This blog post presents some great ideas on how to approach video SEO beyond the basics of using rich snippets and getting links. It is more of a strategy session than a tutorial. The ideas discussed include: self hosting a video rather than hosting on YouTube if the goal is traffic and conversions, using different types of videos to fit your different goals, and if possible, creating videos with some SEO in mind instead of trying to optimize after a video is already created.
This is an excellent and comprehensive post on link building in the current, post-penguin environment. Not only does it discuss different types of links and how to get them (with a list of useful link-finding tools), but it also delves into an overall strategy for building a link profile. This includes how to decide if and when to remove links, tracking the progress of a link profile, and looking at what the future might bring in terms of updates.
Google has begun to show detail about medicine in the search results similar to how a famous person’s biography might show up in a SERP when their name is searched. Data from various authorities on medicine are part of Google’s knowledge graph, which attempts to contextualize words by making connections between words that the algorithm deems to be semantically related. This development will be particularly useful for any business in the medical field.
MDG advertising created this large Infographic with a lot of statistics about online holiday shopping trends. While there isn’t a lot of explanation about what these numbers mean, it’s a good visual that makes it easy to realize some powerful trends. Tablets are becoming a huge factor in that more and more people are using tablets to shop as well as shopping for tablets. Online holiday shopping also seems to be starting earlier and ending later in the year, beginning in October and going past Christmas.
A company trying to decide whether to do SEO or PPC should realize that the most successful campaign will likely implement both at some level and have a hand in numerous other marketing outlets. This article gives 10 good reasons why your company should do PPC, and specifically Google AdWords, while responsibly prefacing that AdWords should probably not be used as a replacement for SEO. Some of the best reasons are probably the first four given, which are that it is scalable, measurable, flexible, and faster than SEO.
Today is the 9th annual Innotech Austin Conference & Expo and Apogee’s own Bill Leake and Alan LaFrance had a session on how to embrace and utilize video in order to help marketing efforts, “Video Killed The Radio Star (But Not Your Marketing)”. Here is a recap.
The presentation began with a few impressive statistics as to why it’s a good idea to invest in video marketing:
People that watch a product video are 60 – 85% more likely to buy (IR et al)
Over 800 Million unique users visit YouTube monthly (YouTube)
Over 1 trillion video views in 2011 (YouTube)
Video improved add-to-cart by 144% for a Retailer (Internet Retailer)
Videos are the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with 55% growth (eMarketer)
Next Alan talked about how to make an effective video and the example he used was the popular Blendtec YouTube series “Will it Blend?” Here are the main points of the segment:
Research and identify a topic and purpose – when you’re thinking of video content, do your research. Go into making your video with a relevant topic and purpose.
Plan out the video content – have a plan before you start video production. Create a storyboard/wireframe of your idea to effectively execute your video.
Use quality equipment – don’t use subpar equipment (i.e. Smartphone camera) to produce a video. Even on YouTube, people don’t want to see low quality videos.
Spend equal time publicizing as you do producing – don’t just spend all your time and money producing a video and no effort with promotion. With no promotion no one will be aware of your video and in turn you wont get results.
Listen – listen to what your viewers are saying about your video. Read the comments, you might be surprised by the insights you can gather. There might be information there that can help you better cater to your audience with your next video. People will tell you what they want to see and what they’re interested in.
Don’t be afraid to destroy stuff – don’t be afraid to take a risk.
Following these points we saw a great example of a company using video to successfully sale a product, Stacks & Stacks dog door. They might not have the cleanest website but they’ve implemented videos that show just how easy it is to install a pet screen doggie door, sizes available, and many other product insights. According to Internet Retailer, Stacks & Stacks improved their “Add-to-Cart” metric by 144% with this video alone.
Bill presented the next portion of the presentation and he quickly touched on 4 main points:
How are online videos online found?
The importance of YouTube
Posted vs. Hosted
YouTube Optimization
As far as how users discover videos online, there were some interesting statistics presented:
44% – discover videos randomly
43% – discover videos via sharing
43% – discover videos via video websites
39% – discover videos via search engines
27% – discover videos via marketing email
4% – discover videos via RSS & MRSS feeds
Since the launch of blended search, videos are becoming more prevalent in Google’s universal search,”58% of users who search Google were served video in universal search engine results pages”.
So you know the benefits of developing videos for marketing and where people discover them, but what are the placement options? - Well when thinking about videos, you have 2 basic options. You can post or host the video. Posting means that the video content is uploaded to video sharing sites, social media, etc. Hosting means that the video content is on your website.
The benefits of posted video SEO:
Existing Traffic – existing video website have a critical mass of traffic and users, which makes it easier to go viral
There is a better ability to rank on universal search (Google) and other search engines
Potential to dominate the traditional SERPs with “carpet bombing” by submitting to multiple video sites, which is due to weak duplicate content filtering at present
You don’t need your own website
There are also some benefits to hosted video SEO:
Control – you have control over related on-page text, encoded metadata, user experience, etc.
You have control over monetization/advertising
Generate traffic to your website
Note: While you can currently dominate the SERPs with “carpet bombing” with posted strategies, this may go away with duplicate content filtering in the future.
Following this, we looked at the power of YouTube and how much it’s grown in the past year with some interesting stats:
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine
Third most visited website (800 million uniques, only 50 million less than Facebook)
60 hours of video is uploaded EVERY minute (was 48 hours in 2011 and 20 hours in 2009)
Over 4 BILLION videos are viewed each day (was 3 billion in 2011)
One of the best takeaways from the presentation was how to increase your chances to rank your videos / properly optimize them for SEO:
Have you checked out our YouTube Page recently? If so, you’ve probably noticed our video B2B online marketing glossary–or, rather, the individual glossary terms. If you haven’t checked out your YouTube page recently, well, you’re missing out on great videos like this one:
So go subscribe to our YouTube channel already! New videos are being added every week.
Is there a term you would like to see explained in video format? If so, leave a comment and let us know!
Last year’s most-talked about Super Bowl ad was undeniably VW’s ad with a little boy dressed as Darth Vader. For the few of you out there who haven’t seen it, said little boy walks around dressed like Vader, “The Imperial March” playing in the background, trying to use The Force to start random household objects. He finally “succeeds” by starting his dad’s 2012 VW Passat. (more…)
