IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(MUSIC).
Hi, I'm Ian Lurie, and this is Video SEO Basics.
| | 00:08 |
Business owners and marketers have a huge
opportunity with video SEO because of the
| | 00:12 |
way search engines blend video into the
rankings.
| | 00:16 |
In this course, we'll explore where videos
appear in the search results.
| | 00:19 |
Then, I'll show you known video ranking
factors.
| | 00:22 |
We'll spend the rest of the hour reviewing
specific tips for improving your video rankings.
| | 00:29 |
Let's get started with video SEO basics.
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1. Introducing Video SEOUnderstanding video SEO| 00:00 |
Before you think about how to get a video
ranking, you need to understand why this
| | 00:04 |
is so important.
Videos can show up in a few places.
| | 00:09 |
On video hosting sites like Vimeo.com and
Dailymotion.com for example, and of course
| | 00:15 |
on YouTube.
Here is a search for Google analytics on YouTube.
| | 00:20 |
YouTube is the second most used search
engine on the internet.
| | 00:24 |
As of today, YouTube gets over one billion
searches per day.
| | 00:29 |
Think about that.
The last time anyone checked, YouTube was
| | 00:33 |
second only to google.com, getting more
searches per day than Bing, Twitter or Facebook.
| | 00:40 |
That's a lot of queries, and getting a
decent ranking on YouTube alone is worth it.
| | 00:44 |
But don't forget other video hosting
services.
| | 00:46 |
Most of the time, if you're putting video
up on your site, you upload it to a video
| | 00:50 |
hosting service like YouTube and then
embed it in your site.
| | 00:55 |
Here's an example of a video I uploaded to
vimeo.com and then embedded in a page on
| | 00:59 |
my company blog.
Since I didn't upload the video to
| | 01:02 |
YouTube, it will never show up in YouTube
search results which is kind of a bummer.
| | 01:07 |
But videos from any of these hosting
services can also appear writing
| | 01:10 |
conventional search results on search
engines like Google and Bing.
| | 01:15 |
For example, the video I just showed you
ranks in the top 20 for Google Analytics Tutorial.
| | 01:22 |
Bing does something similar, inserting
videos into the search results.
| | 01:27 |
And remember, I did not upload this video
to Youtube.
| | 01:30 |
Google includes non YouTube videos in its
search rankings, and Bing includes videos
| | 01:34 |
from non Microsoft properties as well.
Theses rankings called blended or
| | 01:38 |
universal search results are 40 to 50
times easier to get than a conventional
| | 01:42 |
text placement.
And they provide a great way to leapfrog
| | 01:46 |
over super competitive sites like say,
Google zone analytic site.
| | 01:51 |
Videos area great opportunity to grab
great real estate in the search results
| | 01:55 |
without going up against strong non-video
pages.
| | 01:59 |
In this training, I'll focus on YouTube,
because most folks use it for video hosting.
| | 02:02 |
It's free, and it's a great service.
But video SEO isn't as simple as just
| | 02:07 |
uploading a video to YouTube and hoping
for the best.
| | 02:11 |
Video SEO is about optimizing a set of
signals that tell search engines whether
| | 02:14 |
that video is sufficiently relevant and
important to warrant a spot in the
| | 02:17 |
conventional search rankings.
What exactly are those signals?
| | 02:22 |
Well, if I could tell you, this slide
would be the end of the course.
| | 02:26 |
The search engines aren't telling, and
video SEO isn't a sure thing marketing tactic.
| | 02:31 |
Well, actually, there's no such thing.
Video SEO means making sure a video is
| | 02:35 |
easily classified and easily categorized
by search engines.
| | 02:40 |
It's also about providing an accurate
picture of the video's significance to the audience.
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The result is an easier path to strong,
relevant search engine traffic, and an
| | 02:49 |
additional driver for business growth.
Now that you understand the basics an the
| | 02:54 |
importance of video SEO, think about the
part it can play in your overall online
| | 02:58 |
marketing strategy.
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| Exploring video ranking| 00:00 |
Video rankings are important.
They're easier to get and they allow you
| | 00:04 |
to gain eye catching real estate on search
engine ranking pages.
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To rank videos though, search engines use
a slightly different set of algorithms
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than they do for regular search results.
They have to examine the audience's
| | 00:16 |
interest in the video, their engagement,
as well as the relevance of that video to
| | 00:19 |
a specific search query.
There are dozens of metrics that feed into
| | 00:24 |
these larger categories and we don't know
all of them or exactly how they're
| | 00:27 |
balanced, but here are the most important
ones that we know are factors.
| | 00:32 |
First, the keywords in the video title,
obviously, the more relevant a video title
| | 00:35 |
is to a search query, the more likely it
is to rank.
| | 00:39 |
In this example I did a search for RC
Planes and you can see that the top
| | 00:43 |
ranking video, has RC plane in the title,
as does the second ranking video.
| | 00:49 |
But you can see that the number three
result doesn't have RC planes or plane in
| | 00:53 |
the title, and then the next one does.
How exactly does that happen?
| | 00:59 |
This is where the other factors start to
play a major role.
| | 01:02 |
For example, here, the number of views on
a video, makes a difference.
| | 01:06 |
More views by unique visitors is better
than fewer views, but don't cheat.
| | 01:12 |
If you pay for views or otherwise try to
manipulate viewership, you may get
| | 01:15 |
penalize and there's been some very public
examples of that, still though.
| | 01:20 |
That doesn't totally make sense or explain
this ranking.
| | 01:22 |
The number three result here has fewer
views than the number four result and they
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both have some version of crazy frog in
the title so, there's gotta be more to it.
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If you take a look here you can see that
view velocity, the number of views over
| | 01:36 |
time and the rate of growth in those views
can affect rankings as well.
| | 01:40 |
If you take a careful look at the graphs
on the right-hand side here, you can see
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that the number one video has very steady
growth and the growth rate is increasing
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over time.
It's only just started to top out.
| | 01:52 |
The number two video you can see has a few
bumps, but it's clearly starting to level out.
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And if you look at the video down towards
the bottom, you can see it's bumpy, but
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it's clearly leveled out.
And these are subtle differences, because
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we're dealing with tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of views, but you
| | 02:05 |
can see the part that this is playing.
If you can get good view velocity, good
| | 02:09 |
organic view velocity, that makes a huge
difference in your rankings.
| | 02:14 |
Next is view quality.
Are people actually watching the whole video?
| | 02:18 |
That matters a lot, and I can't show you
statistics on that here, because YouTube
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doesn't make those available to the
public, only the owner of the video has it.
| | 02:25 |
But you can look at your videos and see
the average amount of time that people are watching.
| | 02:29 |
User-interaction with their video.
So, comments, shares, thumbs up, actual
| | 02:34 |
engagement in conversation around the
video and the comments are all things that
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can show the impact your video's having on
the audience.
| | 02:41 |
Favorites on video networks are
particularly powerful.
| | 02:45 |
if you look at the number two video here.
it actually had 130 favorites.
| | 02:49 |
I checked in the statistics the number
three had 545 favorites.
| | 02:54 |
But again, it's not as keyword optimized.
But it still outranks number four, which
| | 02:57 |
only has 67 favorites, and fewer comments,
and fewer likes and dislikes.
| | 03:02 |
So, you can kind of see how this is
starting to play a role, where a video
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with a title that's not even close to
optimal can outrank a video with a fairly
| | 03:08 |
optimal title or even two videos with
fairly optimal titles.
| | 03:13 |
Because there's higher engagement with the
video.
| | 03:17 |
Another factor is keywords in the video
description.
| | 03:19 |
The more relevant the description is to
the query, the better the ranking.
| | 03:22 |
In this example, you can see that the
number one video has RC Plane in the description.
| | 03:27 |
And that, actually, the number five video
has RC Plane in the description.
| | 03:32 |
But the number two, three and four videos
don't have that exact phrase.
| | 03:36 |
So, they're ranking for other reasons, for
those other metrics that we talked about.
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Location diversity is an important factor
as well.
| | 03:44 |
The more different sites that embed your
video, the more useful search engines
| | 03:48 |
think it is.
It makes sense if you think about it.
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If a lot of different important websites
take your video and embed it in their
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pages and people all over the web watch it
on all of those sites, chances are it's a
| | 03:58 |
pretty important video.
It's generating high engagement.
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The authority and trust of those sites.
So, if the New York Times embeds a video
| | 04:07 |
of yours somewhere in their site.
That's a major factor.
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If I embed it in my personal blog,
probably not as big of factor.
| | 04:15 |
And the embed location within a site.
Is the video embed on the homepage, is it
| | 04:18 |
twenty clicks from the homepage?
The location matters because that is
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another way for search engines to infer
the importance of that video.
| | 04:27 |
How often, you post videos to their
relevant hosting site.
| | 04:31 |
So, here you can see an example.
We have a video with 180,00 views
| | 04:35 |
outranking a video with 276,000 views.
They both have fairly relevant titles.
| | 04:41 |
The video that's being outranked, actually
has RC plane right in the description.
| | 04:47 |
But you can see that the video ranking
above it, that author has posted 445 videos.
| | 04:53 |
The one below has only post 51.
That makes a difference.
| | 04:57 |
And subscribers.
The number of subscribers to a particular
| | 05:00 |
channel can boost that particular video.
So again, you've got a video with 180,00
| | 05:06 |
views about as optimal as the video below
it.
| | 05:09 |
But they have almost 60,000 subscribers to
their channel.
| | 05:12 |
Whereas the video below them only has 592.
It's another factor that makes a difference.
| | 05:19 |
There are other factors that matter as
well, they just aren't quite as important
| | 05:22 |
as far as we can tell.
Those include things like channel and
| | 05:25 |
playlist inclusion, you know, how many
people are adding your videos to a
| | 05:28 |
particular playlist.
Tagging and annotation of a video, so
| | 05:33 |
people can add notes and tags to videos
and that can make a difference.
| | 05:37 |
The overall authority of the channel where
the video is hosted.
| | 05:39 |
So, on YouTube, you know you get your own
channel, and the more authoritative your
| | 05:43 |
channel the more of a boost videos within
that channel will get.
| | 05:47 |
And the freshness of the video, how new is
it, has it been on the site for five years.
| | 05:52 |
And they'll take that and compare that to
velocity and see how important it is to
| | 05:55 |
the audience right now.
There are even more smaller factors, but
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they all come back to two basic
categories.
| | 06:02 |
There's video engagement, which is data
that the search engines can use to show
| | 06:06 |
the quantity and quality of interest in a
video.
| | 06:09 |
How is the audience responding.
And then, there's video relevance.
| | 06:14 |
That's the stuff that helps search engines
classify and categorize a video.
| | 06:18 |
Keep these two categories in mind and
you'll always stay on track.
| | 06:22 |
Think about your video content really
carefully.
| | 06:24 |
Which aspects of your content do you
directly control?
| | 06:29 |
Well, you directly control all the factors
surrounding relevance.
| | 06:32 |
You can add keywords to a title.
You can make sure that it's description is
| | 06:36 |
really well-written.
What you'll only control indirectly by
| | 06:39 |
creating compelling content?
Engagement factors.
| | 06:42 |
Make sure you're covering both.
But make sure in particular, that you take
| | 06:46 |
care of the things you can control 100
percent.
| | 06:49 |
Make sure that you've covered your bases
with keywords and tagging and things like
| | 06:52 |
that for all your existing videos.
| | 06:54 |
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| Debunking video-ranking myths| 00:00 |
Every now and then, when I'm walking
around at a marketing conference, I hear
| | 00:03 |
folks giving out secrets about how to get
pages and videos up high in the rankings.
