Do a search in Google. Do you see the blue bar that lists the results on the right and has the word “web” on the left? Does it just say web? If so go to the bottom and hit next and see if any videos show up in the first 5 pages of results. If you do not see any videos Google may not have decided to allow for Universal search on for this key word phrase yet. Even if you publish your video the listing will just show up as a normal listing with out the video image icon or the ability to play the video within Google. If you do see a video show up then the blue bar will have the word “video” show up next to the word “web”. Next click on the word video and see what shows up in Google video. If the top video for the keyword phrase you were considering has many thousands of views and hundreds of favorites than you are going to want to find another term that describes your video that is not so competitive. For example the video that shows for the term wedding video has over 3,000,000 views and has been favored over 10,000 times. It’s a cute video of a couple that starts with a slow dance and then the music shifts to “baby got back” and the couple goes into a well choreographed hip hop style dance. Let’s face it you are not going to beat it. So if you have a wedding video search for the term wedding video in the SEO book keyword research tool and find a less competitive term with the word wedding video in it. Ideally you can find a term that describes your video and the top showing competitor is a poor quality video with few page views and few people having marked it as their favorite. A word of caution here, it may be tempting to use a keyword phrase that is popular, has low competition, but does a poor job of describing your video. Don’t do it. You need to ask your self what do these people who search for this term really want? If your video would be a disappointment to them, then even if you do show up in the rankings, your time will be short lived. You’ll get views but poor ratings and the proportion of favorates to views will be low and back down in the rankings your video will go. It won’t do you any good they will just bounce out and you will get nothing out of it. Ultimately if the video does not entice people to view other videos of yours or get them to come to your website then posting the video is pointless.          It might make since to ask yourself if you can beat the top video showing up for the key term before making the video in the first place. That way you can make a video that best serves the people who are searching for the term and beat the competition. Well that’s my first weeks entry. Come back next week for more strategies and tools to put your videos and your web site on top of the search engine listings. There is so much to blog about. I have just scratched the surface. If you already are familiar with all that I have written so far in this first post, I apologize and encourage you to tune in future weeks as I go into more methods, ideas, and research results that go far beyond the basics.