Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO)

According to comScore, nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March 2008, viewing a total of 11.5 billion online videos during the month. However, the average YouTube video receives only 100 views a year. This makes optimizing video for YouTube one of the biggest opportunities in the fast-changing and complex world of search. This session will look at how video search engine optimization (VSEO) has become the most important new use of search engine optimization today.Moderator:Joseph Morin, Partner, Boost Search Marketing & CEO, Storybids, Inc.Speakers:Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PRChase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy CorporationSteve Espinosa, Director of Product Development & Management, eLocal Listing, LLCMatthew Scheybeler, CTO, blinkxGregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLCGreg Jarboe: Anyone heard of Youtube? Audience laughs.
We were playing with this weird thing a few years ago and then Google acquired it. Youtube accounts for over 98% of all videos viewed at Google sites. The game has changed. A lot of us keep optimizing and optimizing and hope with enough optimization good things will happen. One needs to understand Youtube as a couple things. It's a search engine. But it's primary power and addiction and force of dominance is as a video sharing site. The right strategies to get your videos found - means you need to optimize, but also need a sharing strategy. That's the real secret to ranking in Youtube.
A few case studies: A B2C site. A company called STACK media got 140,104 views on 137 videos. Spikes are wonderful, but want videos take off on a sustained basis.
The Allen Iverson training video had 36,885 views as of August 8th, 2008. His training video is getting a consistent growing uplift. The shocking truth is that 13% of views came from Search! That;s where the optimization kicked in. 75% came from somewhere else. In this case, they came from related videos. People don't watch "a" video, they watch batches. They are addictive. They came from other Allen Iverson videos - they came and saw more. This is "related video optimization".
Another case study: Worked with SES to optimize over 130 videos - London, NY, etc. Got 26,2411 views. Healthy in a B2B category. Let's look at an individual video. We see a spike at the time of SES NY. Then # of visits went crazy again in the summer. What happened here? Where did the views come from? In this case 7.4% from search. Great! But 71% came from embedded in players and on blogs. Is that search? No. But it's views. And it helps get integrated in universal search.
The related video phenomenon - people watch related videos in a session. And if they embed it in a blog, even better. Create a widget. Allows a package of videos to be taken onto a site. Can tailor the widget so that your videos come up first on your site. Cross fertilization effect. It's video sharing, and that's the secret.
Next up is Chase Norlin:
The web is becoming increasingly visual. It's a challenge to index everything. Getting in video search engines is big. Provides free traffic, exposure of brand and content, or ad revenue.
Pure Video is a large video search site, and a lot of people want to know how to rank high in this engine. How do you show up in top 3? Need to add rich metadata. Push out RSS/MRSS and update frequently. Format that video search engines like. Video search crawling in general is not automated. Also, contact the videos earch engines! Email them to get into the crawler queue. Will get regularly crawled.
Got a site? Run private label video search on it! Powerful for creating traffic and ad revenue and unique content. Customize the search to your audience.
That's all! Thanks.
Stephen Espinosa is up.
How do you get ranked in universal search, and how to convert it?
Who knows that Yahoo has universal search too with video?
Create your videos - take into account the length. No one wants to sit and watch a 3-4 minute video on a search page. Have a call to action. Calls are more important than clicks. Make it ready for TV. Put a twist on it to make it viral.
Make sure video is in SWF format. Don't use Active X controls.
Use Google Video sitemaps and available variables. Make sure all your videos are fed to Google via the sitemap.
SEO: Build a page for every video you produce. Optimize the page with the tags, content, keywords, file name. Use a constant video description that is keyword rich across all sites.
Use analytics to test how long people are staying on the page. If a video is 6 minutes, and people are staying for 42 seconds - you have a problem. Use A/B variant testing to determine which videos gain the best response and where to place links to your video page from your homepage.
Utilize thumbnails. Show your call to action - phone number. Can tell Google which thumbnail to display. Make sure to tell your video producer to put the call to action at the 1/4 mark, 1/2 mark and 3/4 mark.
Google TV. Very affordable to create highly targeted TV spots that you can coordinate with video launches.
Video & Local. Sponsored and local listings are 2.2x likely to get the click. Add the video and you are 3.3x more likely to get the traffic.
Next up is Matthew from Blix.
Tips: Submit video to Blix and they will do the hard work for you.
A list to do for Google and Yahoo video:
1) Provide a well place message2) Have a page with lots of text3) Descriptive file names4) Sitemaps - submit to different engines5) Make sure the URL is descriptive
Don't:1) Don't tag spam. Will get penalized in Blix. 2) Don't require a special flash player
Real his white paper on video SEO.
Gregory of Infuse is up next.
Doing video search since 2001. Has #1 result for "video optimization" on Google.
People forget how effective video can be for reputation management. Can own the SERPs using video optimization. Sharing / community is key to maximizing the bang.
Also, theres mobile benefit. Can opt into a mobile version of the channel in Youtube. Great for demos.
Case study: "Corvette" search on Google - GM does not have a video but someone else does. Missed opportunity by GM.
Put the video on your site as a best practice, but these days people focus on upload approaches as well as RSS and MRSS feeds.
If you are concerned about putting own video on your own site, and want to rank as well as possible, focus on the metadata and everything that surrounds the video. The video search engines read and use that to rank.
We believe video optimization is any technique - paid, viral, social - anything to achieve marketing goals with videos. People get fixated on he keywords when uploading. They are important. Focus on the truncation aspect. The most important keyword or brand should be at the beginning of the sentence. Can rank very successfully for moderate and non competitive phrases just with keywords, but no longer the only piece of the puzzle. To illustrate this - a video with less views can rank higher because of the social aspect. Especially in a competitive vertical. Google is opening up in new ways - the Google keyword tool - now revealing queries. Youtube is becoming more transparent too. More stuff rolling out. You will not rank well on Youtube for competitive videos on keywords alone. Need to stimulate it.
Tips:1) Have no financial interest - make it a good advice piece.2) One title, description, etc. syndicating to many engines.3) On the Youtube homepage, it will tell you what's popular. Query your keyword. It will show you vital information and what keywords are most popular. 4) Type a keyword related to one of your terms, and sort by views. Study those videos. Look at the content, tags, and community aspects such as comments and links. 5) AOL has a page that shows you popular videos from video search engines.6) Find related videos, and come up with a clever video response to that video. Add a URL in the description of the video to your website.7) Any type of text, or call to action. If you have a series of videos - keep them in your walled garden - there is a free feature in Youtube to do so. 8) Add a branding experience. Add a URL in every single frame with a call to action.
Get familiar with the Youtube partner program. If you are content owner, can get rev share. No cost way to increase your video optimization, because Youtube will help promote it.
A new feature: The screening room. They are desperate for content. Can get 6 figures worth of advertising value if you get featured there.
Allow comments within your channel. If you don't, hard to rank well in hypercompetive verticals.
Talk about your video in social sites, press releases. Can embed videos in press releases. Check out sites like Socialmarker.com, Stumbleupon for using social to promote videos.
Paid search - a new feature rolling out - can buy keywords in Youtube via PPC - only available to agencies right now.
Can use Adwords - through content and site match - to place video ads. Very cost effective. Tremendous value.
Contributed by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

