… be hurting you. Why do keep writing about video search-engine optimization?
Your viewers or customers are increasingly using specific terms in their search, and including the word “video” into searches more than the word “sex.” In the past 5 years the term “how to” has grown steadily as a search phrase (Google analytics).
Eye charts show that when a thumbnail image (representing a video) appears among a search-page results it gets an early glance before people read.
Approximately a third of the views of a video are driven by search. It may surprise you that search engines overtook social media as a driver to videos back in early 2008 (Hitwise, 2009 via ReelSEO).
Google, by far the leading search engine, incorporates many forms of media in its results. Since it currently indexes far more text than video, you have a distinct advantage with video content.
There are two solutions: the hard way and the easy way. The hard way: you can ensure you or your agency is current on video SEO techniques. The second is that you post content on YouTube (which Google crawls quite well) and ensure that your title, description and keywords are aligned and words are ranked by priority. Don’t try to optimize against impossible phrases with lots of competition. Be specific and add words people are increasingly adding to search queries (video, how to, etc).
Robertson puts it simply, “video SEO is purely an extension of SEO.” The more I research it, the more I realize it’s true. The tips for optimizing video content, with some exceptions, are typical of a good search-engine optimization plan.
I met recently with Steve Rubel, who Business Week once called “the all-knowing thumper in a forrest of bambinos.” He’s dumped his Micropersuasion, but still posts on SteveRubel.com.
Steve asked me what I knew about video and SEO, and prompted this succinct 101-post on “how to use online-video to crawl your way to the top of Google rankings.” As I’ve reminded you before, YouTube is the second most important search engine, and YouTube videos get a strong advantage on Google. When you search a term, and see a video thumbnail someone’s done their homework.
Sure you can buy text ads surrounding these Google searches, but they will burn through a budget fas. Furthermore, searchers usually jump to the “organic” or “natural” results that aren’t in yellow. Google eye-tracking charts have proven that, and undisclosed eye-charts of YouTube show that the primary navigation attracts eyes to that coveted search field. I’m not suggesting “either/or.” You want to appear for key searches anyway you can… even if you’re buying ads on searches that you already organically dominate. I have fought this logic, but the text ads for your brand name usually yield the highest-quality traffic (even if they MIGHT have found you without the ads).
Your thumbnail in the red area is worth more than text ads
Now some fresh tips and secrets for helping your video content rise on Google results, where you are exponentially more likely to be discovered by curious prospects.
1) Put Your Video in Places Easy for Search ‘Spiders” to Find. Your video content is either on YouTube or it’s hiding. Google’s automatic “spiders” dig routinely through your site, but don’t make them work too hard. If you have videos streaming on Quicktime on your website, then don’t expect them to get discovered easily (especially if they’re buried deep). Start posting on YouTube, then use TubeMogul to go more broadly (a free tool that distributes videos to dozens of existing online-video accounts, as long as you have accounts on them). I have asked TubeMogul’s CEO (Brett Wilson) to allow video publishers to vary keyword tags by site; currently you tag your video the same for all sites, which doesn’t allow you to experiment and hedge bets. That will increase odds of “Mother Google” blessing you with first-page result for niche terms. Again, if your video is on your brand site it might as well be in a file cabinet.
2) Oddly, Metadata Still Works. Metadata includes the title, description and keywords that search engines can use to find your content. Be selective, and go for targeted terms. Don’t try “digital camera,” but something more narrow like “how to buy cheap video cameras.” Then be consistent with your title, first words of your description, and the keywords. This can be challenging, because viewers like short irresistible titles… but spiders will index based on common search terms or phrases.
3) Engagement Matters. A well-viewed, top rated, commented, favorited video is going to work MUCH better than one you post solo. That’s why the YouTube stars (already popular amateurs or pros) have an edge on the rest. Their active fan following moves them to top of most-viewed videos, and makes them easy for a new audience to discover them. This is one of the reasons I urge marketers to tap into the credible platform of a weblebrity instead of posting their own videos. If I upload a video on my “Nalts” channel, it’s going to do better on SEO than the same exact video posted to a new account or your account. Many people attempt to replicate this by asking friends and family to “5 star, favorite, and comment.” But a few dozen people aren’t as powerful as the thousands of active fans that rate their favorite creators 5 stars even before watching the full video.
4) YouTube is Getting Smarter about weeding out videos boasting provocative thumbnails (the images that represent the video on YouTube or Google search results). So in time, pictures of neon graphics (a hot trend) and boobies (a timeless certainty) will not outrank relevancy. Ultimately I expect YouTube to rank videos based, in part, on “attention scores.” As a YouTube Partner I know which of my videos have high “attention scores,” which is a relative score based on videos that are of similar duration. I can’t tell precisely how many people stopped watching at a specific moment (or the average view duration) but I can see where most people dropped, and I try to manage that by “teasing” video that comes later. If a video for a particular term has a high “attention score,” then Google/YouTube can correctly assume it was relevant to the searcher. So I’d expect that to be as vital as transcribed text, and Google/YouTube already has the ability to connect these (and may well be using them).