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And I grind my teeth and I just move on,
because that's not a good place to have a
| | 00:11 |
discussion or argument about different
search tactics.
| | 00:15 |
Here's the top four worst video SEO myths
that I've heard, and why they're wrong.
| | 00:21 |
First, the idea that you can buy
popularity.
| | 00:24 |
There's lots of services out there that
will let you pay to have people come to
| | 00:27 |
your video, and click play, and come to
your video and leave comments, and embed
| | 00:31 |
your video on different sites.
Or do things like give thumbs up, or
| | 00:36 |
favorites to your videos.
You can do that kind of fakery, and
| | 00:40 |
strictly speaking, it will work for a
little while.
| | 00:44 |
But Youtube, Google, and Bing have seen
this before.
| | 00:47 |
It's not an original tactic.
In fact, it's been going on for over a decade.
| | 00:52 |
If you get 10,000 views in two days, and
then nothing after that, they're going to
| | 00:55 |
know something's wrong right away.
They look for anomalies.
| | 00:59 |
So, any anomalies in views or comments or
anything like that, could just get you
| | 01:03 |
pushed right down the rankings at best,
because your velocity tails off.
| | 01:08 |
At worst, they'll find out and they'll
actually penalize you.
| | 01:11 |
They'll push your videos down in the
ranking or remove them.
| | 01:13 |
So, don't do it.
The payoff is far too small, unless you
| | 01:17 |
are going to be buying video views
forever, for those videos and that's just
| | 01:20 |
not worth doing.
It's very hard to be sneaky about it, and
| | 01:23 |
it's impossible to sustain it or hide it
from the search engines.
| | 01:28 |
You will get caught.
The second myth is that, Google can
| | 01:31 |
automatically index the voice track of a
video.
| | 01:35 |
While YouTube does have a transcription
function, and it's pretty good, services
| | 01:38 |
like these aren't yet at the point where
they can drive rankings.
| | 01:42 |
Inaccurate transcription may mean
inaccurate classification.
| | 01:44 |
And remember, that's one of the crucial
elements of video SEO.
| | 01:48 |
So, make sure that you get your own
transcript done.
| | 01:53 |
The third one is that you have to use
YouTube to rank a video on Google.
| | 01:55 |
This is simply not true.
I've seen many videos rank that were
| | 01:59 |
hosted on other sites.
That said, YouTube is the primary search
| | 02:02 |
engine for videos, so, it's not a terrible
idea.
| | 02:05 |
You might just want to use another service
because you want to avoid ads or you want
| | 02:09 |
a more customizable video player.
There are reasons that you might want to
| | 02:12 |
make that trade-off.
And the fourth, and arguably the worst of
| | 02:16 |
all the myths is that there's some magic
formula.
| | 02:20 |
I get lots of emails from services and
systems claiming they can draw thousands
| | 02:24 |
of visitors to my site by pushing my video
to dozens and dozens of different video
| | 02:27 |
hosting services.
This may work some of the time, but more
| | 02:32 |
often, your video ends up on dozens of low
quality hosting services completely unwatched.
| | 02:38 |
You're much better off directing your
efforts and resources on a single hosting
| | 02:42 |
service like YouTube, or Vimeo or V Zar,
(INAUDIBLE) on real audience building.
| | 02:47 |
And that's what this really boils down to.
Shortcuts don't exist.
| | 02:52 |
They're possibilities, but they don't
exist as long term video SEO tactics, just
| | 02:56 |
like they don't exist as long term
marketing tactics.
| | 03:00 |
So, do it right.
Make it easy for search engines to
| | 03:02 |
classify your videos, and work to build a
natural audience interest in them.
| | 03:06 |
Focus on best practices and video SEO can
be a great traffic driver.
| | 03:10 |
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| Picking a video hosting service| 00:00 |
When you publish a video online, you have
to put it somewhere.
| | 00:04 |
You might use a site like YouTube, or you
might place the video on a file storage
| | 00:07 |
service like Amazon's S3.
Or you might set up your own web server.
| | 00:12 |
For our purposes, assume there are two
kinds of video hosting.
| | 00:16 |
Self hosted, where you store the video and
then you use your own custom player, and
| | 00:19 |
the video lives on your website or on a
set of servers that you control.
| | 00:24 |
And third party hosted, where the video
lives on another website and they provide
| | 00:28 |
the player you use to embed the video on
on your site, and they do all the
| | 00:31 |
streaming and encoding and everything else
of your video.
| | 00:36 |
99% of the time, you'll use a third party
service like YouTube.
| | 00:40 |
YouTube has a huge audience and it's free,
but limitations on the format and the player.
| | 00:45 |
The fact that there's advertising inserted
into your videos, and the fact you have
| | 00:49 |
less control over how and where, and when
the video appears maybe negatives.
| | 00:54 |
They may be things that you want to think
about before you choose YouTube.
| | 00:58 |
Your YouTube page will usually rank
instead of the page on your site where you
| | 01:01 |
embed the video.
If you take a look at this example here,
| | 01:05 |
notice, these are videos on the individual
websites, but they're actually linked
| | 01:09 |
directly back to YouTube instead.
So, those visitors are going to go to
| | 01:14 |
YouTube first not to this particular
individual's website.
| | 01:18 |
So, if you're after lots of video views
and you don't care where folks see the
| | 01:21 |
video, You Tube is an absolute no brainer,
you should use it definitely.
| | 01:26 |
If you want folks on your site when they
view the video, and you care a little bit
| | 01:29 |
less about access to an enormous audience,
and you care more about creative control
| | 01:33 |
over the user experience, then you
probably don't want to use You Tube.
| | 01:38 |
But you can still use third-party
services.
| | 01:41 |
There are other services that offer more
Options.
| | 01:43 |
They offer higher quality video, the
ability to upload larger files, ability to
| | 01:47 |
do things like pay per view, and very
customizable video players.
| | 01:52 |
None of these services can measure up to
YouTube in audience size.
| | 01:55 |
So, you'll get fewer views if you choose a
different third party service.
| | 01:58 |
Also, most of these services charge a fee
for the full version of their hosting.
| | 02:03 |
However, the fee is usually very small.
I'm talking you know, $5.00 a month,
| | 02:06 |
$10.00 a month, and the creative control
they provide can be a real plus.
| | 02:10 |
And of course, if you use a third party
service other than YouTube, the page where
| | 02:13 |
you embed the video on your site has a
higher chance of ranking.
| | 02:17 |
You have a better shot at getting that
page to show up, and a better shot at
| | 02:20 |
getting people to watch the video on your
site instead of on the third party hosting service.
| | 02:27 |
Services available at the time of this
recording include Wistia, Vimeo Pro,
| | 02:30 |
Vzaar, Brightcove, and there are many,
many others there coming up on the web all
| | 02:34 |
the time.
Most of them are exceptional.
| | 02:38 |
So, I suggest taking a look around, and
really picking and choosing fairly carefully.
| | 02:42 |
You can decide to do self-hosting as well.
Self hosting is very very difficult.
| | 02:48 |
You want to use it if you want to squeeze
out every last bit of authority links and
| | 02:52 |
social media shares from your embeds.
If you want to have 100% control over
| | 02:56 |
every aspect of the player and the video
delivery.
| | 02:59 |
If security is a huge issue of some kind,
those are all reasons you might want to do it.
| | 03:04 |
But remember, you're going to have to
worry about everything from bandwidth, the
| | 03:07 |
actual pipe from which the video is sent,
to the way you encode the video to the
| | 03:11 |
video player.
And you're going to have to control and
| | 03:14 |
support all of that.
That's a lot of effort for a fairly small gain.
| | 03:18 |
Unless you know how to do your own video
hosting, including fail over, content
| | 03:22 |
distribution, and creating a set of
embeddable players, just stick to a hosted service.
| | 03:29 |
Because the upshot here is that it only
matters if you launch your content.
| | 03:33 |
If the content never gets out there, if
you spend all your time working on your
| | 03:36 |
solution and tweaking your pages, it's not
going to do you any good as a marketing strategy.
| | 03:41 |
So, use the solution that will best
balance flexibility and your ability to
| | 03:44 |
publish video regularly and easily.
The more limited your resources, the more
| | 03:49 |
I suggest you look to YouTube.
As you get more sophisticated, you can
| | 03:53 |
look at other third party services that
support more options.
| | 03:56 |
And finally, you can go for your own
solution, if you're doing something
| | 03:59 |
completely unique or on such a scale that
the limitations of all the other services
| | 04:03 |
are going to be an issue.
Now's a good time to think about your
| | 04:08 |
video hosting strategy.
Obviously it has long-term implications.
| | 04:11 |
Take a look at how much video you produce,
how often, and how important the level of
| | 04:15 |
control over that video is to your
marketing strategy.
| | 04:20 |
Make your selection once you've weighed
those options.
| | 04:22 |
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|
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2. Researching Topics and KeywordsSelecting your video's topic| 00:00 |
Most folks have a tough time selecting a
topic.
| | 00:03 |
When I'm working with other people, I'll
hear stuff like, my industry is really
| | 00:06 |
boring, I've got nothing to write about.
No one wants to know about any of this
| | 00:10 |
stuff, or I've just totally run out of
ideas.
| | 00:12 |
And I know how difficult it can be to stay
motivated when you're producing lots of content.
| | 00:17 |
You're probably writing video scripts
about things you do every day, and it's
| | 00:20 |
hard to come up with a steady flow of
ideas because you're so close to it all.
| | 00:24 |
But here's some ideas that I used to get
myself unstuck and come up with really
| | 00:28 |
good subjects and topics to work with.
First, what are the questions you're most
| | 00:33 |
often asked by clients, customers,
friends, family whatever about your work?
| | 00:38 |
Answer each question in a video.
I'll find almost everyday that someone
| | 00:41 |
comes to me with a question and I'm
scribbling it down, because it will make a
| | 00:43 |
great video topic.
Take a look at the questions for which
| | 00:47 |
folks search for answers.
It's easy to do this using Google search
| | 00:51 |
box which includes this cool feature
called Google Suggest.
| | 00:55 |
If you type in the beginning of a
question, you'll see the most common
| | 00:58 |
searches around that question.
So, in this example, if I owned a bicycle
| | 01:03 |
shop, I just found my first six to seven
videos right there.
| | 01:07 |
You can review products and tools in your
industry.
| | 01:10 |
Your video can appeal to other people in
your industry and to potential customers.
| | 01:15 |
If they watch and comment on your reviews,
either audience can help you by building
| | 01:18 |
your online authority.
Remember, it doesn't just have to be
| | 01:21 |
potential customers, it can be other
members of your industry.
| | 01:25 |
So, you can review the products yourself,
or the tools you use in your day to day work.
| | 01:29 |
Talk about metatopics.
For example, provide advice on running
| | 01:33 |
your particular type of business.
There's lots of little things you do every
| | 01:37 |
single day that to you are probably second
nature at this point, but to someone
| | 01:40 |
looking to start the business or someone
new in the industry are a complete mystery.
| | 01:45 |
The more you break that down, the more you
create those videos, the more folks are
| | 01:48 |
going to be interested and pay attention
and subscribe.
| | 01:52 |
You can also invite people to submit
questions, then answer those questions
| | 01:56 |
using a video.
If you do that, then the folks who submit
| | 01:59 |
the questions will definitely come and
watch, and they'll probably tell their
| | 02:02 |
friends and collegaues as well.
Hey, I asked this question and Ian
| | 02:05 |
answered it for me in this video, you
should check it out.
| | 02:09 |
The best topics will grow out of your
audience's needs.
| | 02:13 |
That's really the point of this video.
If they have questions, answer them.
| | 02:17 |
If they like to laugh, provide them with
something humorous.
| | 02:20 |
If you're afraid they're going to buy a
product that won't work for them, give
| | 02:23 |
them buyer's guides and other kinds of
guidance.
| | 02:25 |
By building your topic from audience
needs, you guarantee you'll produce
| | 02:29 |
something useful.
