So I do this interview at Blogworld not realizing it’s friggin’ Mark Robertson of REELSEO that’s interviewing me. Since the question of video SEO comes up, I mention Mark during the interview, referring to him as the authority on video search-engine optimization… after all he helped with the chapter on video SEO in “Beyond Viral.” Then the interviewer smiles, says “yeah that Mark knows his stuff,” and turns his name badge around. So yeah, I have one of those Alzheimer’s moments where I realize I’m talking about Mark TO Mark. To make matters worse, the camera man was Daisy Whitney’s husband, who I had dinner with before. Missed that too. Jeremy Scott interviewed me via phone… he’s a hoot. So I’m going to remember him as long as… I can.
I’m lucky I remember my kids names. All three of them. Wait- four.
… 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 just spoke with the Guru of Video SEO, Mark Robertson, to get some input on my chapter on video SEO (for “Beyond Viral Video”). I don’t think I succeeded on convincing him to just write the chapter (with credit, of course), but he’s been very generous with his insights. He’s got the smack daddy of resources on this subject, and had an answer for every questions I could ask.
I’ve obsessed with using YouTube as the fast-track to Google results, but Mark reminds me that it’s only one part of the puzzle. Equally important, perhaps, is ensuring that video content on your own website ranks high, and that it displays thumbnails you create. This is especially true if you’re trying to sell something (versus drive awareness). We already know that YouTubers don’t leave YouTube easily.
I’m still keen on brands (and creators and bloggers) getting content on YouTube because it’s the dominant video site, and more searches occur on YouTube than Yahoo or MSN. But that doesn’t mean we give up trying to optimize video on our own little desert-island websites.
My key take away from the call with Mark: While it’s easier to optimize your content using YouTube, most people would prefer to have the results display their own website. So your focus depends on who you are:
Small businesses or bloggers that lack a well-indexed website and technical resources: you’re much better off getting your videos found on Google by using YouTube.
Large brands are wise to concurrently upload video content to YouTube and their own site. It can’t hurt (at least in the near term it’s unlikely you’d be penalized for repetitive content).
Any sophisticated website should deploy Mark’s best-practices to ensure the site is SEO’d for video. The structure of the site has to make it easy for Google. And you generally don’t want to embed a YouTube video on your site, because that just makes it more likely for the YouTube URL to show up (instead of your own site, if that’s important).
Two hottest trends in online marketing – streaming video and video SEO – will take off in popularity in 2009. According to online marketing studies, Google’s universal search algorythms, which allow multimedia to appear in search results along with web page links, will change the look of Google search results. More video links and thumbnail images of video links will be seen on Google because more people are searching for video than website content.
I trust that marketers will start posting video content on YouTube if only to help SEO rankings. It works, and in fact Google (not surprisingly) is rather kind to video. Not only do my videos get indexed quickly for terms, but my thumbnail (the image) appears on results. You can’t buy that kind of attention using paid-search ads (remember the eye-trackers show that more than 80% of the attention goes to organic rankings not ads, and ads don’t permit images).
