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-PR Chase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy Corporation Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development & Management, eLocal Listing, LLC Matthew Scheybeler, CTO, blinkx Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC Greg 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 message 2) Have a page with lots of text 3) Descriptive file names 4) Sitemaps - submit to different engines 5) 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.
