Online Searchable Videos – Why Hoteliers Should Care? By Milestone Saturday, 5th January 2008

We believe that the lodging industry will see a significant adoption of the online video advertising because most consumers want to see, touch, and feel the hotel before booking their lodging online. 

As search engines move towards Universal Search and start showing results from online videos, it is more critical for hotels to have online searchable videos – the key  being “searchable.”

The Online Video developed for Search Engines is vastly different from the standard videos that you can get from companies specializing in video creation.  It’s the same parallel as a search engine friendly website vs. a website that is set up as a brochure. 

Search engine friendly websites can be found for different key words from the search engines; however, to view a brochure style website, you have to know the website address to get to that site. 

The search engine optimized video and standard videos differ from each other in the same way. A search optimized video can be found by users typing things relevant to your market on main search engines and in video search engines; to find your standard videos, the consumer needs to know the website address for the site where that video is posted.

Search Engine Optimized videos have optimized content for voice over and have keywords and meta-tags encoded in the video.  The web page where you are posting your video should have search engine optimized content, meta-data, RSS etc for engines to crawl your page easily. 

Videos should then be submitted to online video search engines such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Yahoo Video, AOL, etc.

The chart below shows the growth of Online Video Advertising across all industries in the US. 

In summary, video search is growing rapidly. It is considered third most effective online advertising media today to reach your target audience.  It is time for hotels to get a head start and use it effectively.

Interested in seeing an example?  Click www.youtube.com/watch?v=HraOIiqdIn4 to check out the video for Grand Velas Resort and Spa. 

Milestone Internet Marketing, experts in creating complete internet marketing solutions for the lodging and hospitality industry. Please contact Benu at benu@milestoneinternet.com