This is a video SEO training presentation presented by Mark Robertson @http://www.reelseo.com/ at the 2013 Brightcove Play conference.

2. MARK ROBERTSON, FOUNDER | REELSEO
JAMES ZISK, ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR | BRIGHTCOVE
Optimizing Video for Search Engine
Discovery: SEO Tips & Tricks

3. Agenda
! Search Evolution
! A Brief History of SEO
! Video + Search
! Video Search History
! Universal Search
! Video SEO Tips
! Step 1
! Indexing
! Landing Pages
! Extra Tips

4. Get Reel With Video!
! ReelSEO = The Online Video Marketing Guide
Our focus is to help marketers and brands
capitalize and maximize the power of online video.
Video Marketing Video Advertising
Video SEO Video Technology
Video Search Video Production
Research & Trends E-Commerce Video
Live Video Web Series
Mobile Video Internet TV

5. Search Evolution
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH & THE CHANGING
NATURE OF SEO

6. How Important is First Page Ranking?
Source: Seeing Between the Lines of the Search and the Click – Kantar Media/Compete – Oct. 2012
! 87% of clicks go to top 5 organic
spots
! #1 = 53%
! #2 = 15%
! #3 = 9%
! #4 = 6%
! #5 = 4%.
53% of clicks go to the first organic result

7. What is SEO?
! SEO is a ongoing, multidisciplinary
approach to achieving strong and lasting
organic rankings in search via
following best practices for creating
accessible, well-structured, relevant,
informative, and unique content that
satisfies the users' query and intent.
! Good SEO = Relevant indexing and ranking
! Bad SEO = Risk of lasting damage to a website and reputation (BMW, JCPenny, Interflora).
! NOT - about building pages for search engines, robots, and spiders.

8. SEO = Moving Towards True Consensus

9. 20 Years in Search History
! 1993 – Wandex developed at MIT
! 1995 – Yahoo Launches its Web Directory
! 1998 – Google Launches, DMOZ launches this same year
! 2000 – Yahoo Drops Altavista, Uses Google’s Algorithm
! 2001 – PageRank is showed to users through the toolbar
! 2005 – NoFollow Tag Introduced
! 2007 – Universal Search
! 2009 – Google Introduces Caffeine Algorithm, a major shift in SEO.
! 2009 – Bing and Yahoo Merge
! 2011 – Panda Algorithm Update. A major step in the history of SEO
! 2012 – Penguin Algorithm Update
! 2013 – Panda becomes real-time in March via machine learning

10. 2013
Search Engines Then and Now
2000
Source: Bruce Clay Search Engine Relationship Chart

11. Search Engine Market Share – US, Desktop
Sources: 2013 Compete, Nielsen-Net, Alexa, seoMoz, StatsCounter - GlobalStats

12. ! Caffeine
! Google+, Personalized Search
! Panda
! Penguin
! Knowledge Graph
“Each year, Google changes its search algorithm up
to 500 – 600 times” - SEOmoz

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt7wsPARyCo

14. Google “Search Plus Your World” = HUGE SHIFT

15. Google Panda – UNIQUE CONTENT
! Launched US/UK Feb 2011, Global Aug 2011
! Filter for low quality pages
! Aimed at: shallow, poorly written or plagiarized content and sites that carry
excessive advertising (affiliates)
! Introduction to machine learning
! To date has had an impact on 20% of results
! Panda real-time as of March, 2013
! Considerations as a result:
! Focus on providing a great user experience
! Create original, good quality content
! Avoid carrying too many adverts
Quality

16. Google Penguin – NATURAL LINKING
! Launched April 2012
! Filter for ‘web spam’
! Aimed at: keyword stuffing, hidden content, spammy inbound
links, plagiarized content
! Considerations as a result:
! Clean up link profile, do NOT buy links
! Reduce # links with exact keyword phrases (internal and
external)
! Eliminate overuse of keywords (that you are aiming to rank for)
Natural
Linking

17. True Consensus - User Engagement/Satisfaction
! Bounce rates: If a user hits your content from
Google, then bounces straight back out, that's not
a good sign.
! Content should engage and resonate with audience.
! CTR, Time-on-site, Bounce Rate, Engagement
! Social signals: Are people sharing content via
social channels?
! Authorship: Who wrote the content? Are they an
authoritative writer or influencer within your
niche?