And useful is the sure fire route to an
| | 02:33 |
engaged audience.
| | 02:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Picking phrases and concepts to highlight| 00:00 |
Say you know your topic and you're ready
to create some videos.
| | 00:03 |
But you still need to know what specific
key phrases you should use in the video
| | 00:07 |
title, in the description, and in other
text elements of the video.
| | 00:12 |
There's an important distinction between a
topic and a key phrase.
| | 00:16 |
A topic is your subject.
For example, how do I climb hills faster?
| | 00:21 |
A key phrase is a specific phrase that you
think folks will use to find videos on
| | 00:26 |
this topic.
For example, cycling climbing techniques.
| | 00:31 |
The topic is very very general.
The key phrase requires a bit of a look
| | 00:36 |
inside your audience's heads.
Because you need to anticipate exactly how
| | 00:40 |
they're going to search for the answer to
their question.
| | 00:43 |
To understand that you need to understand
the words they commonly use, it's tricky,
| | 00:47 |
but there's some great keyword tools out
there that can help.
| | 00:51 |
You can use the keyword data that various
video hosting services offer.
| | 00:55 |
YouTube has a tool and I'll give you the
URL for that in a moment, where you can go
| | 00:59 |
in and just type in the phrase and get
specific data on that phrase.
| | 01:05 |
You can see here this is giving me terms,
volumes of possible, and of course the
| | 01:09 |
ability to add those terms to an
advertising campaign, which I'll talk
| | 01:12 |
about in a moment.
Even terms that show up with not enough
| | 01:16 |
data are still getting some search
traffic.
| | 01:19 |
So I can look at these phrases, see the
terms they have in common and figure out
| | 01:22 |
the best phrase to use in my video title
description and in the video itself.
| | 01:29 |
And the address for that tool is
Youtube.com/keyword_tool.
| | 01:34 |
And I'll also show all the URL's of
different tools I talk about at the end of
| | 01:36 |
this video.
One very important caution about the
| | 01:41 |
YouTube tool, it is designed for people
who are buying advertising on YouTube.
| | 01:46 |
That data it provides is supposed to help
advertisers figure out where to place
| | 01:50 |
their ads.
That means the numbers probably aren't 100
| | 01:53 |
percent accurate from the perspective of a
video content creator.
| | 01:57 |
Because a number one position in the
regular rankings on YouTube, will not get
| | 02:02 |
you a 50, 60, 70 percent share of total
search volume.
| | 02:07 |
But in my experience, they're a good way
to choose the top search phrases because
| | 02:10 |
they still show their relative difference
in traffic between phrases.
| | 02:14 |
So even if the numbers aren't precise, the
difference between the phrases is usually
| | 02:17 |
very, very accurate.
So it's a great tool for that kind of comparison.
| | 02:22 |
You can supplement your YouTube queuer
research with other tools as well.
| | 02:25 |
Like Google Suggest, YouTube suggestions
will let you see the most popular searches
| | 02:29 |
relating to a particular phrase.
So, you can start typing a phrase into the
| | 02:33 |
search box on any page of YouTube, and see
what appears in the little drop down.
| | 02:38 |
Those are great suggestions for search
phrases.
| | 02:40 |
There are lots of non-video tools as well.
Some of my favorites are commercial tools
| | 02:46 |
like WordTracker, Keyword Discovery and
SEMRush.
| | 02:49 |
I also like to use Google suggest as a
broader check for questions and I like to
| | 02:53 |
use the Google Adwords keywords tool but
again you have to keep in mind this is
| | 02:58 |
designed for advertisers.
It's not designed for people looking for
| | 03:03 |
what I would call organic or natural
search data.
| | 03:08 |
You can find the AdWords keyword tool at
this address and once you have that data
| | 03:11 |
you can sort of do a sanity check on the
phrases you choose by taking a look at
| | 03:15 |
another tool called GoogleTrends.
To make sure you aren't catching a phrase
| | 03:21 |
as it's popularity is trailing off.
And that's really important, you don't
| | 03:25 |
want to put a lot of effort into a topic
or phrase and then find out that people
| | 03:27 |
are no longer interested.
And the URL for this tool is google.com/trends.
| | 03:35 |
A few critical rules to keep in mind when
you're selecting your key phrase.
| | 03:38 |
First of all, choose one or two at most.
You don't have much room to optimize the
| | 03:43 |
title and description in your video.
Right, it's going to be short.
| | 03:46 |
It's only going to be 60, 80 characters.
So focus on one phrase, or if you have two
| | 03:51 |
phrases that overlap, like cycle and
climbing.
| | 03:54 |
And cycling climbing tips, maybe on two in
general I prefer to focus on one.
| | 04:01 |
Use the audience's language.
An example I always like to use is if you
| | 04:04 |
sell running shoes, don't talk all the
time about athletic footwear, that's not
| | 04:07 |
the phrase people will use to find you.
They don't think of their shoes as
| | 04:11 |
athletic footwear, they think of them as
running shoes.
| | 04:14 |
Remember, even if you think your audience
is using the wrong key phrase, you need to
| | 04:18 |
optimize for the phrase that they're going
to use.
| | 04:22 |
You can always steer them in the right
direction later on, but you have to get
| | 04:25 |
them to find you first.
Also, don't worry about competition at
| | 04:30 |
least, don't worry about competition as
much as you might in conventional SEO.
| | 04:34 |
Since there's so many different factors
involved in video rankings.
| | 04:38 |
You have a better chance about ranking
really tough competitors in video SEO than
| | 04:41 |
you would in normal SEO.
Obviously you should pick the easier
| | 04:45 |
phrase if it's just as good.
But remember that you always have a shot
| | 04:48 |
at a top ranking.
One secret weapon I like to use for
| | 04:53 |
keyword research.
You can actually look at competitor videos
| | 04:56 |
and use the YouTube keyword tool to
extract the best keywords from those videos.
| | 05:01 |
Here's how you do it, first, go to a
competitors video on YouTube.
| | 05:05 |
Copy the address of that page, the URL.
Go to the YouTube keyword tool, change the
| | 05:10 |
setting under how would you like to
generate keyword ideas from descriptive
| | 05:14 |
words or phrases to YouTube video idea
URL.
| | 05:19 |
And then paste in the URL you just copied,
and then click Get Keyboard Ideas.
| | 05:24 |
Poof!
You get a list of all the keywords and
| | 05:26 |
phrases that YouTube feels are relevant to
that particular video.
| | 05:32 |
As promised, here's the three URLs of the
tools that I talked about again.
| | 05:36 |
Now that you've watched this video, take
some of the tools that you've learned
| | 05:39 |
about and go apply them to pick out
specific keywords around the topics that
| | 05:42 |
you've chosen.
| | 05:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Researching tags| 00:00 |
In SEO, tagging can mean a lot of things.
In this case, when I talk about tagging, I
| | 00:06 |
mean selecting tags on the video hosting
service that you're using.
| | 00:11 |
Tags are very important.
Here's what YouTube says about tags.
| | 00:16 |
When users type keywords related to your
tags, your video will appear in their
| | 00:19 |
search results.
You can't get much more direct than that.
| | 00:22 |
And by the way, it's totally true.
This is a search result from maple bacon dog.
| | 00:28 |
If you take a look here, you see my video
is showing in the search result.
| | 00:32 |
It's this one right here.
It's way down the page, but still, I don't
| | 00:36 |
use the phrase maple bacon dog anywhere in
my title, anywhere in my description, the
| | 00:41 |
only place I use it is in a tag.
And that got me on page one on YouTube for
| | 00:48 |
what, for awhile was a very hot term.
You can't use this example for every
| | 00:53 |
possible category, but it does work and
tags are very important.
| | 00:58 |
And the temptation I know, after reading
something like this and seeing this video
| | 01:02 |
is to go out and find every broad traffic
generating tag and add them to your video.
| | 01:07 |
Even if it has nothing to do with your
video.
| | 01:10 |
But remember, there's a lot more to
rankings than just tags, views, ratings,
| | 01:15 |
comments, velocity.
If you use tags that have nothing to do
| | 01:19 |
with your video and you get people coming
to it and they watch it, and they're unhappy.
| | 01:23 |
They're either going to watch the first
ten seconds and leave, which can lower
| | 01:26 |
your rankings, or they're going to give it
a thumbs down, which can lower your rankings.
| | 01:31 |
Or they're going to flag it, which will
also lower your rankings.
| | 01:35 |
So, when you select tags, use these rules.
First of all, if you have keyword
| | 01:40 |
research, if you've already done your key
phrase research, start there.
| | 01:43 |
Second, have at least one tag that very
generally describes the subject of the video.
| | 01:49 |
So, for example, if I did a video about
mountain biking, cycling would be one of
| | 01:53 |
my very general topical tags.
So, you actually want to go that broad.
| | 01:59 |
At the other end of the spectrum, have at
least one very specific key phrase tag.
| | 02:03 |
So, if I'm again talking about Mountain
Biking, then I would have a tag that says,
| | 02:06 |
Mountain Biking.
Don't create a new tag, if you can avoid it.
| | 02:11 |
Use the tags that already exist in your
video hosting services tag library.
| | 02:16 |
If a tag already exists, that probably
means folks probably already search for
| | 02:19 |
it, and by using it, you're speaking their
language.
| | 02:23 |
Use YouTube's search suggest feature to
find ideas for tags if you need to, and
| | 02:27 |
try to avoid stop words in your tags.
And when I talk about stop words, I mean
| | 02:32 |
things like a, the, and, or.
If a word does not impact the meaning of
| | 02:37 |
the tag, leave it out.
Use lots of tags.
| | 02:41 |
There's no penalty for using up all your
available tags space on any given hosting service.
| | 02:46 |
So, use every single one to fully describe
your video.
| | 02:50 |
Make sure at least one of your tags
matches your primary key phrase.
| | 02:54 |
When you do that, you should end up with
your primary key phrase showing up in the
| | 02:58 |
title, in the description and in your
tags.
| | 03:03 |
That's what will tell you, okay, this my
most important key phrase, and that's a
| | 03:06 |
good kind of synergy to have among those
three areas.
| | 03:11 |
Make sure you tag for mood where its
relative, if your video is funny, then use
| | 03:14 |
funny as a tag.
And the reason for that is folks often
| | 03:17 |
search for mood as well as content.
You can tell, if you go on YouTube and
| | 03:21 |
type funny in the search box.
Make sure you go plural where possible.
| | 03:25 |
In my experience, people tend to search on
plural forms of words, and search engines
| | 03:29 |
seem to have a better time going form
plural to singular than singular to plural.
| | 03:34 |
And these rules hold true on any video
hosting service that supports tagging.
| | 03:40 |
As you follow these rules to create your
list of tags, you may want to organize
| | 03:43 |
them into something like a spreadsheet.
Then you can search the sheet to remove
| | 03:47 |
stop words, check for words that don't
match your original intent and otherwise
| | 03:50 |
clean up your list.
Tags are very like keywords.
| | 03:55 |
So, if you've already done your key phrase
research, it's very tempting to skip the tags.
| | 03:59 |
And if you've already done your tagging
research, it's very tempting to skip the
| | 04:02 |
key phrase research.
But after this video, you should know to
| | 04:05 |
do both.
You can use YouTube's tag suggestions to
| | 04:09 |
drive additional ideas for key phrases.
And you can use your key phrase research
| | 04:14 |
to drive additional ideas for the best
tags.
| | 04:17 |
These steps build on each other and ensure
that you'll get a great result.
| | 04:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Optimizing Video RankingLearning more about video views| 00:00 |
Video views are an important ranking
factor and while you can't directly impact
| | 00:05 |
viewership, there are things you can do if
you understand how online viewership
| | 00:10 |
impacts the rankings.