5) While Waiting for Transcription. Don’t hold your breath for Google to transcribe videos, which will be the Holy Grail. Rubel observed that “Google Voice” is teaching Google to recognize various dialects, and that will come in handy when it’s time to transcribe and index video speech for word searches. In the meantime, you want your videos to be valuable/relevant and short (30-90 seconds), then compel action (like a visit to a website) with a meaningful promise. Remember it’s much easier to get a YouTube viewer to a channel page than to abandon YouTube. We’re still seeing click-thru rates (from YouTube to brand sites) in the low single digits. Some YouTube creators (like “CharlesTrippy” and “Shaycarl“) post daily videos as long as 10-12 minutes, which automatically propel them to the most popular page. This may give them an advantage, and I recently speculated that long videos may, counter intuitively, be a view driver. I’m now thinking that the frequency keeps them “top of mind” and forges a bond with their viewers, which is the real driver. Still, their fans will watch more of those videos than typical videos of that duration… and that certainly should help. While we wait for transcribed search, consider captioning your content (it’s time consuming but free on various sites) or adding a full or partial text transcript to your description.
5) The basics of SEO apply when it comes to keywords. Spell hot ones wrong on purpose, focus on less competitive terms/phrases, and use desired ones first. Before Google stopped using metatags to rank, it always put exponential emphasis on the first word than the fifth. So consider carefully the first words you’ll use in sequence, and don’t try to fight for highly competitive terms. I used to automatically use “Nalts” as a keyword, but now I place that at the end of my list. Sometimes I’ll use a partial phrase like “how, to, become, popular, on, youtube,” and name the video similarly. Then my description will begin with “How to become popular on YouTube…”
6) I haven’t seen evidence that YouTube videos embedded on other sites have an advantage. Logically, an embedded video means bloggers and other websites find the content valuable… and YouTube videos used to show publicly (under video you’ll see “statistics and data” the sites that drove traffic to a video, but have inexplicably eliminated that somewhat recently). It was probably being abused by spammers. Google tends to focus on relevancy rather than monetization, but it’s hard to ignore a motivator YouTube has: the site can monetize videos on its own site easier than on other sites. So it’s in Google’s financial interest to reward video content that draws traffic to YouTube rather than embedded videos on sites that use its bandwidth without creating a premium for advertisers. We know that if hundreds of websites link to President George Bush using a hyperlink called “stupid,” then he’ll rise on search results for the word stupid. So perhaps my top ranking for the keyword “fart” was helped by any sites that linked to me with the tag, “fart video.”
But there’s a true relevancy factor at play. If you’re inclined to search “fart,” I’m guessing a video of a kid with a fart machine is one of the things you may be hoping to find. Or maybe you were seeking a nice medical definition or the origin of the word (Wikipedia, which now has trumped me, indicates “immediate roots are in the Middle English words ferten,feortan or farten; which is akin to the Old High German word ferzan. Cognates are found in old Norse, Slavic and also Greek and Sanskrit.”
7) Timing. Michael Buckley’s “What The Buck” show and Sxephil’s vlogs benefit greatly from their regular content about topics being searched. Their recent videos are often between 500K to a million, and they have some videos that are cash cows for certain subjects (garnering regular views that are in the multi-millions). As I write, they’re no doubt making a video about the Golden Globes, knowing that on Tuesday people will return to work, and be grazing for recaps. This timely content also serves as “link bait” to popular social-media sites that are looking for current videos about hot content. Topicality is important, and the best personal example I can provide is my 2009 Superbowl “best commercials” video. It maintains a poor attention score (lots of early drops relative to most of my videos), but I launched it before last year’s Superbowl game… fetching it 3-4 million views in the days after last February’s game… and it’s up to 7 million now. The GoDaddy boob thumbnail doesn’t hurt either, but that’s not helping the attention score. If you want boobies, you’re turned off to see a dad and his kid talking about the best ads. If I did a daily vlog about the hot terms I found on Yahoo Buzz, I’m quite certain I could dramatically expand my daily views from 150K-200K to 500K. But alas I have neither the time nor interest. I’m guessing Buckley and Phil scour many sites to find out what content people are searching each day.
8) Untapped Secret: SEM on YouTube. I almost hate to give this away. But if you have an Adsense/Adwords account and you’re a YouTube partner, you can advertise your video based on keyword terms. This drives search-driven ads that display your video to a targeted audience, and is not expensive for most terms (a cost-per-click bid of a few pennies sometimes works). Even better, you’re then able to put your own simple “InVideo” ad over the video with a clickable hyperlink. See the example on my “Hair Transplant Fun,” which is more likely to drive viewers to my blog than a hyperlink in the description. And remember: get that hyperlink early in the description so it appears to viewers in a truncated description.
