As a blogger, there’s many times when I need to create online video tutorials to share with my readers. Adding videos to your blog posts can help capture people’s attention, add different incoming traffic ports, increase the number of people who read and subscribe to your blog, and boost your organic ranking in search engines. The question is, where is the best place to upload videos to?

I can say that determining the best place to upload your videos to is up to you. The reason is because there are advantages and disadvantages with using different services. Below, I have included a copy of the same video that I uploaded into multiple online video sharing sites and also included are my opinions about each. You can review each video and read my opinions about each and determine which online video sharing site is best for you.

YouTube.com

YouTube.com is the most popular online video sharing site online. I would recommend using YouTube because of the added SEO value and traffic you can pipe back into your web site and pages. The disadvantages of using YouTube is that your videos will degrade in quality, and they can NOT exceed ten minutes in length. Because of the time limit, I was not able to upload my video to YouTube.com. Another thing that bothers me is that YouTube.com doesn’t inform me that the video isn’t going to process.

Yahoo! Video

I was actually quite impressed with Yahoo! Video. It has similiar qualities to YouTube.com, but doesn’t have the time restriction. The quality seems to be the same as YouTube.com. The disadvantages, in my opinion, is the lack of traffic, and SEO value. Uploading and processing the video didn’t take long at all, about 15 minutes.

MotionBox Formally AOL Video

AOL Video has been discontinued and traffic is being redirected to a service called MotionBox.com. I decided to give MotionBox.com a try and I am pleased with their service. The process of uploading a video was very clunky and not very systematic. The end result was a video higher in quality compared to YouTube.com and Yahoo! Video. The audio didn’t render quite as well. The disadvantages of using MotionBox.com is the clunky interface, lack of traffic, and I am sure lack of SEO value.

Vimeo Video

I enjoy using Vimeo a lot. It’s one of my favorite places to upload videos to. The interface is very user friendly and the uploading process is conducive to productivity. The problem I have with Vimeo is that it can take up to 30 minutes to batch videos if you have a free account. While this is annoying, I do understand and appreciate their business model. A premium account can be had for under $60 / year, which is very fair. The video and audio quality is amazing. The sharing features are brilliant. One of the things I enjoy most about the sharing features is that Vimeo will do the math for you when you’re customizing proper sizing.

Viddler Video

Viddler reminds me a lot of Vimeo but slightly lesser in quality, but much better than MotionBox, YouTube, and Yahoo. Viddler doesn’t quite match the quality that Vimeo can produce, nor do they offer the robust sharing features. A neat feature about Viddler is the fact that you can record videos on the fly, meaning you don’t have to use desktop software, such as Camtasia, to create the video. With Viddler, you can use record directly on their site.

Where Is The Best Video Sharing Site?

My vote goes to Vimeo. I would recommend upgrading to a premium account simply because it’s affordable, gives you a ton of more features, and it supports their efforts and helps keep them online. In my opinion, even the free account is superior to the other services.

After publishing this article, my strategy will be to use YouTube.com for it’s natural resource of traffic and SEO value. From there I’ll use Vimeo to actually display the videos direct on my pages so that readers can experience the best quality and ease of sharing with others.

Have you ever wanted to search multiple search engines at the same time? I am sure you can imagine the time it would save if you were able to use one search bar to pull data from popular search engines, social networks, and blogs. Now you can with a site called Addict-o-matic.

Addict-o-matic is a site that pulls data from multiple sources online to help users find the information they desire. Simply use the Addict-o-matic search bar to find what you want and then filtered results from popular sites such as Google, Digg, and Twitter will appear.

Imagine being able to search for something in popular search engines, social networks, and blogs all at the same time. Doing so would save you a lot of time. Addict-o-matic does just that. When you do a search, Addict-o-matic scans 25 popular sites to help you find the information you need. These sources include: Google News, YouTube, Twitter, Bing, FriendFeed, Popular Blogs, Technorati, Flickr, Digg, WordPress, Yahoo! News, and more.

In order to see how Addict-o-matic can help you, let’s assume that you’re in the market for a new laptop computer and have been hearing some great things about Apple’s new 13 Inch MacBook Pro. Doing a simple search for 13 Inch MacBook Pro is an excellent example to see how Addict-o-matic shines. The results produced are outstanding, especially considering the fact we’re trying to gather information about this computer so that a wise decision can be made about possibly purchasing it.

