The importance of video in SEO is set to explode in 2012. It isn't enough to upload a video to YouTube or Vimeo and hope for the best - you need to know how to optimise it, distribute it and squeeze every last drop of marketing juice you can from it.

1. VSEO Strategies:
Why YouTube is so much
more than kittens & car
crashes
Carla Marshall | Sorbet Digital
ThinkVisibility
03/03/12

2. Overview
Why video is a bloody big deal
What video seo is (and isn‟t)
Hosting vs Posting
Best Practice for self hosting videos
All about YouTube
Top tips

3. Why rank for video?

5. Video is getting bigger
Video views on YouTube have increased by 25 percent in the past eight months, to an
astounding 4 billion per day. (Reuters 2012)
With 71% of all online adults participating on platforms like YouTube, video sharing
is up 38% since 2006, 28% of which share on a daily basis (Treepodia 2011)
52% of B2B Marketers are planning on using video as part of content marketing
strategy in 2012 (Marketing Profs 2011)

6. Stats a gogo
Video results appear in about 70% of the top 100 listings, the type of content most
often displayed in universal or blended search results. (Marketingweek, 2011)
Q4 2011 saw video views on retail and brand sites increase by more than 3x over Q3
(Invodo research, January 2012)
According to Cisco, video will increase from 30% of Internet traffic to 90% of Internet
traffic by 2013. (Cisco, 2010)
90% Of All Web Traffic Will Be Video - YouTube‟s Robert Kyncl (CES 2012)

7. What is video seo?

8. Video seo is...........
•Optimisation of the video content on your site
•Optimisation of your video content on other sites – video sharing sites etc
• An extension of SEO

9. It isn‟t a standalone – works best as part of an integrated marketing
strategy:

10. Video seo is not...........
• Throwing a video on YouTube and hoping
it goes viral
• Throwing a video on a home page and
hoping it attracts lots of lovely customers
•Smoke and mirrors
•A dark art

11. Video is SEO friendly
Stickiness – Visitors spend an average of two more minutes on websites that host videos
than on sites that don‟t. Video helps to increase a website‟ quality score too. A „long click‟,
which leads to more time spent on site, results from higher quality content, ultimately
enhancing user engagement.
Ranking – According to Forresters, your chances of getting a page one listing on Google
increase 53 times* with video because there is still much less competition for video
pages. (53 times IF other SEO is working – it‟s not a miracle worker)
CTR – A video thumbnail in the SERPs attracts attention

12. “Videos in universal search results
have a 41% higher click through
rate than plain text“ (AimClear
2011)

13. Video is Panda friendly
Visit depth and length – If Google is using data it has on visit
depth and length to your site to evaluate your rankings it‟s easy
to understand how video would have a positive influence – Your
visitors are prone to spend a longer time on each page and visit
more pages if they know they can expect to see videos there .
Video requires a bigger effort = less likely to be spammy -
Another reason Google would give a preference to video is
simply because of the extra effort involved in adding it into your
pages and curating it. Having video on your pages pretty much
earmarks you as being less likely to be a low-end quality spam
website.

14. Your video on the web

15. To Host or Post?
Hosting:
Hosting a video on your website and optimising it for the search engines
Posting:
Uploading your video to a sharing/syndication sites like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion,
MetaCafe etc and optimising it for search engines/users of those sites

16. Self Hosted Videos

17. Benefits of Hosting Video
•You can control on page factors such as metadata, CTAs etc
•You can fully customise your own landing pages
•You can measure effects via Google Analytics (Event Tracking), CrazyEgg etc
•Can strengthen overall site SEO
•Great for driving traffic to the site and (hopefully) converting that traffic

18. • Make sure video is enabled for all devices (mobile phones, tablets, iOS5 (HTML5)
• Use JW Player (WP plugin available) or Wistia. Both provide cross platform support

19. Benefits of Hosting Video
Host on your site then create a distribution strategy (including
blogger outreach). Video is great for blogs!
- MRSS feeds
- Embed Codes
- Facebook/Twitter/Google+ etc etc
- YouTube
- Vimeo

20. You need unique landing pages
•Each video needs its own landing page
& URL!!!
•Use SEO best practice for titles,
descriptions, header tags etc
•Provide context/focus around the video
• Allow easy sharing
•Link to other relevant pages/videos

21. Re-purpose content
•Transcriptions (speechpad.com)
•Presentations (slideshare.net etc)
•PDF downloads
•Screenshots as images (Flickr, Pinterest)
•Podcasts

22. How do you know if your video is
being indexed in Google?

24. Getting found in Google search
• Google has to find your video to be able to index it – it has to be told where it is
• Google uses video sitemaps to be able to do this even if your video is hosted
elsewhere (Vimeo, YouTube) and embedded on your site
• Don‟t rely on YouTube - Google will NOT index a YouTube video with your Domain
Name, it will always go back to the YouTube page
• You need a.............................

