Video Search Engine Optimization
- Website Video SEO –

What is Video SEO?
“Simply put, Video SEO is the art and science of
ensuring that your video content attracts as
much traffic as possible.” – blinkx
Options for Online Video SEO
• Hosted - Website Video SEO – Optimization of video content that is
on your website
• Posted – Video Sharing SEO - Optimization of video content
uploaded to video sharing sites, social media, etc…

Benefits of Posted Video SEO
Strategy: When your goal is to generate video views
Benefits:
• Take advantage of a large audience and viral social nature of video
sharing sites
• Video sharing sites have simplified search algorithms and are easier to
“game”
• Take advantage of pre-established authority and PR – easy way to get into
Organic/Universal Search w/thumbnails. Youtube, Revver, metacafe,
etc…
• Can use this strategy with or without a website presence

Benefits of Website Video SEO (hosted)
Strategy: When your goal is to generate traffic to your
website & your video content
Benefits:
• Control over on-page text, encoded metadata, user-experience, etc...
• Control over monetization/advertising
• Generate traffic to your website
• While you can currently dominate the SERPs with “carpet bombing,”
posted strategies, this may go away with duplicate content filtering in the
future

Benefits of Website Video SEO (hosted)
Direct traffic to site Links back to site

But, Do People Even Search For Videos?
Where do viewers
discover video online?
44% - discover randomly
43% - via sharing
43% - via video websites
39% - via search engines
27% - via marketing email
4% - via RSS & MRSS feeds

Video Search Engine Traffic Trends
Video discovery via
search is on the rise
• 29% of video discovered
on social video sharing sites
in 2008
– vs. 36% in 2007
• 29% of videos discovered
via search engines in 2008
– vs. 22% in 2007

Why the Shift to Search?
1. People are used to using search engines to locate
online content and often append the word “video” or
“videos” to their search queries.
2. And of course, Universal/Blended/Federated Search
proliferation

Google Universal Search
May 2007 – Google Launches
Universal Search initiative to
integrate listings from its
news, video, images, local and
book search engines into
Google SERPS

Videos Dominate Universal Search
Videos Dominate
Universal Search
38% of users who
searched Google were
served video in
Universal search engine
results pages
Source – “Google Universal Search Results Searcher
Penetration by Result Type” – ComScore – Jan 2008

Video Search Engines - Types
1st Generation
• Depend primarily on metadata and on-page text
• Most are moving to second generation
2nd Generation
• Use metadata, on-page text, UGC (user generated content –
comments, annotations, etc..), and advanced recognition
technologies (speech, visual, facial, OCR, etc..)

Website Video SEO Strategy & Tips

How Does Video Affect Website SEO?
+ On the positive side…
• Videos generate interest, buzz, inbound links, and
website traffic = Better rankings
- On the negative side…
• Search engines are not YET able to “read” actual video
content
• Video search engines need to be told what a video is
about using on-page text and metadata

Website Video SEO Strategy
• There are important differences to keep
in mind when optimizing video vs. text
content
• However, SEO should be approached as a
holistic strategy
• Focus on optimizing your entire website,
while at the same time more deeply
integrating your video content

Website Video SEO Benchmarking
Before You Start – Measure Current State
• Check Video Referrals - Analytics
– Where do visitors to your video pages arrive from?
– What % of video traffic originates from search
engines?
• Test Searches
– Does your video content appear in the search
engines currently?
• Monitor Behavior
– What % of visitors are linking to your videos or
sharing?

Basic SEO Tips for Website Video SEO
Video Files
• Offer multiple video formats – flv, mov, mpeg, mp4,
etc..
• Include important keywords in the filename
• Perhaps include the word “video” in the filename
In-File Metadata
• Encode your video files with good metadata that
includes your keywords. - Metadata title, author, date,
description
• Search engines are not great at indexing in-file
metadata but this is improving

More Tips for Website Video SEO
Site Structure
• 1 video per URL – Use unique URLS
• Place your videos in a central root folder/directory
• Use embedded players – not pop-ups
• Create navigation links to your video content
On-Page Text
• Follow general SEO principles for titles, URLs, meta tags, H1, etc…
• Include contextually related links to articles & videos
• Provide related on-page text with your keywords
– Consider using transcripts/captions as additional relevant on-page text.
– Use SWFObject to embed on-page text

