How to use YouTube to drive traffic to your website

It’s easy to get addicted to YouTube. I personally end up surfing the site for hours watching all of the videos that people have made. Some of the videos are made so well, and are so informative, that they have a subscription base, and they have website that support their video content. This is where using YouTube to drive traffic to your site comes into the picture. If you have a website, sell a product, write a blog, or consider yourself an expert in a certain field, you can create video on YouTube that support your site content, and use them to drive traffic back to your site. Here are the basics.

If you have not already created an account on YouTube, sign up for free and create your account. Click here to do this now: http://www.youtube.com/

Make a video using a web cam or a camcorder that can easily be converted into online video. I highly recommend that you use a webcam though because it is already set up for recording right onto your computer and you can instantly upload this video to YouTube. You want to base the content of your video toward promoting your own commercial interest so that you can drive traffic back to your site. Keep your video original. You do not need any fancy text, graphics, etc - just a clean background with your logo, and a clean, quiet environment with good lighting so that your viewers can see you hear you.

If you have some video editing software on your computer, or if you webcam came with some video editing software, it is a great idea to put your site's URL at the bottom of the video throughout the entire video. You can also put the site URL at the front and end of the video on their own screen so that people can find your site easily. If you do not have any editing software that is fine too - just make sure that you tell people where they can go, or hold up a card with the site address.

Once you are done with our video and you post it up on YouTube, set the video permissions so that it will allow people to post or embed it on their own sites. This way, you are not only getting traffic from YouTube, but you will also be getting traffic from other people's sites by allowing them to link to your video.

Add your site's link in the comment section that comes with every video you post on YouTube.

If you are not interested in actually creating your own video, you can leverage videos that have currently been made on YouTube to drive traffic to your website. Choose videos that are relevant to your site content or help to support it.

If you follow all of these steps, you will begin to generate more traffic to your site. Make sure that you are tracking your traffic so that you can show advertisers your page views and other results. It is also a good idea to offer an RSS feed, email opt-in, or subscription sign-up on your site so that the traffic coming to your site can buy into your services.