First, a video with a high number of views
| | 00:15 |
tends to rank higher for relevant terms.
Video views.
| | 00:20 |
The number of times people actually play
the video.
| | 00:22 |
Indicate overall interest on the part of
the audience.
| | 00:25 |
Look at the top ranking video's here for
how to change a bicycle tire.
| | 00:29 |
The number one ranking has over 220,00
views.
| | 00:32 |
I't really popular.
The next video has over 100,000 views.
| | 00:37 |
But then you see this number three video.
And it only has 7,280 views.
| | 00:42 |
And the video's a year old.
It's not that brand new.
| | 00:47 |
The one below it has 277,000 views.
Why is that video number three?
| | 00:53 |
It's all about velocity of views.
The rate at which a video aquires new
| | 00:57 |
views is a second critical factor in the
rankings.
| | 01:00 |
It's another way that views impact the
rankings.
| | 01:04 |
Look at the acceleration on views for the
third video in the last few months.
| | 01:08 |
You see how it's getting faster and
faster?
| | 01:11 |
That's why a video with only 7,280 views
can outrank a video with 277,000 views.
| | 01:19 |
Because velocity is so much higher.
Think about this from the perceptive of a
| | 01:23 |
search engine.
If you rank videos purely based on the
| | 01:26 |
quantity of views, then one video might
get to number one and stay there forever.
| | 01:31 |
Because it just keeps acquiring new views
as the top ranking content.
| | 01:35 |
That's fine but what if a new, better
video comes on the scene.
| | 01:39 |
That new video will never catch up, even
if it's superior because the other video
| | 01:42 |
will just stay at number one.
By counting velocity as well as raw
| | 01:46 |
quantity, search engines can get an idea
of fresh, trending content that the
| | 01:50 |
audience finds really useful.
Here's what you don't want to do, purchase views.
| | 01:56 |
After seeing the importance of views, it
may be tempting to try to pay people or
| | 02:00 |
give them some kind of incentive to watch
your video.
| | 02:04 |
A lot of companies, and a lot of
industries have attempted to fake their
| | 02:07 |
way to a top rank by paying people to
watch their video.
| | 02:11 |
The theory is that if you get lots of
people to watch your video in a short
| | 02:14 |
time, you'll vault to number one.
That top ranking could cost you as little
| | 02:18 |
as a few hundred dollars spent acquiring
fake views.
| | 02:22 |
You do not want to do it.
Here's why.
| | 02:24 |
First, if you purchase a bunch of views,
you're going to get sudden growth and then
| | 02:28 |
a decline in velocity.
That's going to hurt your rankings.
| | 02:32 |
Second, you're going to have to keep
purchasing those views.
| | 02:35 |
Unless you have worked a true miracle, you
have a fantastic piece of content and that
| | 02:38 |
initial investment gets you momentum that
never goes away.
| | 02:43 |
You'll have to continue purchasing them.
It's a very poor business model, and most
| | 02:46 |
important, if you're caught you're
going to get penalied and or banned.
| | 02:51 |
There's been a few industries in the last
couple of years that have been caught and
| | 02:55 |
it makes for very, very bad PR.
So, you want to avoid this.
| | 02:59 |
It's easier in the long run to move up
naturally.
| | 03:03 |
The bottom line is that views come from
the nature of your content.
| | 03:06 |
But you can help a little.
For one thing, you can just ask people to
| | 03:10 |
share the video.
You can keep your video under two to three minutes.
| | 03:14 |
If that's too short for your content, just
break it up into smaller videos.
| | 03:17 |
And spread the word.
If your company has a blog, embed the
| | 03:21 |
video there.
If you have a Facebook page, put it there.
| | 03:25 |
If you have an email list of people who
have said they want to receive useful
| | 03:27 |
information from you, send them the link
to the video.
| | 03:31 |
Don't spam people, but do spread the word.
Now, you understand in more depth why
| | 03:35 |
views matter.
Assess how your promote your video content.
| | 03:40 |
Develop a checklist for every video you
post that includes asking folks to share.
| | 03:45 |
Keeping your video under two to three
minutes and distributing the video through
| | 03:48 |
other channels you have.
| | 03:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing the right titles and descriptions| 00:00 |
A video title is the name you give your
video when you upload it to YouTube or
| | 00:03 |
(UNKNOWN) or whatever site you're using.
If you want your video to rank for a
| | 00:08 |
specific search phrase, you need to
include that phrase in your title.
| | 00:13 |
The title appears at the top of most
hosting service pages in channels and
| | 00:16 |
playlists and in any news feeds.
It also shows up as the title of any
| | 00:22 |
search result, as you can see here.
A great title is going to have your key
| | 00:25 |
phrase in it but it's also going to entice
folks to click through and play the video.
| | 00:31 |
Remember video plays are a major ranking
factor.
| | 00:34 |
So you want the clicks, it's not just
about the getting your key phrase into the
| | 00:37 |
title of the video.
You can enter the title when you first
| | 00:40 |
upload your video.
But you can also go back and edit it later on.
| | 00:44 |
Which means you can test, and find the
right balance between key phrase relevance
| | 00:47 |
and enticement.
Think of the video title as the product name.
| | 00:51 |
It's what first sells the video, by making
it clear what I'm going to see.
| | 00:56 |
These are the rules I try to follow when
writing a video title.
| | 00:58 |
First, make sure your title is fully
descriptive.
| | 01:02 |
If you write it on a blank sheet of paper
and show it to a complete stranger, they
| | 01:05 |
should understand what they would see if
they watched that video.
| | 01:09 |
In this example, moonwalk doesn't really
fully explain what I'm going to see.
| | 01:14 |
It explains that the video's about the
moonwalk.
| | 01:16 |
It doesn't explain if it's the dance, and
it doesn't explain if it's insturctional
| | 01:19 |
or just a video of someone doing it.
Learn to do the Moonwalk is fully descriptive.
| | 01:25 |
Second, include your target phrase in the
title, but write it well.
| | 01:30 |
It should make sense to any reader, and it
should be an easy read for them.
| | 01:34 |
Fourth, keep the title to 68 characters or
less.
| | 01:38 |
Google will truncate anything longer, and
it just won't look right.
| | 01:41 |
And fifth, try some of the classic
action-headline formulas.
| | 01:45 |
You can pick up a book about marketing
copyrighting or writing a great sales
| | 01:47 |
letter and learn some of these.
But here's a couple of examples.
| | 01:51 |
How to, and then whatever it is that
you're teaching is one example.
| | 01:55 |
And then also, what it is that you're
explaining or teaching, like a famous
| | 01:58 |
person who does it really well.
Its a tough balancing act.
| | 02:03 |
You want titles that are relevant and have
your key phrase in them.
| | 02:06 |
You also want titles that folks like to
read and entice the user to click.
| | 02:11 |
It takes practice but here a few ways to
write great titles that are still key
| | 02:13 |
phrase relevent.
First, write for benefit.
| | 02:18 |
For example, you might write capturing
sales with Google Analytics goal tracking,
| | 02:22 |
instead of setting up Google Analytics
goal tracking.
| | 02:26 |
There's an obvious benefit there,
capturing more sales.
| | 02:29 |
Second, write for action.
For example, you might write cycling for
| | 02:34 |
pros, climbing like a crazed goat.
It's easy to picture that action as
| | 02:39 |
opposed to Cycling for Pros, Tips for
Bettery Climbing.
| | 02:43 |
Third, write for humor.
For example, you might write, Fix a Flat
| | 02:48 |
Tire Without Cursing.
Remember you can modify titles later.
| | 02:52 |
If a title isn't getting enough rankings
or clicks.
| | 02:55 |
Consider tweaking the title to see if you
can get any better results.
| | 03:00 |
The description is a bit easier.
You can write two or more sentences, I
| | 03:03 |
usually write two to four, so you have
more room.
| | 03:06 |
My rules for video descriptions are, don't
stuff your key phrase into the description.
| | 03:12 |
You can include your target phrase once.
But don't keep putting it in there again,
| | 03:16 |
again, and again.
It makes for lousy reading and search
| | 03:18 |
engines may see that as manipulative and
they may actually push you down in the rankings.
| | 03:23 |
Include a call to action, for an example,
you might write "watch this video to
| | 03:26 |
learn" .
And then what ever it is you are teaching
| | 03:29 |
or you might include something like "like
this video give it a thumbs up!".
| | 03:34 |
Third, include a few takeaways.
What will I learn when I watch this video?
| | 03:39 |
Now that you've seen this video, you
understand.
| | 03:42 |
You can have a relevant title and
description without being boring.
| | 03:46 |
Write for relevance and for user interest,
and you'll rank higher.
| | 03:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing full versus partial views| 00:00 |
How you choose to deliver you video, and
the length of that video have implications
| | 00:04 |
for video SEO.
Many hosting sites, Vimeo and VZaar for
| | 00:07 |
example, have the option of showing the
first few minutes of video and then asking
| | 00:11 |
viewers to sign up or pay to see the rest.
That's called a partial view.
| | 00:16 |
You can see an example of that here at the
top.
| | 00:19 |
That's fine for marketing in general, but
for successful video SEO, you want to show
| | 00:23 |
the full video.
Having a partial-view video doesn't
| | 00:27 |
directly impact rankings as far as we
know.
| | 00:30 |
Instead, it impacts lots of other ranking
factors.
| | 00:33 |
For example, a partial video is not
going to generate as many links or shares.
| | 00:38 |
Customers are less likely to share a video
with friends, or link to it from their
| | 00:41 |
various blogs and profiles if they know,
they're sending everyone to a partial video.
| | 00:45 |
It's frustrating for everyone.
It's also not going to generate as many
| | 00:49 |
thumbs up, again, folks get frustrated
when they can't watch the whole video.
| | 00:53 |
You can't do a complete transcript.
A truncated video usually means a
| | 00:56 |
truncated transcript, which means less
keyword relevance on the hosting service
| | 01:00 |
and, if you keep your transcript on your
landing page, on your own site.
| | 01:05 |
A full video will generate more comments
than a partial view video: positive
| | 01:08 |
comments anyway.
The same for ratings, and comments and
| | 01:11 |
ratings build the authority and trust
around that video.
| | 01:15 |
And finally, a partial video is less
likely to be favorite, and favorites are a
| | 01:19 |
major ranking factor.
So, use full views, your audience will
| | 01:23 |
thank you and that will result in higher
rankings.
| | 01:27 |
Now, talking about video length.
I've looked at several thousand videos,
| | 01:30 |
and typically a top ranking video is two
to ten minutes in length, and it's
| | 01:34 |
complete, as in self-contained.
Try to stick within those parameters.
| | 01:39 |
You may sometimes have a single video
that's much longer than that.
| | 01:43 |
I've done a few that were over an hour.
If that's the case, consider some options.
| | 01:48 |
You could break that longer video up into
two to ten minute chunks, then put them
| | 01:52 |
all in a single playlist from a single
page on your website.
| | 01:57 |
The result is, you pull all those videos
together into a single set of content.
| | 02:01 |
It's almost as good as having everything
contained in the same video.
| | 02:05 |
If you're having a hard time persuading
yourself or your boss that you should put
| | 02:09 |
a complete video out there for free,
consider how much money do you think
| | 02:11 |
you'll earn by charging folks to see the
entire video.
| | 02:16 |
Do the math on this.
If you get 1,000 people to watch the
| | 02:19 |
introduction to your video, and then 5% of
those people move on and watch the rest
| | 02:22 |
after doing whatever it is they're
supposed to do, and that's a very generous
| | 02:25 |
number, you'll end up with 20 paying
customers.
| | 02:30 |
If you can charge them each $10, that's
$200.
| | 02:35 |
On the other hand, if you can get all
1,000 of those people to watch the entire
| | 02:39 |
video, and if they all tell two to three
friends about the video so that they go
| | 02:42 |
and watch it, you've just had 3 to 4,000
people watch the video.
| | 02:48 |
If 5% of those people become customers of
your larger business, that's a hundred and
| | 02:52 |
50 or so real customers.
