Forget everything you think you know about search-engine marketing.

Introduction
Step 1: Recognize that online video isn't "coming someday;" it's already here
Step 2: Learn from early adopters
Step 3: Forget everything you think you know about search-engine marketing
Step 4: Get creative about how to produce -- or link to -- video.
Step 5: Stop thinking "static text."

Step 3:

As an online marketer, you more or less expect that if you build it, (eventually) they will come. After all, sooner or later, search engines will find your clip, right? Uh, well… no.

Video search capabilities, believe it or not, are basically where Google was years ago, when web search was new. That's because standard web search relies on text to find and categorize site content. With video files, there is no text, making it harder to decipher what a video is about, who posted it and how relevant it is.

Google gets around this difficulty by requiring users to create "metadata" that describe the video before posting content to its site. "Google video search" literally means just that-- searching videos posted to Google/YouTube and nowhere else.

That approach not only makes your content difficult to find, it also makes it difficult for you to monetize your own clips. On your site, you control the branding, you own the user experience and you capture the leads. On Google and YouTube, you don't.

Fortunately, a handful of companies -- including mine, ClipBlast! -- specialize in true, internet-wide video search that not only makes it easy to find video content, but to monetize it. What that means for you, as a marketer, is that you may need to expand your concept of search to also partner with the right video-search provider.