Anyone can upload a video.  But few do it well it seems.  It is a pet peeve of mine to see a beautiful video just dumped on YouTube..

Beyond creating a video for online versus other media (which is pretty big) – one has to remember that YouTube is a search engine.  The second largest.  Entertainment, How Tos, anything with Cats will do well – but attention is needed on five core things..

1. LINKS:  Add a contextual (clickable) link in the description back to your online reference centre – be that a website or other network.  What’s interesting is that many add links but they aren’t active.  Ensure you have the “http://” before the www URL address to make it work.
2. TAGS:  Although I would rely on a good search person’s opinion for a video tag selection, I would start at time & location tags (like 2012, Canada, Toronto), then popular search terms for the topic of the video, then descriptors or quotable titles/sayings within the memorable video.  Using the term “best” would be cheating but also indicative that you know how people search on YouTube.
3. ANNOTATE:  I don’t think this does much for organic search results but it is standard practice I guess to note any music used and give credit.
4. TITLE:  Really.  build.  this.  for.  search.  Use terms that are popular.  Use YouTube Google ad words tools to see what related terms there are to your title.
5. DESCRIPTION: Make it interesting.  Explain something about the video content.  And double check for relevant key word use within your paragraph.

Finally – don’t wait for views to come.  Seed your video – if it is original content worth for eyeballs – submit it to Buzzfeed, to stumble upon, to many of the dozens of sites that aggregate content.