Video Search Engine Optimization - Website Video SEO

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=quot;yesquot;> • 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? • quot;...when you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, we will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video.quot; • BUT …they continue on quot;...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

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Video Search Engine Optimization - Website Video SEO

by Mark Robertson

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