14 Best Practices and Tips for Video Optimization SEO

Video optimization as part of your search engine optimization efforts can be a great way for you to expose your brand to users who may have otherwise not been familar with your brand, your product(s) or your service(s). With the launch of Universal Search from Google, you can expect to see more and more video results occupying the search engine results that are served up by Google.

Marketers and site owners are continuing to experiment with video as a means of intercepting their target markets. As a result, we are seeing more video driven content surface on the Web. Just how popular is video content on the Web? Well depending on the study or data you review, the results vary.
The thing is, as is the case with a lot of the content on the Web, a lot of the video out there is useless and lacking in informative content.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great "How To" video's out there, but there are a lot of video footage that is really just noise and an interuption to those of use looking for useful, relevant information. According to websiteoptimization.com, the growth of online video has been quite explosive.

Site Unique Visitors (1000s) (June 2007) Year-over-year growth
1. YouTube 51,378 162%
2. Google Video 17,759 137%
3. AOL Video 15,687 114%
4. Yahoo! Video 15,473 405%
5. vids.myspace.com 15,281 69%
6. MSN Video 11,967 8%

With this type of growth, the need for online video optimization is a must. As a result, we have compiled a few best practices that you should consider when looking to optimize your online video.
Video Optimization Best Practices and Tips
  1. Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information. Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too. Videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience. Save the viewer the trouble and don't just upload a video for the sake of uploading a video.
  2. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1:
    Give your video a Catchy Title
    - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site. One way to get users to view your video is to give it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand.
  3. Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site.
  4. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #2: Optimize your video for Important Key Phrases - You might want to optimize your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your video with these terms, consider naming the file name of the video with these terms in mind.
  5. Provide Transcripts of your Videos
    - Good old HTML content is still a favorite with the search engines. If you
    want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to
    index and rank. Surround your videos with onpage copy that can be indexed by
    the search engines.
  6. Keep Your Videos to five minutes or less - there is nothing worse than a boring video that goes on an on.
    If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tag each accordingly. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, it also keeps the user looking for more.
  7. Make use of a Video Sitemap - For video that is native to your own website, make sure that users and search engine spiders can find your video content. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap on your site. Use important keywords in the
    anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.
  8. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #3: Tag Your Videos - tag your
    videos with key phrases that are reflective of the content.
  9. Brand your Video with your Logo -
    Video is a great tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take advantage of this by incorporating your brand in your videos.
  10. SEO Video
    Optimization Fundamental Tip #4: Remember Inbound Linking Factors
    -
    Link to videos using important keywords in anchor text.
  11. Offer the Option to Embed Your Video - allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing.
  12. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #5: Add Descriptive Meta Data -
    optimize your video for relevant keywords and include a keyword rich description of your video content.
  13. Allow Users to Rate your Video -
    videos that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to favorite and save. You can bet that the search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos.
  14. Syndicate Your Video - Submit your video to RSS.

Video optimization is becoming more important as mainstream aspect to search engine optimization. The best way to optimize your video content is to think about the user and who you want to engage with your video. Be smart about it, don't just post a video for the sake of posting a video. Consider your audience, their language and their needs.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Jivox combines a self-service video ad creation tool, proprietary targeting technology, sophisticated reporting capabilities and an extensive network of premium local publishers to offer advertisers a complete service for local online video advertising.
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pandreson

social media optimization

Lee Norman said...

Hi,

It was a great post on "video search engine optimization".

Here is an important tip for video search engine optimization.

If you are going to make videos,make sure you do a quick test video to ensure that people can actually see and hear you in your video. This only needs to be about ten to twenty seconds long. You don't want to waste your efforts by shooting a six minute video and uploading it to YouTube, only to have no one be able to see or hear you.

Joseph said...

Hi,

Thanks for sharing useful information on video search engine optimization.

Video is best for the communication of a simple, persuasive message. We can feel an emotional connection more readily with video's moving images and sound than other communication mediums - to an audience it is the closest medium to reality.

Streaming videos over web pages has caught on with an increase in the available bandwidth and connection speeds in the last couple of years. Often a good video associated with a good product could double or even triple the 'saleability' of the product.

Ankur Singhal said...

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