That's a far better payoff.
| | 02:56 |
These aren't absolute numbers, so, take
the dollar amounts with a grain of salt.
| | 03:00 |
All I'm saying is that there are very few
scenarios where charging for a video
| | 03:03 |
content will make you more money than
using that video content to get folks
| | 03:07 |
paying for core products or services.
Now that you've seen this video, you
| | 03:11 |
understand why it's important to use full
views unless you can show a really, really
| | 03:15 |
strong financial justification for a
partial view.
| | 03:19 |
Run the numbers on your own business, and
on the value of a full customer versus
| | 03:23 |
what you could charge for a particular
video.
| | 03:26 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Facilitating viewer comments and ratings| 00:00 |
Comments and ratings are definitely a
video SEO ranking factor.
| | 00:04 |
And they may seem out of your control, but
you can do things to get more of both and
| | 00:07 |
to improve the quality of comments that
you get.
| | 00:11 |
Lets start with comments.
The quantity and velocity of comments
| | 00:14 |
definitely matters.
But if you take a look at this page.
| | 00:17 |
You can see that it's not the only factor.
The number two video has few reviews, and
| | 00:21 |
fewer comments than the number three
video.
| | 00:25 |
The quality of comments is the
differentiating factor here.
| | 00:29 |
And they matter as well.
The comments on the number three video are
| | 00:33 |
short, and not necessarily lending much to
the discussion.
| | 00:36 |
Where as the comments on number two are a
bit substituent, they, they lend more to
| | 00:40 |
the conversation around that particular
video.
| | 00:44 |
Here's a few ways that comments can impact
the rankings.
| | 00:47 |
First, they show engagement, they also add
keyword relevance, so potentially if lots
| | 00:51 |
of people leaving comments with your
keywords in them.
| | 00:56 |
That may impact your ranking and
relevance.
| | 00:59 |
They also indirectly impact the rankings,
because every comment added to your video
| | 01:02 |
is social proof to people who visit that
page that they might want to leave a
| | 01:06 |
comment as well.
so, it encourages more comments and views.
| | 01:12 |
And some hosting services have several
networks built into them, so that if the
| | 01:15 |
user leaves a comment on a video, all of
their friends and followers, receive a
| | 01:19 |
notification, that they left that comment.
So, there's a lot of good reasons, to try
| | 01:24 |
to get more comments on your videos, but
you have to nurture them, you have to
| | 01:27 |
nurture the comments and the cementers and
here's a few tips for doing that.
| | 01:33 |
First, practice good comment moderation.
Make sure that you review your comments
| | 01:37 |
periodically and remove, ban or block
really bad commenters.
| | 01:42 |
The only time you should do that is if the
comment is actually obscene, rude or just
| | 01:45 |
completely unhelpful.
Sometimes people will throw links into
| | 01:48 |
comments in an attempt to advertise a
product that has nothing to do with your
| | 01:52 |
discussion thread for example.
Don't remove comments that are simply negative.
| | 01:57 |
If someone is criticizing, let them
criticize.
| | 02:00 |
You also have to respond to comments, and
when I respond to comments, I follow these rules.
| | 02:06 |
First of all, I always respond.
If someone leaves a note with a question,
| | 02:10 |
I make sure I leave an answer.
If they leave a note saying how much they
| | 02:13 |
love the video, I'll probably even leave a
note saying thanks.
| | 02:17 |
If someone offers criticism, I'm going to
respond in a positive way, meaning if
| | 02:21 |
someone posts a critique of the video,
something specific like I didn't really
| | 02:24 |
like the way you did this one part of the
video.
| | 02:28 |
Or next time can you show more detail
please, then I'll leave a reply saying
| | 02:31 |
something like that's really good
feedback, thank you I'll take care of that
| | 02:34 |
next time.
On the other hand, don't feed the trolls.
| | 02:39 |
And this is a internet expression.
And when I say don't feed the trolls what
| | 02:42 |
I mean is, there will be people who will
leave clearly extremely negative comments
| | 02:45 |
simply to try to get a reaction.
So, if you respond to someone's criticism
| | 02:50 |
in a positive way and then they come back
with more negative criticism, you might
| | 02:53 |
want to just leave it at that.
But the most important thing is, you
| | 02:57 |
respond to people who are leaving useful
notes that are actually making a real
| | 03:01 |
contribution to the discussion around your
video.
| | 03:04 |
When you respond, they appreciate that.
So, now let's talk about ratings.
| | 03:09 |
Ratings, on YouTube these are the thumbs
up and thumbs down buttons, impact the
| | 03:13 |
video rankings as well but they don't
necessarily impact them the way you'd expect.
| | 03:19 |
Now, obviously the velocity of ratings
matter, so does the quantity.
| | 03:24 |
But what matters less is whether the
ratings are positive or negative.
| | 03:28 |
If you have a video with 9,000 negative
ratings and no positive ones, you're going
| | 03:32 |
to have a problem.
There's no question.
| | 03:35 |
But any balanced velocity is good.
So, even if you're getting 30, 40, 50% of
| | 03:39 |
your ratings being negative, that may not
necessarily indicate that the video's
| | 03:42 |
going to have a hard time ranking.
It may simply indicate that the video is
| | 03:46 |
prompting a great deal of discussion, and
that it's controversial.
| | 03:49 |
And that may actually help it rank.
It's not easy to get more ratings.
| | 03:53 |
And you certainly should not go out and
pay people to rate your video.
| | 03:57 |
But there are a few tips that can help you
maximize the number of ratings you get.
| | 04:01 |
For example, you can ask in the
description of your video that folks rate
| | 04:04 |
the video.
Just say something simple like, If you
| | 04:07 |
like this video please give us a thumbs
up, If you hated it please give us a
| | 04:10 |
thumbs down.
you can ask at the end of the video itself.
| | 04:15 |
You can say, if you're watching this video
on YouTube, please when you're done give
| | 04:18 |
us a thumbs up if you like what we said.
And you can ask in follow-ups.
| | 04:23 |
So, if you're using YouTube to distribute
training materials or some kind of updates
| | 04:27 |
that you then notify people of those
updates using e-mail, you can in the
| | 04:30 |
e-mail say, we really like to get your
feedback, can you please give us a
| | 04:33 |
thumbs-up or thumbs-down and let us know
how you liked the video?.
| | 04:40 |
On your next video, try adding a single
sentence to the description that just
| | 04:43 |
reads, please rate this video below.
Also, try responding to every comment
| | 04:49 |
that's left on that video.
See how that video performs in the
| | 04:52 |
rankings compared to previous videos.
| | 04:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Developing transcriptions and captions| 00:00 |
I know we talk a lot about video, but
search engines still at their heart use text.
| | 00:06 |
Plain old text on a page as their primary
ranking signal, so video represents some
| | 00:10 |
special challenges to search engines.
They have to find ways to attach relevance
| | 00:15 |
and significance to different videos.
And they do that using a lot of the
| | 00:19 |
signals I already talked about.
Things like velocity of comments, velocity
| | 00:23 |
of views, keywords in the title tag.
But you can help them and rank much higher
| | 00:28 |
if you can supplement your video content
with text and transcripts, captions and
| | 00:33 |
annotations offer you that ability.
So I'll start by talking about transcripts.
| | 00:40 |
A transcript is a word for word copy of
what's said in the video.
| | 00:44 |
You can upload a transcript directly to
YouTube and you can put it directly on the
| | 00:47 |
page on your site where you embed your
video.
| | 00:50 |
Either way it's giving the search engines
an accurate copy of the video.
| | 00:54 |
The example you see here is from a website
called maz.com.
| | 00:58 |
They post a full transcript of their
videos right on the same page as the video.
| | 01:03 |
That gives search engines a full text
version to crawl and use to classify both
| | 01:07 |
the video and the page.
And that's important because even though
| | 01:11 |
YouTube and other search tools attempt to
transcribe automatically.
| | 01:14 |
They're not quite accurate enough to be
used as a classification tool.
| | 01:18 |
You can look in this example and see that
they've gotten a couple of lines very
| | 01:22 |
wrong here, home entertainment instead of
oh, you're kiddin' me.
| | 01:26 |
We've got because you can pay me with your
instead of the kind you can pay me with.
| | 01:30 |
So these are very impressive tools.
And when you think about, it this
| | 01:34 |
transcription tool got it probably 80%
right which is amazing.
| | 01:38 |
But it's not quite accurate enough to
trust it to give a search engine its idea
| | 01:42 |
of how to classify your video.
So if you put the transcription on the
| | 01:48 |
page in your website where you embed your
video, that provides Google with a very
| | 01:51 |
powerful signal as to the content of that
video.
| | 01:55 |
Because the text on the page, Google will
assume is relates to the video itself.
| | 01:59 |
Plus it can help you with conventional
SCO, because you put more content on that page.
| | 02:03 |
If you upload the transcript to YouTube,
then we know for a fact, that Google
| | 02:07 |
crawls and indexes that text.
Google uses that text, when it's
| | 02:12 |
classifying the video and deciding where
it should rank.
| | 02:16 |
Now captions are different.
Captions may be word for word or not.
| | 02:20 |
But they're time based and they're
synchronized with the video so that the
| | 02:24 |
transcribed words or other information
appear on the screen right when the actor
| | 02:28 |
on the screen is supposedly saying those
words.
| | 02:33 |
And if you didn't notice a moment ago
YouTube actually generates captions when
| | 02:36 |
it's transcribing your video.
So you actually get both when it does the
| | 02:40 |
automatic transcription, but again, it's
not quite accurate enough.
| | 02:46 |
So captions have to be connected directly
to the video.
| | 02:49 |
If you add captions, remember to put a
copy on your embed page as well, otherwise
| | 02:52 |
they may not provide the same relevance.
Use captions if you're going to have a lot
| | 02:57 |
of users using mobile devices because they
may be in places where there's too much
| | 03:00 |
background noise to listen to the audio of
your video.
| | 03:04 |
You should use captions if you are
going to have your video auto play on your
| | 03:07 |
own website, which I never recommend.
But if you're going to, you want to have
| | 03:12 |
captions because you'll probably want to
mute the video.
| | 03:15 |
When it starts playing so that your
viewers don't suddenly blast your
| | 03:18 |
soundtrack across their whole office when
they decide to load your homepage.
| | 03:22 |
You definitely want to use captions if you
think your audience might include folks
| | 03:25 |
who are hearing impaired.
Because this may be their only way to
| | 03:28 |
understand what's being said in the video.
Regardless of which one you choose, you
| | 03:33 |
have to pick one or the other because you
need that text supplement to your video.
| | 03:37 |
Now I typically do transcripts.
They're much easier.
| | 03:40 |
I can hire a service to do it for pennies
per word.
| | 03:43 |
And it scales really well, because I can
send the video out, get it transcribed in
| | 03:46 |
a couple of hours and get it back really
quickly.
| | 03:49 |
Captions take a little more effort because
they have to be synchronized and delivered
| | 03:52 |
in a certain format.
Now there's another way to supplement the
| | 03:57 |
content in a video, and these are called
annotations.
| | 04:00 |
An annotation is a bit of text that's
added directly to the video itself and
| | 04:03 |
appears in the video at a particular time.
In this example I'm adding a block of text
| | 04:09 |
to the ultimate marketer tease video.
