Since the advent and widespread adoption of broadband internet service, the number of videos viewed on the internet each day has swelled dramatically and is projected to continue growing at an extreme pace in the coming few years.  Statistics aside, this means that every day, various user-driven websites serve video content that is watched by millions of people around the world. 

To anyone familiar with internet marketing or SEO, this is obviously a huge potential marketplace to target so it’s no surprise that just about everyone is trying to cash in on the popularity of the various video marketing services these days (including the video sites themselves, with various monetization schemes).  This can take any number of forms, from video production and channel creation, all the way to PPC ads.  For the link builder, though, the benefit of these services is very clear:  Popular sites that accept and stream user video (YouTube, MSN, MySpace, Revver, etc…) are great places to acquire some links because they have plenty of authority and enormous amounts of traffic.

Obviously every video site is a little different, so there’s no single tactic, or set of link building strategies, that works to build links with all of them, but there are generally 3 places it can be done:

Each Video Page – The person who posts a video has a number of fields to work with, including a description field which can, and often does, contain a link back to the entity that the movie references.  As a link builder all you need is a user account and some sort of video to post and you can start inserting links.

User Profile Pages – Members of video sites are often given a place to create a profile page, much as they would do on a social network.  Nearly everything on that page is under the control of the user, so links upon links can be posted there.  Additionally, if you find another user who has relevant videos and profile information, you can certainly ask them for a link on their profile as well; you may have to give something in return, but usually a fair exchange can be had.

Video Comments – On many of the sites in question, there is an option to post comments about a video that has just been watched.  You’ll almost always be required to have an account before commenting, but if you plan to do video marketing of any type, you’ll already have one anyway.

Keep in mind that link building using video sites is a bit complex compared to some other sites, so care needs to be taken to ensure that the community and its administrators don’t ban your account.  The same could be said of many other social networking forums as well, so the principles of politeness and adding something that benefits the community apply equally to every video site.

As a final note on link building with videos, be warned that the NoFollow movement (which is equivalent to web fascism in the minds of most link builders, including this one) has gained quite a bit of steam as of late, and many of the links you can get on these media sites will have that tag attached.  That fact may make it seem relatively worthless to try for these links at all, but that’s simply not the case:  Think of online video outlets as a counterpart to social networks, and remember that brand exposure to a living, breathing audience is just as important as creating avenues for search engine crawlers.

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