18. http://www.google.com/insidesearch/

19. Brief History of Video Search

20. Video Search – The Early Years
Remember these guys?
• Blinkx
• VideoSurf
• Truveo
• Clipta
• Megavideo
• VidSea
• Searchforvideo

21. Video Search Today | 2013
Blinkx, VideoSurf, Truveo, Clipta, Megavideo, VidSea, Searchforvideo

22. Google Universal Results Have Matured
! [UPDATE, 8 AUGUST 2012: As much as I appreciate seeing this research continue to circulate online,
I'd like to note that these findings are now almost 4 years old, and are almost certainly no longer
accurate. Just as you wouldn't rely upon Nielsen ratings from January 2009 to tell you what's popular
on TV today, nor can the data below tell you how Google is handling search results today.] –
Nate Elliot, Forrester

23. Understanding Universal Video Search Results
Transactional
Intent
Informational
Intent

24. Universal Video Search Result Triggers
! What keyword triggers work?
! Obvious – “video” “show”
! Instructional - “how-to”
! Informational - “review” “unboxing” “about”
! Navigational - website, brand names, etc…
! Long-tail queries
! less competition (e.g. homedics breathe air revitalizer)
! Less intent based feedback
! What keyword don’t often trigger?
! Transactional keywords “buy,” “free,” or “sale”
! Local search
! Don’t forget, it’s Google’s control

25. What
is
Video
SEO?
Simply put, video SEO is the application of SEO best practices to
ensure that your video content achieves max visibility amongst your
target audience in search
! Video SEO is an extension of SEO

26. Why Video SEO? Break Through the Clutter

27. Video Shown Most in Universal Results
Source: Searchmetrics "Universal Search Results in the Google SERPs - Review 2012 and Forecast 2013”

28. Video Generates Higher CTR in SERPS
! Across all positions, video
results with thumbnails
generate consistently higher
click through rates.
Source: RankAbove.com SEO Firm 2010

29. Video
Search
=
Significant
Trend
in
Search
Marke9ng
Source: SEMPO Survey 2012 Trends in Search Marketing

30. Benefits of Website Video SEO
! INCREASED, Direct traffic
! Control:
! on-page text
! user-experience, etc...
! action/conversions
! brand experience
! Better analytics capability vs. YouTube
! Exposure to related, owned content
! Can strengthen overall website SEO

31. Video SEO Best Practices
THERE ARE NO TRICKS, JUST TIPS

32. YOU WON’T RANK JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE VIDEO
Video SEO is Step #2

33. SEO is Step #1
! Search Rankings (video, blogs, news, images, web) = Based off Relevance of URL
! SEO Study – e-retailer
! Completed an SEO audit
! Enhanced internal linking
! Optimized titles, metadata, etc…
! The Results?
! “Visible lift in video landing page views”

34. SEO Basics
! Site Structure
! Prominent Video Section
! Text Navigation
! Internal Linking
! Unique Content
! Unique page titles
! Unique meta descriptions
! Canonical URL tag
! H1s on all pages
! RIA Technology – graceful degradation
! Content within, javascript, iframes, flash
! Etc….

35. HOW TO GET INTO VIDEO SEARCH RESULTS
Getting Indexed as Video

36. Video Search Engine Flow

37. Video Search Indexing - Issues
! Problems with video search mechanisms are evident:
! Discovery difficult – multiple publishing methods
! Text Reliance - Not YET able to “understand”
! Advanced mechanisms are insufficient:
! Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
! Only relevant if spoken word exists
! Concept detection
! Only as good as what goes in – quality
! What does this mean?
! Search engines need to be told about video
! Optimization is crucial to discovery, indexing, and ranking

38. 1st – Are Your Videos Indexed?

39. Methods to Get Indexed In Search
! 1) Web Crawling
! Unreliable & error-prone
! 2) MRSS Feeds
! Unique per platform
! 3) Video Sitemap Protocol:
! Google
! Bing/Yahoo – Manual Submission
! Hulu -– Manual Submission

40. Getting Indexed in Google Video Search
XML Video Sitemaps
! Step 1. Create XML video sitemap
! XML file, index of site URLs
! Step 2. Give Google Video XML Sitemap
! Webmaster tools and/or robots.txt file
! Step 3. Google crawls page to verify
! Step 4. Indexed in Google video
! Available via Google’s video index
! Thumbnails displayed if appropriate

