Unilyzer » You Tube

Make Your Videos Search Friendly

Rebecca — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:21:20 +0000

Google is making it easier for webmasters to tag their video content to get indexed in the Google search results. Because video content is graphic based and not text based it’s hard for Google’s spiders to index this type of content.

“While we’ve become smarter at discovering this information on our own, we’d certainly appreciate some hints directly from webmasters,” says Google’s Michael Cohen, Product Manager for the Video Search Team.

To help make videos more search-engine friendly, Google now supports the following mark-up formats for videos:

It’s too soon to say if one mark-up is better than the rest. Personally, I recommend the Facebook Share method of mark-up because it’s simple; all you do is add a few lines of meta tag information in your header tag. Just like you enter title tags, alt tags, and keywords for your website pages – you also need to optimize your videos to be search friendly.

The Facebook Share mark-up includes the following information for the search engine spiders:

Link to the Video Thumbnail
Link to the Video File
Video Title
Video Description
Video Dimensions (Height & Width)

Example of the Facebook Share mark-up: Copy and paste into your header tag, customize the bold sections to your video content. If you’re embedding video from Youtube the video source would be something like “http://www.youtube.com/v/jPtBdydGnWY&hl=en&fs=1″

http://example.com/thumbnail_preview.jpg” />

http://example.com/video_object.swf“/>

My Video Description “/>

My Video Title” />

296” />

512” />

application/x-shockwave-flash” />

This site has some examples and additional information about the Facebook Share mark-up format and a place to treat your page to make sure you did it right.

http://developer.search.yahoo.com/help/objects/video

Both Google and Yahoo are accepting the Facebook Share mark-up language for videos. While it’s not guaranteed that adding this code to your site will get your videos indexed, at least your videos are now search engine friendly. I would make sure to use your targeted keyword phrases in your video title and description. Just don’t abuse the system. Make sure the content in your videos matches the title and description you tag it with.

The highlights in yellow show how optimized videos show up in the search results. What you use in your Facebook Share mark-up is what Google displays in the search results.

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Dominate with Video

Rebecca — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:09:48 +0000

If you have a blog where you want to reach more people and drive traffic to your website you really need to be creating videos and uploading them on the web. Compete.com shows that YouTube had 85 million unique visitors in July 2009! Just imagine what it could do for your site if you happened to create a viral video that got 100,000 views… 200,000 views…. 1 million views!
A certain percentage of those people would visit your site and a percentage of those would sign up for your newsletter or buy something from you.

If you post a video and get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If 3% of those convert into sign-ups or customers, that is 900 signups or sales! Sound good to you?

I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are popular. Why are they so popular? What is so good about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.

These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned or spontaneous, but they are NOT selling something, they are NOT outwardly trying to get customers or build their mailing list. If you want to create a viral video you cannot be selling in the video. Instead, let the video generate buzz for you!

Another great idea is to give the viewer something in your videos for free. Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. Become an authority on your topic, and they will love you and gladly tell others about you.

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Using the Power of Video for SEO

Rebecca — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:09:33 +0000

When you perform a search on one of the major search engines, take a look at what you get. You get more than just search results, notice the results now include images and videos. The videos returned in the search results stand out on Google because it includes a thumbnail image with a play button. Web surfers have a tendency to jump the the video link even if it’s not the top search result, simply because video is more engaging. Having your videos indexed in Google can be a great way to get ahead of your competition when it comes to being discovered on the major search engines.

But how do you get those videos in front of people? It’s called utilizing Video Search Engine Optimization (Video SEO/ vSEO). With the increase of search engines adopting “Universal Search” features and the growth of online video content, it is imperative vSEO becomes a player for those businesses looking to drive significant traffic.

Video SEO at its core is about the discoverability of video content via search engines. As a business, the goal of vSEO is getting video content to the top of search engine rankings within the video search results page AND the standard search results page.

A lot of the same rules that apply to SEO also apply to vSEO; you must have relevant and keyword rich text surrounding the video content and utilize inbound and internal linking. Take advantage of social media to allow visitors to share, bookmark, rate and comment on your videos, and strong video title and meta tags.

Promotional videos and vlogs (video blogs) are important if your business is going to survive in the future of the Internet. Remember, we retain 7% of what we read, 38% of what we hear and 55% of what we see. That alone should tell you online video must be a part of your marketing package. Businesses that put their message in front of a customer through video marketing will be the businesses thriving in the future.

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Grab Attention with Your Facebook Wall Posts

Rebecca — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:41:01 +0000

The Facebook wall is a running list of your friend’s latest status updates. Typically it includes a thumbnail of your friends profile photo and some text on the right. When there are about 30 updates on your wall, it’s hard to stand out if all you have is text. Adding video and photos to your updates makes your wall post stand-out from the crowd and draws friends or fans to click and see more. The examples below show how wall posts with photos and video stand out.

Standard Facebook wall post:

Facebook wall post with photo:

Facebook wall post with video:

Facebook makes adding video super easy. Embed video from YouTube, Revver, and Yahoo Video. In fact, you can record video from your webcam directly into Facebook, no fancy editing software needed. (watch tutorial) When your friends or fans click on your video link they can watch the video (it expands and plays). They never have to leave Facebook to watch. What a great tool to keep users on your fan page or encourage them to learn more about you, and in the end your products and services.

People are naturally drawn to pictures and video. I know when friends post photos I almost always check out their profile photo galley to see more. Next time you post on Facebook, try adding a photo or video then observe your friends reactions. Did they have a tendency to comment more? Let me know how this works for you by leaving a comment below.

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