Video Search Engine Optimization

Helping to finish up my first day of San Jose liveblogging is Joe Morin (Boost Search Marketing, Storybids, Inc.) who’s moderating this one with speakers Greg Jarboe (SEO-PR), Chase Norlin (Pixsy Corporation), Steve Espinosa (eLocal Listings, LLC), Matthew Scheybeler (blinx) and Gregory Markel (Infuse Creative, LLC).

And because I know you want to know, my toe’s blisters now have blisters. Epic shoe fail.

Up first is Greg Jarboe.

Greg lets us know that YouTube accounts for over 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google’s sites. In May, Google sites once again ranked as the top US video property with 4.2 billion videos viewed. YouTube accounted for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Google sites also attracted the most viewers who watched an average of 50.2 videos per person. 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube.

Is YouTube the top video search engine or top video sharing site?

YouTube is now hosting 83.4 million videos. It receives 13 hours of new video from users every minute. 57 percent of online video viewers share links to the videos they find online with others. Yowsa.

The secret to getting great rankings in YouTube is to have a video strategy.

The one-of videos are always welcomed, but you want to look for patterns. He talks about a video he had that did really well. They optimized 137 videos for STACK Media. Received 140,104 views. 75 percent of views came from Related Videos section. 13 percent came from YouTube search.

Lesson: People don’t watch a video. They watch batches of videos. You want to tap into that
Related Videos section.

They optimized and promoted 131 videos for SES and got 26,411 views. The interview they did with Nicholas Carr had some crazy traffic patterns, with a big spike, a drop off and then another surge. Why?

71 percent of the views came from the video being embedded in players that someone was running on their blog. Is that search? No, but it is views. The fact that it got so many views helped them to be picked up by Universal Search.

The SES video widget combines related videos with an embedded player. You can create a package of videos that will be renewed each time you update it.

You can customize the SES video player widget for your Web site or blog audience.

• Header options: Speakers or bloggers
• Playlist content: Display videos of everyone but with videos of you or your company ranked first
• Widget Format: Vertical or horizontal layout, number of thumbnails and videos.

Chase Norlin is next.

He’s going to take a different take and NOT look at YouTube. He’s going to talk about the trends in video search.

For video owners, video search engine optimization means free traffic, content exposure and ad revenue. You have to get discovered first. Add rich Meta data. Push out (really great and structured) RSS/MRSS feeds and update them frequently. Then, contact and submit your video the search engines. This will put you in the crawl cue. If you don’t, you’ll just be put on a list and eventually they’ll get to you. By submitting it will make you source that’s regularly crawled and will help you to show up at the top of the search results.

Put a video search box on your Web site to create traffic, ad revenue and unique content on your pages. Private label search means more searches, more page views, more ad revenue and more pages for Google crawl.

Stephen Espinosa is up. Everyone please wave. He just turned 21. Aw, babies!

He’s going to teach us how to get ranked in Universal Search and how to convert the traffic.

Universal Search and Video

Tips for Creating Your Videos:

• Video length: Each industry is different, therefore each threshold of attention is different.
• Call to Action: For local businesses, calls are more important than clicks
• Ready for TV: If possible, make sure your vides are ready for TV

Optimizing your Video

• File Type: Export videos as swf. Do not use Active X controls
• Video Sitemap: Utilize Google Video Sitemaps and available variables
• SEO: Build a page for each video you produce. Optimize the page (Titles, Tags, Content, Keywords, Filename). Link from your index page to your video page. Consistent video description and title across all sites.

Reporting & Testing

• Analytics: Use analytics to test how long customers are staying on your video page to determine if video is too long.
• A/B Variant Testing: Determine which videos gain the best response and where to place links to your video page from your home page.

Tips: Utilize thumbnails to show your call to action. YouTube makes thumb nails at 1/4,1/2 and 3/4 mark.

Google TV makes TV very affordable and allows you to create highly targeted video.

If you have a video and local listing on the SERP, customers are 3×3 more times likely to visit your Web site.

Matthew Scheybeler is next.

If you index your site on Blink, then your video will show up in other engines like Ask and MSN. Blinkx watches the video to help optimize it. They do a transcript of the video to speech.

Video Search Engine Optimization: Do’s

• Provide well-placed, rich and relevant Meta data.
• Use a cleaner to rid your files of irrelevant, distraction Meta data.
• Have just one video per page with a simple textual title and description.
• Ensure filename is sensible and descriptive.
• Take advantage of site maps, starting-point URLs or RSS feeds.
• Submit video to sharing sites and search engines.

Don’t:

• Don’t tag with popular, but irrelevant search terms.
• Avoid Flash-only and entirely dynamic players.
• Avoid pop-up players.

How do you optimize thousands of videos? Blinx has technology to help. They can understand the video and generate lots of things for you. They can automatically generate the taxonomy and titles, work out the most important tags and they can place the full transcription of the video for you.

Gregory Markel is last. My memory reminds me that he’s a fast talker. [rolls up sleeves]

Video search is extremely popular. It’s effective for branding and reputation management. It’s free! There’s no submission cost or cost per click. It provides you with Google.com search engine result presence, many social/viral/community benefits and a mobile presence.

Video is influencing regular search results in Google’s blending search results. For the phrase [corvette video], Google doesn’t return a single car manufacturer, but does return many videos.

Three submission types for video search engine optimization:

Video on your site: Your video is found on your site: a small number of video search engines like Truveo and Blinkx crawl the Web looking for video content on your Web site and will use the Meta data and traditional surrounding page elements it finds to weight and rank the video for relevancy. Make sure your video has target keyword-infused Meta data added during the video encoding process. It should also be featured on its own page.

Upload/ Video Search Engine: This is now the most common. These types of video search engines require that you upload your file while providing textual information. You want to use keyword infused titles, descriptions and tags and categories. Keyword prominence in each is important for ranking and click thru rates. Analyze competition’s approach prior to uploading.

You will not rank well on YouTube based on keyword-rich content. You need to stimulate community attention.

RSS/MRSS Feeds: Probably not too many people using this method unless you have a lot of videos.

TubeMogul allows you to upload to many different video sites at once. Offers agency level tracking and keyword intelligence.

Video Search Engine Optimization Techniques:

• YouTube will tell you what’s popular on their site with its search suggestions. It will tell you what keyword related to your keywords are most popular at YouTube. Type a keyword related to your content then sort by “most viewed content” and you will see the most popular videos on YouTube related to your terms.
• Knowing what type of content is most popular with viewers can strategically aid the shaping of your video based marketing plan.
• Submit to many video search engines to get the most visibility, not just YouTube.
• Create a video response to popular videos that are related to your video content in some way and include audio and visual call to action to visit your video. These will appear in close proximity to popular content allowing your visibility to piggy back on the popular video.
• Leaving with an active URL in your description. They’re clickable! Conclude your video with an instruction/visual cue to click on the link.
• Use video annotations to convey text information and link to other YouTube videos.
• Add comments on popular videos that include a coded URL call to action.
• Become a YouTube partner channel, get featured, promoted and share ad revenue.
• Allow comments. If you don’t, you won’t be able to rank well in hyper-competitive areas.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.