Replying to Help Encoding/Compressing Video

So, I'm using Premiere Pro 2.0 as my editing program and I have a decent camera (fairly low end 3CCD) and I'm wondering what the best ways are to compress/encode my video once I'm done editing in order to keep as much quality as possible while still reducing size so that I can post clips online and such. I have heard some people export in full quality and then encode/compress later in a different program, but I am just wondering what the best techniques are.