ONLINE VIDEO STUFFOh Yeah, and SEO and Marketing

Mark Robertson - ReelSEO.com

Why Online Video?

30,317,131,000 *

Vs.15,500,000,000 Search Queries **

*U.S. Comscore Video Metrix - Videos Viewed – April 2010 | ** ComScore Core Search Report – April 2010

YouTube Marketing and Optimization

Focus on Quality and Engagement

Not TV Advertising - Lean Back vs. Lean Forward

"It's got to be 30 sec?" • My answer is, tell the story first

– Shorter is almost always sweeter– Focus on first 15 sec

Telling a story:• Engage customers• Educate customers • Point of differentiation• Entertain customers• Be different• Write with keyword in mind (if applicable)

http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

Sales increased 700%, 5X the company's old record

Success = More than Keywords & Text

YouTube Ranking Factors– Title – Description– Tags– Views & frequency– Likes, dislikes– Playlist additions– Flagging– Shares– Comments– Age of video– Video Responses– Subscribers– Favorites– Embeds & inbound links

YouTube Ranking Factors – Holistic Effort

More Possible YouTube Ranking Factors

• Social Media Activity & Buzz• Degree & frequency of community

interaction• Playlists• Flagging• Honors• Insight/Trends/Analytics indicators• Bulletins• Authority Channel (Ex: BMW)• Google & YouTube searches• Channel Views• Social Bookmarking

• Blogs• News/Press/Press Release• Crowd Sourcing – Influencers & Media• YouTube Partner Program• Close Captioning/transcriptions

Tips for Uploading to YouTube

Titles are important• Trade-off = Search keywords vs. enticing titles

Maximize descriptive text• Leverage descriptions liberally (5000 characters)

• Leverage tags – optimize & de-optimize (no spam)• Important keywords first in titles, descriptions & tags

Enable interaction• Embedding and sharing• Commenting and rating

Consider manually uploading or API• More characters available for titles, descriptions, tags vs. uploading tools• Geo-tagging, CC, Annotations, etc…• To take advantage of YouTube, you really should be an active community member

Engage the Audience & Drive Interaction

Add URLs to descriptions• Track with tiny URLs

Leverage annotations • Drive viewers to other videos

Engage the community• Subscribe to relevant users• Add video responses when appropriate• Encourage linking and embedding

Don’t Ignore your Channel• Channel URLs followed• Site URL followed

YouTube Marketing - Think outside YouTube

• It’s more than YouTube now. YouTube Optimization can still be effective for less competitive keywords, HOWEVER, competitive keywords require additional effort OUTSIDE of YouTube

Promote and Promote Again

• Distribute via most popular YouTube channel available to you

• Leverage social sharing functionalities• Post to your blog• Crowd source -Target/Use Key Influences

• Spread the word internally– Encourage your company to help seed/spread the word

Track, Measure and Learn!

YOUTUBE CONVERSION TIPSDriving YouTube viewers back to you

Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home

1) URL in Description 2) In-Video Calls to Action

- Must include http://- Use URL shortener – tracking, nofollow

How can you drive interested YouTube viewers back to your website?

- Teasers, Coupons, Promo codes, Call tracking #’s, Unique URLs, Etc…

Driving Video Views – YouTube Promote

YouTube Promoted Videos• Pay Per Click/View• Keyword bidding• Drives video views

Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home

WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW• Bonus = Free call to action overlay• Auto-play on channel = more views• Starts at $0.01 CPC• Cost per click off-site? $0.00• What you don’t know?

– Overlay is yours regardless = FREE

EXTRA YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION TIP

Closed Captions & Speech Recognition

• Sept. 2008 – GAudio launches

• Nov. 2009 - Google Rolls out automated YouTube closed captions (limited)

• Mar. 2010 – Automated captioning for all videos (Beta – English only)

• Apr. 2007 - Google 411

“Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen... The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model … that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.” - Google’s Marissa Mayer

Example Search – “DFWSEM”

What You Didn’t Know

• YouTube & Google Index CC• CC/Subtitles don’t require audio• Can help with longtail searches• Weight = ?? Not much yet

Why Closed Captions?

• Accessibility for hearing impaired • Global Reach - Translations

How to Create YouTube Closed Captions

• Create and upload .SRT file

• Did you create a script?– Upload as a transcript– Google automates temporal matching

• Use Google’s machine transcription– Download –> fix –> re-upload

• Web-based tools & services– DotSub– CaptionTube– Subtitle Horse – SubPly– 3PlayMedia

• Turn off Title & Ratings– &showinfo=0

• Turn off Search– &showsearch=0

• Turn on Related Videos– &rel=1

• Want a custom player?– Use Chrome-less Player (YouTube API)

• More - http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-embed-hacks/

YOUTUBE Tricks|Customize The Embed Code

OUTSIDE AND BEYOND YOUTUBE

Publish, Distribute, Syndicate

YOUR SITE

Why Hosted Video SEO?

• “Thumbnail Power”• query – “shoot birthday

videos”• Traffic goes directly to

howdini.com• Page 1 out of >6.5M results

Don’t make it difficult for users to find• Prominently link to video section• Incorporate video results within own site search

Publishing for SEO• Use Embedded Players• Don’t use popups – (i.e. “click to watch video” pop-up)• Avoid external js, if possible

Best Practices for Website Video SEO

Best Practices for Video Landing Pages

Creating a Video Landing Page• 1 Video/URL• Unique URLS w/Keywords

Optimize the Video Landing Page• SEO principles for titles, URLs, metadata, H1,

etc…• Keyword anchor text to URLs

Provide Context to Surround Video • As always - accessibility = SEO• Contextually related links (products, videos,

articles)• Related on-page text (tags, transcripts,

comments)

Video Landing Page Anatomy

Getting Video into Search Engines

Link to Video File – traffic to video file vs. page

Best = XML Sitemaps• Google supports both MRSS and XML video sitemaps • Truveo, blinkx, others support MRSS• XML sitemaps (better)

– Allows you to specify player, thumbnail, and “allow play” in Google Video

Tips for Sitemaps• Robots.txt - include sitemaps and allow URL crawling• Publish both video sitemap and regular xml sitemap (video + page)• Titles are given disproportionate weighting• Tell search engines which thumbnail to use• Contact search engines for specific guidelines – many outdated

1. Googlebot Crawls the web & finds video– Process in flux – don’t rely on this

2. MRSS Feeds or XML Sitemaps– Step 1) Tell Google where your video

resides• MRSS Feeds or Video XML Sitemaps

– Step 2) Google crawls page to verify video exists

– Video indexed in Google video– Available via universal search results– Thumbnails displayed if determined

appropriate

3. HTML5 – not working yet

How Google Video/Universal Video Works

• http://www.reelseo.com/video-search-engine-optimization-tips-from-truveo/

• Page Load Times are Critical

• Create compelling thumbnails– Eye-catching – Relevant– High Quality

Other Tips for Website Video

Please Visit ReelSEO = Video Marketing News, Trends, Tips…

Thank YouMark R. Robertson, Founderwww.reelseo.com

@reelseo

Facebook.com/reelseo