41. Indexing Issue: Publishing Methods
The Issue?
! JavaScript and iFrame publishing
! Verification issues
The Solution
! Indicate and match <video:player_loc> or
<video:content_loc> in the html source of the
page via:
! Schema Markup
! Facebook Markup
! NoScript tags

42. Basic Sample XML Sitemap Entry
<url>
<loc>LANDING_PAGE_URL</loc>
<video:video>
<video:player_loc>PLAYER_URL</video:player_loc>
<video:thumbnail_loc>THUMBNAIL_URL</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>VIDEO_TITLE</video:title>
<video:description>VIDEO_DESCRIPTION</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>

43. XML Video Sitemap Fields
Documentation: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/sitemaps
<loc> URL to video landing page required
<video:player_loc> URL to flash player with parameters required
<video:content_loc> URL to video file (http only) not recommended
<video:thumbnail_loc> URL to thumbnail image required
<video:title> Title of video/page required
<video:description> Description of video/page required
<video:tag> Single word descriptive tags optional/recommended
<video:duration> Duration in seconds optional/recommended

44. Random Tips for Video Sitemaps
! Robots.txt
! Include sitemap location
! Allow crawling of all required assets
! <video:player_loc> vs. <video:content_loc>
! Respects desired thumbnail
! Bypasses issues with streaming protocols & authentication
! Reinforce sitemap elements with structured, on-page markup
! Monitor 404’s, expire video entries in sitemaps
! Include duration for long-form content

45. Brightcove VideoCloud Sitemap Resources
! Make your Video Content Indexable
! http://support.brightcove.com/en/video-cloud/docs/make-your-video-content-indexable
! The page includes
! Sample site maps – standard and video sitemaps
! Example video:player_loc element path you can use
! Resources for creating dynamic sitemaps

46. Optimizing Video Landing Pages

47. Video Landing Pages – Presentation & Design
Creating “Video Landing Pages”
! 1 Video/URL
! Video prominent on page, top of HTML
! Create obvious video “sections” /videos

48. Video Landing Page - continued
Make it easy for users to find videos
! Landing page display
! Show thumbnails of video with title text vs. icon or “click here for video”
! Avoid popups if possible – (i.e. “click to watch video” à pop-up)
! Incorporate video results within site search
! Add “videos” to navigation
! Recommend related videos and link to them
Auto-play or Not to Auto-play?
! Viewer expectation

49. Video Landing Pages – Basic SEO
Optimize the Video Landing Page
! General SEO for titles, descriptions, Headings
(H1, H2,) etc…
Provide ConTEXT to Surround Video
! Contextually related links (products, videos,
articles)
! Related on-page text (tags, transcripts,
comments)

50. Transcripts or No Transcripts?
! How much textual content on page?
! Is there a script?
! Is it helpful for user experience?
! Is it long-form content?
! Consider interactive transcripts (3PlayMedia)
! Increased view time w/MIT
! Internal cross-linking

51. How to Utilize On-Page Transcripts
! Must be in source code
! Ideally, not hidden from viewers
! OK if user initiated expandable layer
! Can be hidden behind video
! Must be clearly representative
! Still best to provide in visible manner
! Consider closed captions as well
! Accessibility for hearing-impaired
! Translations – global exposure
! Future use in video search via HTML5

52. Pay Attention to Load Times
Page Load Times are Critical
! April, 2010 - Factor in Google’s ranking algorithms
! User experience
! Monitor page load times with video
! In-video ads
! Player plugins
! Free tools to evaluate:
! Page Speed, open source browser add-on.
! YSlow, suggests ways to improve speed.
! WebPagetest, waterfall view of performance.

53. ! LINKING & SHARING
Video Landing Pages

54. Share the Video page URL
! Customize video
share URL to point
to player page
! How?
! Embed parameter
“linkBaseURL”
! Player API

55. Default Example vs. Site

56. Facebook Open Graph

57. Facebook Social Sharing
1) Shared Link -> Links to Source Page 2) Shared Link -> Plays Video on FB Wall

58. Facebook & Open Graph Mark-up
<head>
<meta property="og:url" content="CANONICAL-URL">
<meta property="og:title" content="PAGE-TITLE ">
<meta property="og:description" content="PAGE-DESCRIPTION "/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="SITE-NAME ">
<meta property="og:type" content="video">
<meta property="og:image" content=”IMAGE-URL"/>
<meta property="og:video" content="http://secure.brightcove.com/…swf" />
<meta property="og:video:secure_url" content="https://secure.brightcove.com/…swf” />
<meta property="og:video:width" content=”1280" />
<meta property="og:video:height" content=”720" />
<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
</head>