Now a few things that don’t work, or at least will die soon enough.
I’m finding lots of spam automatic blogs that are now embedding my videos and descriptions hoping to trick Google into indexing it. This annoying technique is also fooling Radian6 and other social-media monitoring tools, which report this old content as new. Last week I tried a “Nalts” search on Radian6 and was frustrated to see old video descriptions appearing as recent buzz about me. Maddening.
I’m also constantly finding my name packed with other YouTube usernames in videos by people who naively hope that works. Puh-leeze. Did that ever work? It’s a good technique if you’re mentioning a particular YouTuber, because we do tend to “ego surf” for content that tags our name. But as soon as I see 12 other names aside mine, I know it’s trolling.
Fake thumbnails might artificially drive views, but the video will be penalized when the attention scores show Google the video duped its users.
A special video for you WillVideoforFood subscribers, and the secret members of the UncleNalts family. How to scam your way to saving money in college (and beyond). Some of my tips to help you waltz along life without playing by the rules of everyone else (okay that was a joke).
How to save money, sneak into events, avoid parking tickets, hide stuff in dorms, fake IDs, use bathrooms, get discounts on cars and hotels, get into a restaurant without a reservation, get liquids on a plane, get out of some speeding tickets, save cash at a movie, and more…
It may be almost 8 minutes long, but I guarantee you’ll learn something new that pays. Or you can have your 8 minutes back… no questions asked. Well at least it’s add free. Because UncleNalts don’t run no ads, and he’s no big-headed “partner.” No sir. He’s just your crazy Uncle, and you may be glad he’s not your dad… but he always makes reunions a bit more interesting.
Yesterday I outlined the 5 magical secrets to making money via online video. I made it up while driving to NYC from my rural PA home, and used a forced “NALTS” acronym. It was the only way I’d remember it on stage at the Digital Content NewFront, and I still had to check my hat lid, where I had written them down as an emergency.
Hopefully the audience remembers these tips more than my pratfall, fart machine, and spinning beer caps.
Nickle: Keep it cheap. The “one man band” will always do better than a crew. I couldn’t have quit my day job if I had to share my YouTube revenue with a writer, editor, producer, agent and actors. Just me, a camera, and unpaid “actors.”
Amplify: There’s no online-video “prime time.” A homepage video on YouTube won’t guarantee an audience. You need to promote, collaborate, get involved with the community (the eBook gives you tips).
Listen: It’s not distribution it’s dialogue. Listen, react, talk back. Don’t “Oprahize” YouTube and use online-video for trailers. Get on camera and interact with the audience. Do collaborations with other famous peeps.
Theater: Go where the crowds are: Be in Regal not a tiny cinema. Fish where the fish are. YouTube. Use TubeMogul to post more broadly, but no f’ing microsites. As a marketer, I want my ad on the highway, not on some rest stop.
Sponsor: Bring your own sponsor. The money on CPM buys isn’t as interesting. Build content that’s entertaining but targeted to a niche that advertisers want to reach (moms, cooks, fisherman, financial, whatever). You can’t get a sponsor easily unless you have an audience, and if you’d rather let someone else hunt for the sponsor than check out Hitviews (disclaimer: I am its chief strategical officer).
There. Now go get rich. But as a reminder, if you’re focused on making money I would advise writing blogs about mortgage or investing. It’s very hard still to profit via online video, whether you’re talented or not.
I’m clearly motivated by sources other than money. I’ll have to ask a therapist what those motivations are.
When you’ve learned the rules, enjoy the simplicity of this winner of a “Piece of Maine” contest (by Maine Realtors). It’s a low-production video with a great tune and soulful lyrics. Here’s a guy that celebrates a mindset that where you are — right now — is exactly where you want to be. He shows a map with Maine in red, and the rest of the U.S. as “insane.” All this makes it almost okay that he bought land once stolen from Indians (snap). The song made me smile because the definition of insanity is wanting to be be someone or somehere you’re not. And Slater is celebrating what he’s got and where he already is.
I used to “free associate” Maine with the madness of Steven King (and maybe lobster on the shore, which I have, incidentally, checked off my bucket list). Now maybe when I consider stopping by Maine, I’ll envision fewer tentacles emerging from The Mist, and instead see Slater on a hammock singing this earworm.
As I mentioned previously, I’m presenting “The Secrets of Viral Video Marketing” at a Yahoo! event called “Big Screen, Little Screen.” It’s this Wednesday, July 9 in Toronto, Canada.
