While most people want to focus on Google, Bing, and Yahoo when dealing with SEO, we’d like to explain why YouTube should be a major part of your SEO strategy. Here are a few reasons to help convince you:

1.  Google owns it—First and foremost, as we’ve learned over the last few years, Google loves their own products. The way they’re using Google Plus as a factor in search rankings proves this. Since Google purchased YouTube in 2006, you can bet that they like (and reward!) businesses who properly use their tool.
   
2. Videos can outrank articles—We all know that the search engines adhere to the old saying that “content is king,” but what does that mean exactly? Is all content created equal? Obviously not. With that in mind, we have to wonder what sort of content does Google view best. First of all, it needs to be of high quality. In other words, it should add value to the reader by offering unique, well-researched, and well-written copy. In the case of a video, it needs to have an engaging script and be of decent quality. But, which will rank higher, a quality article or that same piece converted to a video format on YouTube? There is no clear cut answer. However, there have been some documented cases where the video definitely outperformed the article.
   
3. YouTube is a search engine—While most people don’t think about it this way, the truth is that YouTube is America’s number two search engine. That’s right, it’s ahead of Bing and Yahoo. Why? Think about it. When you need to say, fix your garbage disposal, where do you go? If you don’t immediately “Google” it, then you likely hit up YouTube, because you want to find a video that a knowledgeable plumber posted (as part of their online marketing strategy!) that demonstrates the steps to fixing your garbage disposal related issue.
   
4. Ranked videos appear in search rankings with a screenshot—Why should you care of the organic results include a screenshot or not? Consider this: which do you think a searcher is more likely to click on, an article with a brief meta description or the link to a video with an equal description, but also a photo? Obviously, the picture is going to garner more attention, as it pops out from the other search results. This means more clicks. And, isn’t greater traffic the end goal?
   
5. YouTube is easy to integrate into other forms of social media—Google has made one thing extremely clear…SEO is turning more and more towards social media. That means the more that content is shared, the higher it’s going to rank. That said, YouTube makes it extremely simple to share their hosted videos on social networks. Take Facebook as an example—all you have to do is paste the link into your status update and it automatically pulls a screenshot and description of the video into your update. Furthermore, people love to share videos. And the more it’s shared…well, you get the idea.