Use of video on the Web for business has been the talk of the marketing world in 2012. If it isn’t already obvious to you, data from multiple sources confirm, yet again, the amount of video watched via the Internet continues to climb.

It’s no wonder. As the benefits become more obvious, more businesses are leveraging the power of the medium to its full benefit. From profiles to how-to’s to product and sales demonstrations, businesses of all sizes are realizing the potential returns on investments of using video to tell their stories.

Businesses already on board are ahead of their competitors, but they’ll have to keep producing great video content to keep up, as everyone else starts to catch on.

And it looks like they’re about to. Global video traffic is expected to make up 54 per cent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2016, according to the Cisco VNI Benchmark Report. That’s up from 51 per cent in 2011.

And it hasn’t just been because of PSY’s Gangnam Style. This year, YouTube, the second-largest search engine, dropped an even bolder prediction that 90 per cent of all Web traffic will be video in the next few years.

Worldwide, Internet video-to-TV is also expected to continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing sixfold by 2016, Cisco’s report also predicts.

As consumers are increasingly watching their favourite shows and movies online, the ad dollars are following, according comScore . Video ads have become the most popular rich-media format for ad buyers, and as advertisers are recognizing the return, Forrester predicts that video advertising will grow to $9-billion by 2017 from $2.9-billion in 2012.

This week, Unruly Media, which tracks not only what videos people watch but also what they share, released its list of the ads that went most viral in 2012:

1. Invisible Children: Kony 2012: 10,068,928 shares

2. TNT: A Dramatic Surprise On A Quiet Square: 4,352,283 shares

3. Abercrombie & Fitch: Call Me Maybe: 2,435,774 shares

4. DC Shoes: Gymkhana 5: 2,292,354 shares

5. P&G: Best Job: 2,227,528 shares

6. Dancesport Studio: Two-Year-Old Dancing The Jive: 2,094,766 shares

7. Melbourne Metro: Dumb Ways To Die: 1,217,751 shares

8. Chevrolet: OK Go, Needing/ Getting: 1,140,769 shares

9. Volkswagen: The Bark Side: 1,127,479 shares

10. PBS Studios: Mister Rogers Remixed, Garden Of You Mind: 1,045,039 shares

You can find the final 10 here.

“Overall, the number of video shares of branded content increased in 2012. The top 500 ads of the year attracted a total of 113 million shares in 2012, a 21-per cent increase over 2011 (93.34 million.

“Shares of the top 10 ads rose from 16.8 million in 2011 to 28.0 million in 2012 – an increase of 67 per cent and a clear sign that media consumption habits are continuing to evolve rapidly,” said Unruly in its release of its list.

“Emotive content and bottom-up sharing stole the show this year,” is how Unruly co-founder and chief operating officer Sarah Wood digested these figures. This means the story you are telling is very important, as is creating a compelling story that encourages or inspires people to share it with their network, and increase its reach.

Those of you who are in tune and ready to join the revolution, awesome. For those of you who needs stats and hard data to back up your business decisions, the above should work quite well.

Video has ruled 2012, and will for years to come.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist/anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV , a web video and social media marketing agency.

Find her on Twitter and Facebook .

Some of the clear – and perhaps obvious – benefits of online video for businesses are:

• Expressing who you are and what you’re all about
• Educating viewers about your products, services and brand
• Boosting your credibility

But did you know that web videos offer tremendous search engine optimization (SEO) benefits as well?

More video = higher page rankings

You might be surprised to learn that a quality web video hosted on your site makes the page 50 times more likely to be shown on the first page of Google search results. This fact alone makes online web videos one of the most powerful marketing and SEO tools you can have in your arsenal. In a nutshell, web video leads to both higher conversion rates and more organic web traffic to your website – which in turn leads to even more conversions.

Ever since Google purchased YouTube, the likelihood that they will rank these videos favourably in search algorithms has markedly increased. In fact, it is possible to obtain a high ranking on Google practically overnight when web video is effectively used on a page. Google now rates web video even higher than high-quality, keyword-rich articles.

Steps to SEO success

The key to high rankings is proper optimization of the video for SEO purposes. Ideally, videos should have relevant, quality metadata titles and descriptions. Relevant keywords should be used artfully within the video’s title. These days, Google tends to present search results that offer a mixture of text-based web page results, images, news items, local results and videos. But of these blended results, video tends to be most likely to be clicked through.

Consider also hosting videos on your own servers for additional advantages. The videos hosted on these sites can sometimes achieve a first-page ranking by merely optimizing the video title with appropriate, relevant keywords. Google algorithms tend to have a bias toward YouTube videos to begin with, so a keyword-rich title usually seals the deal.

Encourage sharing

Another way to increase your video’s exposure is through sharing. Videos can be shared via email, on social networking sites, blogs and on other content sites. Videos are the most shared content opportunity on social media — more-so than article links or pictures.

Easily embeddable links are provided by most online video hosting platforms. With these tools so easily accessible, the result is a powerful addition to your regular marketing approach. The feature encourages video sharing and makes it easy for viewers to do so.

To maximize your chances of hitting the SEO lottery with video, be sure to add as much relevant information to the video’s description page as possible. If hosted on your own site, be sure to optimize the video’s URL to be descriptive and keyword-rich as well. Add content around the video such as a high-quality, well-written, keyword-rich article about it, and, of course, related meta-tags.

Of course, SEO is just the icing on the cake. Be sure to start with thoughtful, relevant content and professional-level quality. Too often I come across video representing an otherwise ‘polished’ brand, but the quality is anything but — and therefore a detriment to the brand messaging and strategy. Consistency of video content is important too. Regular video content will also greatly assist in your SEO efforts. If in doubt, you can take the guesswork out and hire a professional to do it for you.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist/anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV , a web video and social media marketing agency based in Calgary. Find her on Twitter and Facebook .