Want to review the deck and provide any suggestions? Obviously it won’t be self explanatory, but I thought I’d give you loyal WVFF readers a sneak preview. Here’s the Powerpoint deck in Flash via Slideshare.net.
Any suggestions?
Oh- and thanks to David Bridges for designing the Nalts flavicon (that little icon on the left of the browser window before the WVFF URL). Thanks also to Jan for installing the little booger!
Okay maybe “top secret” is an over statement, but most readers of this post will find a few surprises here. I give you some of the lesser known tricks on YouTube to optimize your experience as a viewer or creator…
Find Best Videos on YouTube Don’t surf the homepage or most-recently uploaded section if you want to find the best videos. There are two places to go… the “top rated” section and the “most viewed.” I prefer the latter, because the community decides what’s lands there. Note that some creators live on this page because their fans rate them 5 stars without fail, so it’s not all good. There are also a few people that are “gaming the system” by artificially rating themselves 5 stars with sock accounts or autobots (boo, hiss). If you like vloggers, check the “most discussed” section of “People and Blogs.” You can also surf the “most subscribed” creators (by category) and when you find someone good (say, for example, Nalts) be sure to subscribe. Then visit your subscription page first, which is like an RSS for new videos by your favorite creators.
Upload to YouTube and a Bunch of Other Sites at Once.
I use TubeMogul whenever I want to upload beyond YouTube on a mess ofwebsites including, currently, Yahoo!, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Revver, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Crackle & StupidVideos.
Reference a Video in Comments Section. You can post a URL in the comment section of videos, but you can provide the 11-digit alphanumeric code, and then people can post this before it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Download YouTube Videos
This is a post with some tips, but I like VideoBox from tastyapps.com (but it’s Mac only). KeepVid can download videos as FLV files pretty quickly. I’m also using Snapz Pro or Snagit to grab short sections of videos very quickly.
Upload Videos for Best YouTube Quality
For starters, you gotta export your videos in the best resolution possible — that means making them larger files (mine are 100 megs or more) and ensuring all the specifications are YouTube friendly. Trippy’s blog covers these specs well. Some argue that it’s best to convert it to an FLV per YouTube specifications before uploading, but I don’t like the idea of sending YouTube anything compressed so tightly.
Subscribe to Someone When You Can’t. YouTube accounts without videos don’t have a “subscribe” option. To get around this (or to make it easy for people to subscribe to you), use this code, substituting the profile name where I have “Nalts.” http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=nalts
Jenna from YouTube asks the questions (in the comments from a recent post). The humble viral video genius gives the answers…
Hey Nalts, I have some questions about the history of video blogging and the history of Nalts (you).
Did the guys who made YouTube intend for it to be used as a video blogging site? Chad and Stephen created YouTube in the requisite “Internet startup garage” because they saw a need for simple sharing of videos (instead of e-mailing large attachments). Vlogging came later. Those two don’t even vlog, at least publicly.
Have you ever been to a YouTube gathering? Are you kidding, Jenna? Those are like Star Trek conferences. Never.
What do you think are the genre antecedents to video blogging? Do you think it came out of reality TV? Actually I think it’s “anti reality TV.” People were sick of manufactured reality, and entranced by the notion of real people interacting with audiences in an almost real-time setting. The early vloggers were stars who weren’t.
Can you write a post where you watch your first two videos and then your last two videos and reflect on how your style has changed and why? Wow. First time I’ve thought about that. Initially I was just posting goofy stuff with the kids like “Scary Santa.” The kinda thing that might end up on America’s Funniest Video. The second was “Gum Tree,” which was more carefully edited and still makes me smile. A bit later came “Speed Racer,” which might be worth a sequel now that the movie is coming out! My most recent video, “Rusty’s Song” was more crafted for spreading (nostalgia, cultural references, cute dog, annoying song). The most recent popular video I’ve done was a parody on Mac Air’s commercial, and it did fairly well (about 400K views on YouTube alone) for a video that was never featured. Maybe I’m trying to hard now.
Where do you live? Between NYC and Philadelphia. But I’m from New Orleans and we still have a family place in Sweet Alabama.
Do you use StickAm? I tried to use it but I don’t understand how to do it. I have used it, but I can’t take it except in short doses and usually when I’ve had a few drinks. It’s hard to get used to… check out my “Stickam is Crack” video and the responses for some thoughts.
P.S. In business school (Babson) we studied in Prague with some people from Millsaps College in Mississippi, where your profile says you attend. That made me laugh because there was a guy from Millsaps that used to say the name of his school with the funniest Southern accent. And one of my classmates (who died a few years later of cystic fibrosis) did a belly aching impersonation of him… “I’m doin’ some indeeepdendent reeesurch for meeeel ssshaaapps” he’d say. You hadda be there.