More Tips for Website Video SEO
Inbound linking – Enable Interaction & Sharing
• Let visitors grab your embed code
• Include social bookmarking tools
• Enable comments
• Allow users to subscribe to your videos via
RSS/MRSS
• Create easy link for users to grab
• Don’t forget about internal linking – consider a site-
wide link in your page’s footer

How Do You Get Into Search Engines?
Search engines currently do their best to crawl the web and index
video content. BUT, don’t wait for them to find you. Help them by
telling them about your video content.
MRSS Feed Syndication
• Most video search engines accept RSS / MRSS feeds (+ iTunes)
• MRSS is an RSS feed with media enclosures
• TIP - If you have a problem, contact the video search engines, they
are helpful and want your content
– http://www.blinkx.com/rssupload
– http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit
– http://www.reelseo.com/submit-videos-rss-mrss/
What about GOOGLE??

Google Video Sitemaps - XML
• In December 2007 Google
launched XML sitemaps for Video
(not = MRSS)
eMarketer projects
• File Types accepted: that 87% of the total
U.S. Internet audience
– mpg, mpeg, mp4, mov, wmv, asf, avi,
will watch videos
ra, ram, rm, flv
online by 2011. Guess
– no streaming protocols supported who dominates in the
video search market?
• Others will likely follow as with One word, Google.
regular xml sitemaps

Google Video Sitemaps - XML
Google Video XML Sitemaps Requirements:
• Only use URLs that refer to video content
• <50,000 videos per sitemap
• Sitemap file size <10MB
• Video files and thumbnail images <30MB
• Title <100 characters
• Description <2048 characters
• Set Robots.txt for UserAgent “Googlebot” = Allow

Google Video Sitemaps - XML
Google Video XML Sitemaps Tips
• Include thumbnail URL
– “we strongly recommended that you provide a thumbnail URL
to increase the likelihood of your video being included in the
video index.” – Google
• If you want users to be able to watch your videos on
Google Video, make sure to set <video:player_loc
allow_embed=\"yes\">
• Set player to autoplay so that users will be shown the
video after they click on the result

Google Video Sitemaps - XML
Where Do Videos Submitted Via XML
Sitemaps Appear?
• \"...when you submit a Video Sitemap to Google,
we will make the included video URLs
searchable on Google Video.\"
• BUT …they continue on \"...in addition, your
video may also appear in other Google search
products.“
• Why is this important?

YouTube Dominates SERP Thumbnails
However, since the launch of video XML sitemaps, many others have
been successful at getting video thumbnails into Google SERPS
Other sites showing thumbnails successfully: Videojug, Ted.com, 5min.com, Vodpod

Universal Search = Thumbnail Power
Regular SERPS Universal SERPS

Will Google Show Your Thumbnails?
You Bet!
We have done
some testing to
show that it is
possible.

We Also Love Video Sharing
• Consider submitting videos, especially those
of a viral appeal to video sharing sites
• Easy way to get into universal search
leveraging the authority of existing sites
Tips
• Use a service like Tubemogul or TrafficGeyser to
upload your videos to multiple sites.
• Put your URL in the start of the description
• Leverage tags – use tags liberally – Optimize & De-
Optimize
• YouTube Tip – Consider using annotations to drive
viewers to your related videos.

ReelSEO.com is a website dedicated to providing
unique insight and informative articles on the
ever-growing use of online video marketing and
video search engine optimization (video SEO)
Visit www.ReelSEO.com for tons of news and tips about Video SEO
Please subscribe to our feed and check out our ReelSEO podcasts on iTunes
Other Resources
• http://seowiki.blinkx.com
• http://search.yahoo.com/mrss
• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=10079
– or just search “Google video sitemaps” in Google

Questions?
Mark R. Robertson
Founder & Publisher – ReelSEO.com
mark@reelseo.com
Twitter: reelseo
Skype: reelse