And while it's not 100% clear how these
| | 04:14 |
directly impact rankings, they're a useful
tool and they can indirectly help video SEO.
| | 04:19 |
They do that by providing a call to
action.
| | 04:21 |
Maybe providing a link to your website or
otherwise adding details to the video that
| | 04:25 |
aren't there.
And, they can let you do that without
| | 04:29 |
using a high-end video editing tool.
So you can use annotations to create links
| | 04:33 |
to other resources on your website or
elsewhere.
| | 04:37 |
You can point out important details in the
video.
| | 04:40 |
And you can provide a call to action.
So you can provide something at the end of
| | 04:43 |
the video like share this video with your
friends or rate this video below.
| | 04:47 |
Or you can combine it with a link and and
say visit our Facebook page and like us there.
| | 04:52 |
Use annotations when and if they make
sense.
| | 04:55 |
Unlike transcriptions and captions which
we know get crawled and indexed by Google
| | 04:59 |
and therefore impact the rankings.
Annotations have a secondary effect on SEO.
| | 05:05 |
They get people to take action.
Be mindful of that when you invest effort
| | 05:09 |
and focus on the transcript or captions
first.
| | 05:12 |
Then move on to using annotations.
Captions, transcripts, and annotations are
| | 05:17 |
always to supplement your video content.
When you use them, you make your video
| | 05:21 |
more visible.
If you put in all the time to create and
| | 05:24 |
upload a video, take the extra few minutes
to annotate it, and pay for a
| | 05:27 |
transcription or a caption.
You'll see the results in your rankings.
| | 05:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Embedding video| 00:00 |
This course isn't about traditional SEO,
but there's still some important rules to
| | 00:04 |
follow when you embed videos on your site.
And I'm going to go over them here.
| | 00:09 |
Any video hosting service provides an
embed code like this.
| | 00:12 |
You can use this to place the video on
your site by cutting and pasting it into
| | 00:15 |
the code of your page.
But when you do that, you need to consider
| | 00:19 |
your goals and keep some best practices in
mind.
| | 00:22 |
When I say consider your goals what I mean
is think about what you want from having
| | 00:26 |
the video on your site.
Do you want more people coming to your
| | 00:30 |
site or do you just want more viewers for
the video?
| | 00:33 |
That will make more sense in a moment.
The first rule is include only one video
| | 00:37 |
per page.
Don't have a long list of videos on a
| | 00:39 |
single page unless they're all very
closely related, like they're part of one
| | 00:43 |
training course...
Because it'll be very hard to indicate to
| | 00:46 |
search engines what that page is about.
Make sure you include a transcript of the
| | 00:51 |
video on that page or at least a very
complete description.
| | 00:56 |
Don't use an iFrame based embedding tool
on your site.
| | 01:00 |
If you have the option, and you should,
all the paid hosting services I've talked
| | 01:03 |
about here, do offer that option, then you
don't want to use it.
| | 01:07 |
On YouTube, that will mean using the quote
old embed code.
| | 01:12 |
Why?
Because this will let you add things like
| | 01:14 |
rich snippets to your video later on, and
because Google appears to have a very hard
| | 01:18 |
time crawling content in an iFrame.
That's beyond the scope of this course
| | 01:23 |
right now, but it's good to retain that
flexibility.
| | 01:25 |
And just to insure that Google can see
that the video is actually embedded in the page.
| | 01:30 |
So if you use the iFrame, that may not
happen.
| | 01:33 |
Make sure the video embed code is
available on your page so people can put
| | 01:36 |
it onto their sites that they can embed it
elsewhere.
| | 01:40 |
And finally, if you're being picky and you
want to make sure that only your page
| | 01:44 |
ranks for the video, give those other
people the iFrame version of the embedding code.
| | 01:50 |
What that will do is ensure that they put
the video on their site, and people can
| | 01:53 |
view it, but Google will only recognize
the video on your site.
| | 01:58 |
Now there's other more traditional SEO
steps you can take.
| | 02:01 |
For example, you want to make sure that
you provide social media sharing buttons
| | 02:04 |
on the page.
Because those kinds of shares can first of
| | 02:07 |
all just spread the word about the video,
which will spread discussion and probably
| | 02:11 |
the kinds of citations that will improve
rankings.
| | 02:14 |
And second 'cuz there's some evidence that
social media sharing is used as a search
| | 02:18 |
ranking signal.
You'll want to optimize the title tag of
| | 02:22 |
that page.
So just like you make sure your key phrase
| | 02:25 |
shows up in the title for your video.
You want to make sure your key phrase
| | 02:29 |
shows up in the title for the page,
itself.
| | 02:31 |
And then, if you're really working hard on
optimization.
| | 02:34 |
You might look at linking from a prominent
place in your site's navigation to that
| | 02:37 |
video page.
I'm not going to go into the specifics of
| | 02:40 |
all of this.
Just kind of keep it in mind as you're
| | 02:42 |
embedding content on your site.
If you host your video on YouTube and it
| | 02:46 |
does well in the rankings, it's 99% likely
the YouTube page is going to rank instead
| | 02:50 |
of your own.
You should still take all the steps that I
| | 02:55 |
just talked about.
Your page may appear in the conventional
| | 02:57 |
rankings like it does for me here.
And then the page on my blog that has a
| | 03:01 |
video embedded in it is appearing here.
But just understand that the YouTube page
| | 03:06 |
is probably going to get most of the
ranking and most of the clicks.
| | 03:11 |
If you really really want your page to be
the only thing that ranks for the videos
| | 03:14 |
so that all of the traffic for the video
goes to your website.
| | 03:18 |
Then you want to use a third-party service
like Vimeo, and you need to block the
| | 03:21 |
video on the third-party hosting site so
that Google can't go to that hosting site
| | 03:25 |
and crawl the video there.
So in this example, you'll see I have a
| | 03:30 |
webinar, and it's embedded on Vimeo, and
it's embedded on my own web site.
| | 03:34 |
But you can see they're both ranking.
That's because I did not block the video.
| | 03:40 |
In this case, I have a video that is
embedded on the (UNKNOWN) site and it's
| | 03:44 |
also hosted on Visa/g, but Visa page is
blocked from being crawled.
| | 03:49 |
So, the video page from our site, is what
ranks, and nothing else.
| | 03:52 |
So, just keep these tips in mind.
This is a little advanced for a video SEO
| | 03:57 |
basic's course.
But you're going to embed video on your
| | 04:00 |
site and if you do, kind of keep these
rules in mind, you'll probably make sure
| | 04:03 |
that you retain flexibility later.
For additional optimization that you want
| | 04:08 |
to do.
To just summarizing really quickly, when
| | 04:11 |
you embed a video on your site, consider
your goals.
| | 04:14 |
If you want lots of traffic to your site,
you want to make sure that your page is
| | 04:18 |
the only one that ranks.
And do some of the things in here I've
| | 04:21 |
talked about, like blocking the video on
other sites.
| | 04:25 |
You'll also want to make sure that your
page is highly optimized.
| | 04:28 |
If you're more concerned just about
getting lots of viewers, then that's not
| | 04:31 |
as critical.
And you can put the video up on YouTube
| | 04:34 |
and other hosting services and just let
the rankings fall where they may.
| | 04:38 |
After this video, go take a look at how
you are treating videos on your website.
| | 04:43 |
Are you putting videos one video to a
page?
| | 04:46 |
Do you have transcripts with them?
Those are two very easy upgrades.
| | 04:49 |
Are you using the right kind of embed code
do you have sharing buttons around them.
| | 04:53 |
Take a look at all that and see what
actions you can take to improve your rankings.
| | 04:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Improving Your VisibilityUsing social media to announce your video| 00:00 |
You created your video, you selected
keywords and tags and crafted your title
| | 00:03 |
with great care.
All you need is a steady flow of views,
| | 00:07 |
shares and reviews, and you'll be headed
up in the rankings.
| | 00:11 |
Now, the problem is how do you let people
know.
| | 00:13 |
Well, social media is a fantastic place to
start.
| | 00:17 |
Even if all you have is just two or three
close friends on your Facebook account,
| | 00:19 |
they probably want to help you out.
They'll go watch your creation if you let
| | 00:24 |
them know, and as more people discover
your videos they will likely seek you out
| | 00:27 |
on common social media sites as well.
So, make sure you have a consistent social
| | 00:32 |
media launch plan, a set of steps you
always go through when you put a new video online.
| | 00:37 |
For example, when you publish a new video,
you should make sure that you announce it
| | 00:41 |
on Facebook.
Facebook is great for reaching anyone.
| | 00:45 |
Consumers, B2B customers, which ever...
So, you should always place your video on Facebook.
| | 00:51 |
You should announce it on Goolge+ as well.
Even if you don't have any friends on
| | 00:55 |
Google+, even if you've never used it
before, Google's social network is
| | 00:59 |
increasingly bound up in their overall
rankings algorithm.
| | 01:03 |
So, it pays to announce your videos there.
Announce on Linkedin to make sure that you
| | 01:07 |
reach a business audience.
And then, you can also use Twitter if you
| | 01:12 |
need to reach a geekier audience, a
younger audience, or a niche audience,
| | 01:14 |
like a particular set of journalists,
because you'll often find folks like that
| | 01:17 |
using Twitter pretty actively.
Then you need to find other sites as your
| | 01:22 |
audience fits.
And you'll know you're industry and your
| | 01:25 |
customer base better than I.
And you'll know which special anchor
| | 01:28 |
social networks are out there that you can
use.
| | 01:31 |
Use these sights with caution, because
they are very picky and they don't really
| | 01:35 |
like promotional stuff getting published
on them.
| | 01:38 |
So, if you go to one of these niche sites,
make sure that when you publish, you are
| | 01:41 |
publishing stuff that's informational.
Now, I know it can seem like you are
| | 01:47 |
shouting in the wilderness, but if you
even get one or two people to watch your
| | 01:49 |
video via social media, and one of them
shares it with a few more people and a few
| | 01:52 |
more of those people watch and so on.
It's a very scalable way to promote your
| | 01:58 |
video and it's well worth the effort.
Some guidelines for when you post, make
| | 02:03 |
sure that you keep the post short.
Don't write multiple paragraphs, just show
| | 02:07 |
the video and have a very brief
introduction and text explaining what it's about.
| | 02:11 |
Embed the video, don't reupload it.
The reason for that is, if you link to a
| | 02:16 |
video on a site like Google+ or Facebook,
they automatically try to embed it on the page.
| | 02:22 |
They're very, very good at this.
You can see here on Google+ that I have a
| | 02:25 |
video that looks like I professionally
embedded it in the page, when all I
| | 02:28 |
actually did was take the link to the
video from Vimeo and paste it on to
| | 02:31 |
Google+ as a link not as a video.
And Google+ figured it all out, and placed
| | 02:38 |
the video in that nice player and
everything.
| | 02:41 |
Facebook is equally clever if not more so.
So, you don't need to re upload the
| | 02:45 |
videos, just embed them on the pages.
Write a really good announcement.
| | 02:51 |
This is more about marketing copy-writing
than video SEO, but write a good
| | 02:54 |
action-based headline that's fully
descriptive and makes the reader want to
| | 02:58 |
click Play.
Maybe most important, respond.
| | 03:03 |
Say thanks.
If they ask a question, make sure you answer.
| | 03:06 |
You'll win immediate fans.
Also, if they follow you, check them out,
| | 03:11 |
and if they're relevant, follow them back.
Another one of my favorite rules is don't
| | 03:16 |
feed the trolls.
If someone offers useful criticism, thank
| | 03:19 |
them, and answer in a productive way.
If they're rude or just plain nasty, don't
| | 03:24 |
answer, don't react.
That's the best way to defuse someone
| | 03:27 |
who's trying to just get a rise out of you
and other people that are watching the video.
| | 03:32 |
Consider time zones.
