and web address).

Upload the video to YouTube with your keywords in the title of the video. Make sure to optimize your video description as well. Voila! You now have a YouTube video that can help you with internet video marketing and increases your chances of ranking in Google’s Universal Search.

Have you tried internet video marketing? If so, tell us about it. If not, don’t you think it is time for people to watch YouTube videos online about your company?

Do you know the spider names?

If one ever wondered if search engine engineers were a whimsical lot, one only needs to looks at the names of search engines’ spiders to find the answer. Googlebot, Slurp, Ask Jeeves and ia_archiver are some of the spider names used by the most popular search engines on the web.

Which search engines uses spiders to fetch documents?

Using a program called a spider, search engines continually search the web looking for new pages and reviewing documents they already have in their index. You may ask, “Which search engine uses spiders to fetch documents?” and the answer is, “All of them.” Without a spider, search engines would not be able to find new pages.

Why name a spider? Search engines don’t have to.

The main purpose of spider names is so that search engines’ spiders can be easily identified in your site logs. When was the last time you looked at your logs? Today, with the availability of free tracking software, such as Google Analytics, many people never look at their logs, but if you do, you will see the spider names from the search engines appear all over it.

Think of it as a courtesy. Certainly the search engines’ spiders could arrive at your site under the name “Mozilla” which is how most web browsers appear in your logs, but the search engines don’t wish to be rude. By using spider names, they let a site owner know that they have been by to visit.

Why you should care about search engines’ spiders and their names.

You can use this information to find out when the last time the search engines’ spiders came to your site or a page on your site. The more important they think a page is, the more frequently they will visit a page. If you look at your site logs, you will see the spider names and will be able to tell if the search engines have picked up the latest changes on your site.

Name of each spider, search engines they belong to:

Knowing a little more about search engines spiders and the spider names will allow you to get a better insight into what the search engines know about your site. Tune in next time when we go over how you can give directions to spiders about how, when and if they should look at pages on your site.