Competing with other sites for top spots in the search engine results can be tricky and sometimes challenging. Even the best SEO efforts can sometimes fail to generate the results you want, particularly if you’re using highly competitive keywords and phrases. One option you might want to consider is adding video to your site.

Video won’t necessarily help your primary SEO rankings but if you submit your footage to video sites, such as YouTube, MSN, Metacafe, and AOL then you’ll have a better chance of being noticed by traffic. Plus, you can use your location on these videos sites to link back to your maint site which can further help your SEO standing.

If you want to add video and make the most of your efforts, here are a few tips:

• Create a useful video – The best videos are going to be practical and interesting to viewers. Make a video that is related to the main theme of your site. How-to videos work very well.
• Keep the video footage brief – You don’t want anything longer than 10 minutes. Most of the sites have limits on file size anyway, plus viewers online don’t have long attention spans. If you have a topic that requires a longer time limit, break it up into smaller segments.
• Surround the video with keywords – When the spiders crawl the site, they make a lot of determinations about the quality of the video from the content on the page around it. That means you want those keywords to be prominently placed on the page around your video.
• Link to the video – Once the video is posted, write an article or a blog post including a link to the video. This helps it rank higher and ensures and helps build traffic both ways.

When you’re putting together the video, use your best effort and you’ll reap the biggest rewards.