59. Advanced Open Graph – Movies, TV, Episodes…
! <meta property="og:type" content="video.movie" />
! <meta property="og:image" content="http://content6.flixster.com/movie/11/16/75/11167576_ori.jpg" />
! <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/django_unchained_2012/" />
! <meta property="og:description" content="Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary
masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino." />
! <meta property="video:release_date" content="2012-12-25" />
! <meta property="video:duration" content="165" />
! <meta property="video:director" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/quentin_tarantino/" />
! <meta property="video:actor" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/jamie_foxx/" />
! <meta property="video:actor" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/leonardo_di_caprio/" />
! <meta property="video:actor" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/christoph_waltz/" />
! <meta property="video:actor" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/samuel_l_jackson/" />
! <meta property="video:actor" content="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/walton_goggins/" />

60. Additional Markup for Video
What is Schema Markup?
! Joint effort launched by Bing, Google, Yahoo and Yandex
! Structured markup language (like microformats, RDFa, data-
vocabulary.org, etc.)
! Support for video launched in April, 2012
Benefits
! May help with indexing
! On-page markup
“…we’re also launching video
support for schema.org. …now
the recommended way to
describe videos on the web.”
– Henry Zhang, Product Manager for
Google Videos

61. How to Markup Videos with Schema
Must include the following
! itemscope and itemtype
! Name (title)
! thumbnailURL
! embedURL
! Description
! More info – http://www.reelseo.com/schema-markup-video/
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">
<h2>Video: <span itemprop="name">Title</span></h2>
<meta itemprop="thumbnailURL" content="http://site.com/
thumbnail.jpg" />
<meta itemprop="embedURL” content="http://site.com/player.swf?
123"/>
<object ...>
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
</object>
<span itemprop="description">Video description</span>
</div>

62. Working with Schema Markup
! Make sure markup is done in the source code for that page.
! It needs to be visible without executing any JavaScript or Flash.
! Submit a video sitemap
! Helps Google discover/index videos (schema not sufficient)
! Provides faster updates (new or updated videos)
! Provides additional information about your video content
! Use the same info in both your video sitemap, and your on-page markup.

63. Verifying Video Markup
Google’s Rich Snippet Testing Tool - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
! Provides verification of proper markup
! May not appear with the rich snippets

64. Extra Tips

65. Thumbnails as Important as Titles for CTR
Make Thumbnails
! High quality
! 16:9, HD
! Clear, in-focus
! Bright, high-contrast
! Close-ups of faces
! Visually compelling
! Good composition
! “compel you to click”
! Accurately represents

66. Video Content Marketing Builds Links
! Posts with videos included will attract
almost 3X more ILDs (In-Linking Domains)
than a plain text post.
! Posts with all three media types (videos,
images, and lists) will attract almost 6 times
more ILDs than a plain text post.

67. Offer Custom Embed Code Option
! Offer a custom embed code option
! Include a link back to the original video page
! Optionally link back to uploader, section, etc…
<embed></embed>
<p><a href=“LANDING_PAGE_LINK”>VIDEO TITLE</a></p>

68. Get on Google+
! Search+ Your World

69. YouTube

70. < 5 yrs. - YouTube = 2nd Largest Search Engine
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Bing
Yahoo!
YouTube
Google
2.7
2.7
11.7
3.9
U.S. Search Queries (billions) in Dec. 2011
Source: comScore qSearch, Dec. 16, 2011

71. Search video vs. YouTube

72. How YouTube Search Works = > Keywords
! YouTube Ranking Factors
! Title
! Description
! Tags
! Time watched
! Views & frequency
! Likes, dislikes
! Playlist additions
! Flagging
! Shares
! Comments
! Age of video
! Subscribers
! Favorites
! Embeds & inbound links
! Annotation linking

73. QUESTIONS:
THANK YOU
• MARK ROBERTSON – MARK@REELSEO.COM
• JAMES ZISK – JZISK@BRIGHTCOVE.COM

74. PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO COMPLETE A SESSION EVALUATION.
YOUR FEEDBACK WILL HELP IMPROVE BRIGHTCOVE PLAY.
Thank you