If you announce a video and you've got
| | 03:34 |
some followers on a social network and you
get absolutely no response, think about
| | 03:38 |
the time zone.
Was it very early or late in the time zone
| | 03:42 |
where most of your audience is?
If so, consider doing your resend a few
| | 03:45 |
hours later with a note like, afternoon
resend for all you folks on the east coast.
| | 03:51 |
And finally, if you've got a video you
really, really want to promote, and you
| | 03:54 |
think folks would really want to see it,
consider using things like Facebook paid advertising.
| | 03:59 |
These kind of paid promotions social media
advertising systems are very, very good.
| | 04:04 |
They're great networks to try.
There's very little risk, because you pay
| | 04:07 |
by the click.
So, if no one clicks your ad, you don't
| | 04:10 |
pay anything.
And I suggest taking a look on Facebook at
| | 04:14 |
things like sponsored stories as a way to
make sure that lots of people see your
| | 04:17 |
announcement when you make it.
So, social media is not magic, but it can
| | 04:23 |
help jump-start your video SEO campaign.
And if you stick with it, over time you'll
| | 04:28 |
grow your audience, and it can become a
very powerful engagement tool.
| | 04:32 |
Go take a look at the current social
networks for your organization, or for
| | 04:35 |
yourself, and see if there are people
within those networks, that might want to
| | 04:38 |
hear the next time you launch a video.
Then when you do launch a video, announce
| | 04:43 |
it to them and see what happens to your
rankings, and your video views.
| | 04:47 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a video XML site map| 00:00 |
A Video XML Sitemap can ensure that search
engines see all of the videos on your website.
| | 00:06 |
So in this video, I won't talk in huge
detail about how to create them.
| | 00:10 |
I will point you in the right direction to
get started and tell you about what you
| | 00:13 |
need to know if you're managing other
people who are actually building the sitemaps.
| | 00:19 |
If you don't need to know how to create a
sitemap, if you have a development team or
| | 00:22 |
a company that does your development for
you, then these are the things you need to know.
| | 00:27 |
First, you need to know your Google
Webmaster Tools login.
| | 00:31 |
If you don't have one, you need to set one
up.
| | 00:32 |
And you can talk to the folks who manage
your website to do that.
| | 00:36 |
You need a list of all of the videos on
your site and the pages that they're on.
| | 00:41 |
And you need to be able to provide access
to your web server to the people who are
| | 00:44 |
going to create the sitemap.
If you're not going to create the sitemap
| | 00:48 |
yourself you can actually stop the video
here, you're good to go.
| | 00:52 |
Before we begin, again, you need to have a
Google Webmaster Tools account.
| | 00:56 |
That's how you're going to upload the
Video Sitemap later on, so make sure you
| | 00:58 |
do have that set up and you have the
password.
| | 01:02 |
If you've never heard of an XML Sitemap,
here's a quick summary.
| | 01:05 |
XML Sitemaps in general are an entire
category of specialized files uploaded to
| | 01:09 |
the web to help search engines figure out
all of the entities on a website, the
| | 01:12 |
pages, the videos, the sound files, et
cetera.
| | 01:17 |
A Video XML Sitemap will provide a list of
the videos that you're embedding on your
| | 01:21 |
site, the pages on which they're embedded,
the videos titles, and descriptions and
| | 01:25 |
other optional information like the length
of the video, number of views, a
| | 01:28 |
thumbnail, things like that.
A basic XML Video Sitemap looks like this.
| | 01:37 |
It looks really scary.
But if you break it down, it's actually
| | 01:40 |
pretty simple.
There's this template.
| | 01:42 |
This text that you just have to use time
and time again.
| | 01:45 |
And that's all of the stuff that's in blue
or in red.
| | 01:48 |
And then, if you see the black text here.
This is what you would actually change.
| | 01:52 |
So this is the video page title.
The description of the page that it's on.
| | 01:56 |
An optional link to the thumbnail for the
video, et cetera.
| | 02:01 |
This is really a template.
It's like doing a mail merge in Microsoft Word.
| | 02:05 |
You just take this text file and you
insert all of the snippets of text into it.
| | 02:09 |
And if you want to learn about the
standard you can.
| | 02:12 |
You can go to a site called sitemaps.org
and really dive into how the standard is
| | 02:16 |
set up and how you deal with the various
properties of videos.
| | 02:21 |
Luckily, you also don't have to write your
sitemap by hand.
| | 02:25 |
There are a lot of tools out there to make
your life easier.
| | 02:28 |
Most important, if you're using WordPress.
Especially the installed version, wordpress.org.
| | 02:32 |
There are great plugins that will generate
Google XML Sitemaps for you.
| | 02:38 |
One of my favorites is called Google XML
Sitemaps for Videos.
| | 02:41 |
But you can go onto the wordpress.org
website.
| | 02:44 |
Search through the plugins.
Install the plug in.
| | 02:47 |
And it will do everything else for you.
My team has actually created a fancy
| | 02:51 |
Google Doc spreadsheet that will generate
the sitemap for you.
| | 02:55 |
Go on to Google and do a quick search on
video sitemap generator portent and just
| | 02:59 |
click the first item and you can go use
that sheet.
| | 03:03 |
And there are several paid products and
services that will generate the sitemaps
| | 03:06 |
for you.
Google lists some of the more common ones
| | 03:09 |
on their site and you can find that page
by doing a search on Google for
| | 03:13 |
code.google wiki sitemapgenerators.
Once you've completed the sitemap you'll
| | 03:20 |
up load it using Google Webmaster tools.
So, here I'm in Google Webmaster Tools.
| | 03:24 |
I've actually logged in, I clicked on
Optimization and then Sitemaps.
| | 03:28 |
I'll click Add to a Sitemap, follow the
prompts and just upload my file.
| | 03:33 |
Google will tell you, within minutes, if
there is any problems with the file.
| | 03:37 |
So, you want to keep an eye on this and
then go back and fix anything you need to
| | 03:40 |
and then upload it again and that's it.
I've seen videos appear in Google's index,
| | 03:45 |
as quickly as a day after, I uploaded a
video sitemap.
| | 03:49 |
So, creating video sitemaps can be a
chore.
| | 03:52 |
But it's worth the time and the
investment, it ensures that search engines
| | 03:55 |
know where videos are located on your
site.
| | 03:58 |
And it increases the chances your site
will rank, instead of the video page on
| | 04:02 |
YouTube or another third party hosting
service.
| | 04:05 |
Take a look at your site, see how many
videos there are on there, find out if
| | 04:09 |
you're using WordPress or another pre
built content management system that has a
| | 04:12 |
plugin for Video XML Sitemaps.
And do the initial investigation on just
| | 04:18 |
how hard it's going to be to create that
XML sitemap.
| | 04:22 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an optimized playlist| 00:00 |
Every third party video hosting site has
some form of playlists.
| | 00:04 |
Playlists are easy to create, and there's
pretty strong evidence that playlist
| | 00:07 |
inclusion has a direct effect on video
SEO.
| | 00:10 |
Playlists are collections of videos
grouped by subject, some attribute, or
| | 00:14 |
just about anything else that the viewer
uses to organize the videos that they want
| | 00:18 |
to watch.
You can create playlists of your own
| | 00:22 |
videos, and use that playlist to give your
videos a ranking boost.
| | 00:27 |
That boost can happen because YouTube and
Google aggregate their views when they're
| | 00:30 |
doing their rankings.
So, if you have a playlist with lots of
| | 00:33 |
videos that have historically done well,
and you add a new video, it may get a nice boost.
| | 00:38 |
Playlists provide a powerful call to
action for viewers.
| | 00:42 |
If they watch one video in the list, they
may watch the rest, and you can embed
| | 00:46 |
entire playlists on other websites.
In addition, playlists get their own title
| | 00:51 |
and description, allowing you to optimize
for broader topics than you may want to
| | 00:55 |
optimize for within each video.
It's also possible that YouTube may look
| | 00:59 |
at the rate at which you add new videos to
a particular playlist.
| | 01:04 |
If you're hard at work, adding videos
every week or even every day, that could
| | 01:07 |
boost every other video in the list.
And users can like and share playlists
| | 01:13 |
within YouTube.
That's another signal that extends across
| | 01:16 |
all videos in that list.
And even if it doesn't directly impact the
| | 01:20 |
rankings, it gets you more views, more
thumbs-up, more engagement.
| | 01:25 |
Here's an example where I was able to tie
together a large group of analytics
| | 01:28 |
tutorials, then aggregated all the videos.
You can see it put them all together here,
| | 01:33 |
it pooled together all the views on those
videos it also pooled any participation by
| | 01:37 |
the audience on those videos, and made it
much easier for me to sneak into a very
| | 01:41 |
crowded ranking space.
You can see here I'm ranking one above
| | 01:47 |
Google, and one below someone else who
contributed a really good tutorial.
| | 01:52 |
And you can see here that my video was
submitted not all that long ago.
| | 01:55 |
There's also a link to another related
page on my site, above the results that
| | 01:59 |
you see here.
That page contains a video that's also in
| | 02:04 |
that playlist.
So, you can see that playlists are
| | 02:07 |
providing all different kinds of boosts to
my rankings.
| | 02:11 |
If you have two, ten, or a thousand
videos, you should consider grouping them
| | 02:14 |
into playlists.
And here are the basic rules that I use
| | 02:18 |
when I optimize a YouTube playlist.
You need to group like with like.
| | 02:23 |
If you have 50 videos that all discuss the
merits of rhubarb/g, but ten of them are
| | 02:27 |
recipes, create a separate rhubarb recipes
playlist.
| | 02:31 |
Make sure that the title for the playlist
is fully descriptive.
| | 02:34 |
If you write that title on a blank sheet
of paper and show it to a complete
| | 02:37 |
stranger, they should understand what the
contents of that playlist will tell them.
| | 02:41 |
Of course, use your target key phrase in
that title.
| | 02:45 |
Write a complete description.
Again, use your target key phrase in that
| | 02:49 |
description, and embed the playlist on
your own website.
| | 02:53 |
That will allow visitors to the site to
see the entire playlist re-embedded on
| | 02:57 |
their own sites, share it with other
people, or just continue watching other
| | 03:00 |
videos in the list.
Playlists may seem like a small detail,
| | 03:04 |
but they're super easy to do.
They can provide a nice shot of adrenaline
| | 03:09 |
to any video SEO campaign.
Make them another step in your video SEO routine.
| | 03:15 |
Go take a look at all the videos you have
on your particular YouTube or Vimeo
| | 03:18 |
channel, and see if you can group them
into play lists and make them available to
| | 03:22 |
the public that way.
| | 03:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an optimized channel| 00:00 |
If you have a YouTube account, you have a
channel page, every account holder on
| | 00:04 |
YouTube has a channel page.
Channel pages and channels can impact
| | 00:08 |
video SEO in a few important ways.
First, here's what I mean when I say
| | 00:13 |
channel page, a channel page aggregates
your YouTube content under your identity.
| | 00:18 |
It lets you do a little decorating with a
custom header, things like custom colors,
| | 00:22 |
and you can choose which videos show
where.
| | 00:25 |
Then it shows basic information about you
and your organization.
| | 00:29 |
And lets visitors see all the videos
you've created.
| | 00:32 |
Here are four particularly important
channel metrics that YouTube and Google.
| | 00:38 |
May apply when they're determining how to
rank a video.
| | 00:41 |
First, video upload frequency, the more
frequently you upload new videos to your
| | 00:45 |
channel, the more relevance and importance
YouTube will attribute to the videos
| | 00:49 |
within it.
This is in the context of those video's
| | 00:52 |
reviews, viewership, and other factors of
course.
| | 00:55 |
So if you just spew times of videos out
there and nobody watches, that's not
| | 00:58 |
going to help you.