Immediately, Addict-o-matic has produced results from Twitter, Bing News, Google Blog Search, YouTube, Digg and quite a few more sites. What makes this situation beneficial is that finding consumer information about the 13 Inch MacBook Pro comes very real. You’re tapped into Twitter, which we all know, people love to rant and rave on Twitter. Both excellent and poor experiences are communicated on Twitter. And that includes the experiences with the 13 Inch MacBook Pro.

Having Bing News results will give you more official news and press release information. Google Blog Search will give you similar data to Twitter, but the difference is that you’ll find lengthy descriptions of positive or negative experiences. With YouTube and even Digg, you can expect to find excellent reviews on the laptop.

As you can see, Addict-o-matic is very useful in many ways. With me being a professional blogger and freelance writer, it’s important that I have access to multiple resources for article research. Another way Addict-o-matic is useful is it allows bloggers, such as myself, an easy way to research and drill down into topics needed to complete writing tasks. If I happen to be covering a story about airplanes, I can easily use Addict-o-matic to find information, specification, news, reports, and even pictures and videos of the specific airplane I need.

What are some other sites that you use to search multiple sources at once? Are there sites similar to Addict-o-matic that you like to use? Leave a comment and share this information with others below.

It appears that Google is taking a stab at trying to keep people interested in using their personalized iGoogle page. Google just introduced social gadgets for iGoogle. Google now has the aim to make things easier for users by allowing quick access to some of the more popular sites on the Web such as YouTube.

Earlier last month I wrote a post about the new Yahoo! Homepage. I have to say that I am a little disappointed in Google. I don’t think it would be too difficult to beef up iGoogle. I really think Google is going to have to be careful because Yahoo!’s personalized homepage looks killer.

While I do believe that Yahoo! did their update much too late, at least they did it. Right now, Twitter, FaceBook, and FriendFeed are the trend. With the new Social Gadgets for iGoogle, you can’t even add FaceBook because they use their own API technology.

While Google may be the number one search engine, I think they might want to start raising some concern to their competition. It would very easy to keep the competition below water, but it almost seems like Google is purposely allowing other companies to get close.

In my opinion, the common Internet user is attracted to things that look simple to use and look nice. Google does have a simple to use feel to it, but iGoogle is very clunky and cumbersome. Compare the two yourself and ask yourself which one you’d make your homepage if you were a new Internet user. I know for a fact I would use Yahoo! and in many cases I am starting to use them more and more.

One of the few things left that keep me from switching back is email. Yahoo! Mail is terrible. Gmail, hands down, is the best web based email service on the Web. Aside from Yahoo! lacking in email, they sure do have some cool stuff. But, so does Google. The difference though is that Yahoo! lets everyone know about the services they provide. With Google, users can go years before they discover Google Reader, and other Google services.

Every owner of a website is interested in finding ways of getting more people to come visit their website. Many of the steps are the same as getting potential customers to come into your brick front store. There are more avenues with using a website, however. It is all a matter of knowhow.

Here are some proven free methods of increasing traffic to your website:

1. Start a blog. Blogging is the newest Internet “craze”. Well, blogging has been around for a few years, but the phenomenon continues to this day and is expected to grow even more in popularity. To succeed in this field, you simply develop your expertise on your chosen area and write (blog post) about it. At the end of each blog post simply put your website address. Also, many blog software allow blog postings to be posted directly onto your website.

2. Use social networking sites. Social networks (such as Squidoo, Reddit, de.licious, etc.) are very, very popular mediums for a wide variety of Internet users. This is a great way to socialize and become a part of a community. Just be certain you do not use these sites to simply sell something. That will not go over. Offer your expertise in your targeted area.

3. Write articles. By writing articles on your area of expertise, you can post them to numerous sites found on the Web. You establish yourself as an expert, and people will come to visit your website. Be sure to include a short bio on the bottom of each article and include your website address in it.

4. Help Wikipedia. You can write research papers on your area of expertise and include them in Wikipedia’s library. List yourself as a reference, along with your website. Not only will you be seen as an expert in the field, but your website will be viewed by millions.

5. Write optimized press releases. A well written press release will be heavy in targeted keywords and contain quality SEO content. Post these both in print and online publications.

6. Post to targeted blogs. Perform an online search targeting your area of expertise. Search by typing your keyword in quotes and follow with + blog. For instance, if my keyword is widgets, my targeted blog search would be “widgets”+blog. Then, once you enter the blog, post a comment. Include your website in the comment.

7. Post to YouTube. Make a video and post it to this popular site. It is highly responsive and free. And, place a link to your website in the video.

These are but a few of the many ways for you to increase your website’s traffic. They are a good beginning and will keep you busy for awhile. Good luck!