This paper investigates the optimal placement of piezoelectric actuators for the active vibration attenuation of beams. The governing equation of the beam is achieved by coupled first order shear deformation theory with two node element. The velocity feedback controller is designed and used to calculate the feedback gain and then apply to the beam. In order to search for the optimal placement of the piezoelectric actuators, a new optimization criterion is considered based on the use of genetic algorithm to reduce the displacement output of the beam. The proposed optimization technique has been tested for two boundary conditions configurations; clamped -free and clamped-clamped beam. Numerical examples have been provided to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed technic.