But if you can continuously add decent
| | 01:01 |
quality videos, that's definitely going to
help all of the videos within the channel.
| | 01:06 |
Video upload recency is also important.
Videos on a channel where the last video
| | 01:11 |
upload was a year ago will have a harder
time ranking as well as videos on a
| | 01:14 |
channel where the last upload was an hour
ago.
| | 01:18 |
The number of channel subscribers matters.
More subscribers can make all the videos
| | 01:23 |
in your channel more authoritative, and
therefore get them higher rankings if
| | 01:27 |
those subscribers are real people who
watch other videos on YouTube, and watch
| | 01:30 |
the videos in your channel.
And finally, aggregate video views.
| | 01:36 |
More total views within a channel makes it
more likely new videos will rank, because
| | 01:39 |
YouTube wants signals that you're
providing quality content.
| | 01:43 |
Unless we forget, because this isn't
metric but it's still important, call to action.
| | 01:49 |
A great channel page will make it more
likely that folks will watch your videos.
| | 01:53 |
Towards the end of this video, I'm going
to talk about some specific features that
| | 01:56 |
Google has added to YouTube recently that
will help improve your caller action.
| | 02:01 |
Here are a few basic steps you can take to
make your channel as appealing as possible.
| | 02:05 |
First create a background image you can
search Google there are lots of tools and
| | 02:09 |
tutorials about this but the basics are
create an image that's 1,800 by 1,298 pixels.
| | 02:16 |
Keep it really, really simple.
If you do something crazy, it's going to
| | 02:19 |
make it hard for people to see the text on
the page and the videos on the page.
| | 02:23 |
You have to export it in either JPEG or
PNG format, and then note that the maximum
| | 02:27 |
file size is 1 megabyte, so you can't use
anything bigger than that.
| | 02:33 |
Use relevant tags.
You can see another video in this series
| | 02:36 |
titled Picking the Right Tags for more
information.
| | 02:40 |
Write a great, fully descriptive title.
If you've watched other videos in this
| | 02:43 |
series, you've heard me say this already.
But your title should be something that if
| | 02:47 |
written on a blank sheet of paper and
shown to a complete stranger tells the
| | 02:50 |
stranger what they're going to see when
they visit that channel page.
| | 02:56 |
Write a detailed description.
Don't just copy a blurb about your company
| | 02:59 |
from your website, make sure it's unique.
Use the other channels feature to
| | 03:03 |
cross-promote related content.
I have two channels on YouTube, a personal
| | 03:07 |
one and one for my company.
Recently, I linked the two by using the
| | 03:11 |
other channels feature.
Now, when I promote content on my business
| | 03:15 |
site, it also shows up in my personal
feed.
| | 03:19 |
Link to your website, your Twitter
account, your Facebook page, and other
| | 03:23 |
relevant social media sites from your
channel page.
| | 03:27 |
And do the same in reverse.
In your YouTube account settings, be sure
| | 03:30 |
to actually connect your Facebook and
Twitter account.
| | 03:34 |
There's a section called connected
accounts and what I've done, is I've
| | 03:37 |
connected Facebook and Twitter directly,
to Youtube.
| | 03:42 |
That does a couple things, it
automatically shares public activity on
| | 03:44 |
those accounts.
Here, the only thing I'm sharing right now
| | 03:47 |
is if I upload a video.
But I could set it up to automatically
| | 03:50 |
tweet and post to Facebook if I like a
video, if I comment on a video, if I add a
| | 03:54 |
video to a public playlist.
In addition, you want to connect your
| | 04:00 |
YouTube account to Google+.
If you haven't done this yet then the next
| | 04:04 |
time you log into YouTube, if you have a
Google Plus account, it will automatically
| | 04:07 |
prompt you and you want to make that
connection.
| | 04:10 |
That's very, very important, 'cuz Google
is clearly working towards merging all of
| | 04:13 |
their properties into Google Plus one way
or another.
| | 04:16 |
Set up your activity feed for sharing,
that way your account will stay active
| | 04:20 |
when you do any kind of update.
Even if you don't upload new videos.
| | 04:25 |
So, when you create or add to a public
playlist, or you like something, comment
| | 04:28 |
on it, all your subscribers will know.
Group videos within the channel using playlists.
| | 04:35 |
And there's another video in the series
about optimizing video playlists.
| | 04:40 |
And then here's the slick new feature I
was talking about.
| | 04:43 |
You can create welcome videos for your
channel, one video for people who are
| | 04:47 |
already subscribers, another for people
who aren't.
| | 04:51 |
So, you can basically create a channel
trailer.
| | 04:53 |
This video can do a lot, to draw in
unsubscribed visitors or prompt subscribed
| | 04:57 |
visitors to come in and see the latest
content on the video.
| | 05:01 |
You really want to take advantage of this.
So a quick warning.
| | 05:06 |
When you upload a video to your channel,
if you don't specifically choose unlisted
| | 05:10 |
as I have right here, that video will
immediately become public within your channel.
| | 05:17 |
So if you upload a video and then you
intend to come back to it later and do all
| | 05:20 |
the final wrap up work like adding a
transcript and stuff.
| | 05:23 |
And you don't want the video to go live
until then.
| | 05:26 |
If you leave it set to the default, which
is public, it will publish, and then
| | 05:29 |
you'll have to go and make all those
changes.
| | 05:32 |
And those changes will populate to
everybody who's already seen the video.
| | 05:36 |
If you want to keep things as clean as
possible, make sure that you pick
| | 05:38 |
unlisted, and then change it to public
once you're done.
| | 05:42 |
Channel pages are your home page on
YouTube.
| | 05:45 |
Remember, you can always edit them later
on but you want to have as polished a
| | 05:48 |
channel page as possible because the
things that happen on that channel page
| | 05:52 |
effect every single video you publish
because of the way YouTube and (UNKNOWN)
| | 05:55 |
aggregate statistics within a channel.
Go take a look at your channel page and
| | 06:01 |
see if there's some quick things that you
can do to get some easy wins like
| | 06:04 |
integrating your page with Google Plus,
integrating your page with Facebook and Twitter.
| | 06:09 |
Adding a unique description of your
company.
| | 06:12 |
You'll see the impact that that can have
on the rankings of all the videos within
| | 06:14 |
your channel.
| | 06:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Analyzing your success with YouTube statistics| 00:00 |
If you've put all of that work, into
producing a video and then promoting it,
| | 00:03 |
you're going to want to know how it's
doing.
| | 00:05 |
YouTube provides an excellent analytic's
tools set, built right into your account.
| | 00:10 |
Note that other services, like Vimeo, have
similar reporting.
| | 00:13 |
So, you can apply what you learn, in this
video, to those services as well.
| | 00:18 |
To see your report, log in to YouTube and
then click the little chart icon at the
| | 00:21 |
top of the page.
You'l get a report that shows views, level
| | 00:25 |
of engagement and even a little
demographic data across all of your videos
| | 00:29 |
within your channel.
But when you start exploring the options
| | 00:34 |
on the left, things really start to get
interesting.
| | 00:37 |
You can use these individual reports to
check all sorts of things like different
| | 00:41 |
time frames, you can narrow searches by
location, you can take a look at audience
| | 00:44 |
retention across all your videos.
You can even look at things like the
| | 00:49 |
devices they're using to view your videos.
And then you can segment your data so that
| | 00:53 |
you can see people on certain devices
shared your video more often than people
| | 00:57 |
on other devices.
So, there's a lot you can do with this data.
| | 01:02 |
But that can be a little overwhelming.
So, here's the stats that I like to check
| | 01:05 |
typically when I'm taking a look at my
channel.
| | 01:08 |
First, I want to see total views over time
across all my videos.
| | 01:12 |
Since view velocity is a major ranking
factor, I need to see it and I just need
| | 01:16 |
to see if there's any big changes or
aberrations.
| | 01:20 |
Second, I want to look at all the
engagement reports so I'll take a quick
| | 01:22 |
look at comments, favorites, likes, and
dislikes just so I can see whether I'm
| | 01:25 |
generating a response.
I'll take a look at top traffic sources,
| | 01:30 |
typically it's YouTube.
But it's good to see where else your
| | 01:33 |
viewers are coming from.
And this also gives you a preview of the
| | 01:36 |
kinds of devices that are driving views.
Playback locations tell me whether folks
| | 01:42 |
watch my videos via mobile devices, on
other websites, or on YouTube.
| | 01:46 |
And this may be my favorite report,
audience retention, I need to see whether
| | 01:50 |
people are watching my entire video or
whether they're just clicking play and leaving.
| | 01:56 |
I can optimize my video length based on
what I see here.
| | 01:59 |
Note that I can also drill down and look
at specific videos to see how each video's
| | 02:03 |
performing on its own.
This lets me look for outliers, videos
| | 02:07 |
that are doing particularly well or
poorly, and take action based on what I see.
| | 02:13 |
You may use different reports.
For example, demographics aren't that
| | 02:16 |
critical to what I do.
I just glance at them to make sure
| | 02:18 |
something hasn't gone totally off balance.
But you may care about demographic data a
| | 02:22 |
lot and use that report instead.
Make sure you explore the options on the
| | 02:27 |
left-hand side so that you can see all the
different kinds of data that YouTube makes available.
| | 02:32 |
Also, note that YouTube makes new kinds of
data available all the time, so you
| | 02:35 |
want to keep checking back to see what new
stuff they're releasing.
| | 02:42 |
One important point is, don't just look at
the data.
| | 02:44 |
It's very easy to look at it and get
overwhelmed.
| | 02:47 |
Pick out things that you can take action
on.
| | 02:49 |
For example, if I know my audience
retention is just terrible for this
| | 02:52 |
particular video, I might look at what I
can do to improve retention.
| | 02:57 |
I might shorten then video seeing that
there's a little bit of a bump at the very
| | 03:00 |
very beginning, and there's all sorts of
different things that I can try based on
| | 03:03 |
this data.
Or, if I know that folks using IOS and
| | 03:07 |
Android devices watch this particular
video longer than most, I might start
| | 03:11 |
creating mobile specific videos or
versions of videos.
| | 03:15 |
Or I might focus more on topics relating
to those devices and so I have a pretty
| | 03:18 |
geeky audience and chances are they
want to learn about those devices as well
| | 03:22 |
as more general topics.
Use YouTube's analytic tool set to get
| | 03:28 |
insight into how your videos perform.
You'll be able to continuously improve the
| | 03:32 |
quality of your content, your targeting,
and your strategy.
| | 03:36 |
Go to YouTube, take a look at the
statistics and see what you can learn
| | 03:39 |
right off the bat.
You'll be amazed at how it can guide your
| | 03:43 |
overall video marketing and SEO strategy.
| | 03:46 |
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| Next steps| 00:00 |
You've finished the course.
Now, it's time to go apply what you've
| | 00:03 |
learned about video SEO.
A few next steps that I would suggest.
| | 00:07 |
If you want to learn more about building a
presence on YouTube, take a look at the
| | 00:10 |
YouTube Essential Training on lynda.com.
Also, if you want to learn how to make a
| | 00:15 |
good web video, check out some of the
courses on editing, storytelling, and
| | 00:19 |
specific video editing tools, also on
lynda.com.
| | 00:24 |
To learn more about video SEO, search
Google for video SEO and check out some of
| | 00:27 |
the great blogs and resources out on the
Web.
| | 00:31 |
I know I've covered a lot of territory,
and it can seem a little bit overwhelming
| | 00:34 |
because there's so many little things that
you have to do, but individually, each
| | 00:37 |
tactic is completely doable.
Video SEO is a huge ranking opportunity.
| | 00:43 |
But you have to remember that very few
businesses capitalize on it.
| | 00:47 |
By taking the first steps, you can gain a
decisive competitive advantage.
| | 00:51 |
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