This paper presents an approach to define an optimal piezoactuator length to actively control structural vibration. The optimal ratio of the piezoactuator length against the beam length when a pair of piezoceramic actuator and accelerometer is used to suppress unwanted vibration with direct velocity feedback(DVFB) control strategy is not clearly defined so far. It is well known that DVFB control can be very useful when a pair of sensor and actuator is collocated on structures with a high gain and excellent stability. It is considered that three different collocated Pairs of piezoelectric actuators (20, 50 and 100 mm long) and accelerometers installed on three identical clamped-clamped beams($30{ imes}20{ imes}1mm$). The response of each sensor-actuator pair requires strictly positive real(SPR) property to apply a high feedback gain. However the length of the piezoactuator affects the SPR property of the sensor-actuator response. Intensive simulation and experiment show the effect of the actuator length variation is strongly related with the frequency range of the SPR property. Thus an optimal length ratio was suggested to obtain relevant performance with a good stability under the DVFB strategy.