Anyone Experimented With YouTube SEO?

[alhallinan]

Primarily questions I want to know definitive answers to:

• Do incoming links to a YouTube video affect Google's decision to show a YouTube video thumbnail in the results? If so, does YouTube rank the video higher due to incoming links?
• Does YouTube take any off-page factors into consideration when ranking a video?
• Does anyone else have any other helpful tips/thoughts/suggestions?

Please don't answer this just to get points and give me fluff information. I'd really like to get some concrete data/info

Cheers!

[qlkasdjfw]

I do not have answers to your questions but I have seen positive results in ranking long-tail searches with YouTube videos.

[RebeccaRalston]

YouTube appears to value the same off-page factors that matter on most pages. Having your keywords in the title of the video, leading with the most important keyword in the description and making use of the tags all make a difference, but since these appear on the page, as well as ioff-page there may be some confusion.