25. Video Sitemap

26. Video Sitemaps
•Lets the search engines know about your video content
• Tells the search engines what the focus of the video is
• Automatically adds a Thumbnail – good for CTR
• XML Sitemaps for video – supports mpg, mp4, mov, wmv, flv, avi, ram, asf
• Allows you to specify player
• Can be used alongside regular sitemap

27. The Technical Way
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/video-sitemap-guide-for-vimeo-and-youtube
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472
http://www.koozai.com/blog/webmasters/how-to-create-a-video-sitemap-for-embedded-youtube-videos-
without-using-linkedtube-com/#comments
http://www.reelseo.com/vimeo-sitemaps/

28. The Easy Way
•Use a video sitemap generator – add to Webmaster Tools
•http://www.sitemapdoc.com
•http://videositemappro.com/
•http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/ ($49)

29. The Easiest Way
• Upload Video
• Confirm URL
• Gives you an embed code (wrapped in JW Player)
• URL/Video indexed within 12 hours

30. Breaking News
• Google announces official schema.org support for videos
• This is great news!
• Rich snippets & less issues with indexing
http://www.reelseo.com/schema-markup-video/
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/intro
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/02/using-schemaorg-markup-for-
videos.html

31. Posted videos

32. Benefits of Posting Video
Take advantage/leverage traffic of larger sites –
including their authority and rankings
Easy way to get into blended search results – using
thumbnails
Builds brand awareness
No extra indexing needed

33. Be aware that....
80% of the video results shown in Google
are from YouTube and a lot less than 20%
are self-hosted. (Wordtracker 2011)
CTR of YouTube to original site – 0.03%

34. YouTube

35. • 2nd largest search engine in the world
•The „how to‟ video category is the fastest growing vertical on YouTube
•1 hour of video is uploaded every second.
•YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing
a YouTube link

36. Google ‘sYouTube video

37. YouTube is strongly influenced by:
• Title tag
• Tags – remember to use “xxxxxx“
• Engagement /Interaction (views, likes, comments, being added to playlists, shares etc)
• How many people use the embed code on their own site
• Subscriber numbers
• Inbound links to the video

38. Also: Was video found via Google
Search?
Top 3 videos on Google Video Search
compared to Top 4 listings on YouTube

39. YouTube General Tips
• Create a branded channel
• Post the videos to YOUR channel (not your agency)
• Allow comments and likes
• Use a keyword rich file name for the video
• Use the description feature!
•Use CTAs, captions and annotations (In Video Overlays)

40. In Video overlays

41. YouTube annotations
•
Link to other videos from within
YouTube annotations (rewards the
other video). Links to videos from
other videos/users in Youtube
matters a lot. Use annotations to
add CTAs, instructions, links,
comments etc

42. YouTube open captions
Captions are a bit of a silver bullet for video SEO, giving search
engines detailed information on the topics, content, and comments
within your video.

43. YouTube closed captions
155 different languages supported!
YouTube now has a capture search
http://captiontube.appspot.com/

45. YouTube CTAs
Register your video with
YouTube Paid Promotions to
enable your “Call To Action”
Overlay feature.

46. YouTube metadata

47. YouTube titles
•Keyword rich (not keyword
stuffed)
•Use YouTube Keyword
Suggestion Tool
•Make the first 27 characters count

48. YouTube tags
•Use the right keywords
•Use “.......” otherwise all the tags
would be separated
•Forget „the‟, „and‟, „it‟, etc

49. YouTube descriptions
•URL first!
•There is plenty of information you can
put in the Youtube description
including calls to action, text that
frames the content or provides
context, links to similar content or
websites etc

50. YouTube descriptions
•Use bit.ly in
place of a non-
SEO friendly URL
•Use the http://!

51. And finally...

52. Best Practice
• Offer multiple video formats - .mov, flv, mp4, mpeg
• Include target keywords in the video file name – also use“video”
• Encode your video files with relevant, targeted metadata
• On site – unique landing page per video & SEO the page
• On site – use embedded video players, not pop ups
• On site – build internal & external links to the video landing pages
• Off site – link build to the video pages

53. Oh and remember to.....
Make your videos as engaging and
informative as possible

55. Make sure they add value
Answer questions, provide information or entertainment
Quality content is king (yes, yes) but so is quantity. Post regularly.
Google wants relevant, quality content – if the
video ISN‟T relevant, it won‟t show in the SERPS
(not on the front page anyway)

56. Any Questions?
carla@sorbetdigital.com
www.sorbetdigital.com
@Carla_Marshall
www.facebook.com/sorbetdigitalseo
www.gplus.to/sorbetdigital