Video SEO

Ever since YouTube smacked the Web in 2005, followed by the iconic purchase by Google, web video cast a bit of a shadow over social networking. Now that Google is crawling Flash, video is even more front and center. In this textual report, Greg Jarboe explains the importance of video relativity and how sharing increases exposure. But truer to form, we also have videos on the video concept, one from YuMe.com VP Bob Bahramipour, explaining how textual search relates to online video, and another from video search engine Pixsy’s Chase Norlin on how RSS feeds are crucial to video SEO.

The Search Economy

Everybody’s on a tighter budget these days, including marketers. In this video, LuxuryLink.com’s Sean Walsh talks about how the economy is affecting paid search, and repeats his bear market outlook in a summary from the State of the Search Industry session. Budgeting for search, then, becomes more important than ever, a topic continued as marketers ask Where’s Money for Search Going?

Twitter, Google Boogie, iADD

One thing many weren’t talking about last year was Twitter. In a video interview Michael Gray talks about this "really, really interesting tool." While we had his ear, we also pinged Gray about developing inbound links while staying on Google’s good side. Speaking of Google’s good side, Andy Beal posts a few photos from the Google Dance, where geeks go to get down; hopefully they’re not dancing to the "Rock Band" tunes emitting from a dedicated stage.

Feel like we’re jumping topics a lot? Blame the Internet. Lee Siegal thinks the Web is damaging our attention spans. Maybe that will provide another straw for Microsoft to grasp as Satya Nadella, in his keynote, tries to simultaneously get search marketers’ attention while convincing them Microsoft is just as good as Google in the search department. Maybe they should enlist Seinfeld for search as well as for the PC. 
 

It can sometimes take a couple of weeks to get a new domain indexed by Google (even longer to start ranking!). In order to speed up the process of getting your site indexed quickly, even in 24 hours, follow the steps outlined below:

1) Create 5 pages of content

Skip the “under construction” page and write several pages of real content, at least a few paragraphs.

2) Create Internal Links to your Pages

Put the content in a template with a menu structure to make this step easier. You can find free templates at oswd.org and other places, at least to get started. Link to the content through the menu, and if you have a major landing page, link to it from the content of a page or two.

3) Tag on Social Bookmarking Sites

After just a few minutes to create an account with these sites you can submit a link to your site. This gives you an instant way for Google and other search engines to find your site because these social bookmarking sites get visited by the search engine bots (like the Googlebot) quite regularly. A few bookmarking sites to recommend: Del.icio.us, BlinkList, StumbleUpon.com, and Furl. Make sure you tag them with common words, like those you find on their tag clouds (BlinkList has a good one, just scroll down on the page to see it).

4) Comment on popular and recent blogs (with your link)

Find 5 blogs that are fairly popular, relevant to your site, and have a recent blog post (last day or two). Read the post and add a comment that contributes to the discussion, including a link to your site in the URL field.

5) Create, Submit, and Ping your XML Sitemap

You can create a free XML sitemap here then upload the file to your site (just save it as sitemap.xml). Then ping Google with your sitemap by typing in the following URL in your browser, replacing the domain name with your own:

http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Next, create an account with Google Webmaster Central, add your site, and submit your XML sitemap.

6) Install Google Analytics

Add Google Analytics (free) to your site. Don’t forget to verify your site with them to get the data collection started.

7) Run some Google Ads

Create an account with Google Adwords and start running some ads, even if its just for the domain name, company name, or some long tail keywords. Google has to go to your site because of their quality score, which includes “your landing page quality”. Just spend a couple of bucks and it can help jumpstart the indexing.

With these steps, you should see your site indexed fairly quickly. I can’t guarantee the 24 hours, but it is possible. At the very least it will speed up the indexing significantly (from weeks to days). Look for the “googlebot” to visit in your site analytics. Then look for your site to show up with Google by doing a search with the site: operator (for example, site:sphinn.com). Enjoy!

Comments

The company says its goal is to provide a forum for discussions about maximizing online video traffic. Blinkx also released a whitepaper for those interested in learning more about:

·    Cleaning and conversion of metadata
·    Optimizing titles, description and filenames
·    Leveraging sitemaps
·    Utilizing Media RSS
·    Content Management
·    Where to submit
·    What to Avoid

Chandratillake told WebProNews that VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization), while sharing some commonalities with traditional SEO like linking and anchor texts, there some important differences, and things to consider like whether optimized content is copyrighted or intended for sharing, if a site owner wants their videos hosted or if they want traffic driven back to the website.

"We’ve received an enormous number of questions from content producers who want to maximize the exposure of the video they’ve put into our system, and I wanted to build a more structured assistance program for them," said Chandratillake.

"This effort isn’t intended to make money, we simply wanted to be open and transparent about how blinkx and other search engines rank rich media content. Over time, we’re hoping the wiki will become a useful tool and forum for the entire community."

Blinkx partnered with Denuo, a media branch of Publicis Groupe, SA to produce the Video SEO wiki and the guidelines. "The need has never been greater for tools and approaches that bring some semblance of order to today’s relatively rudimentary processes of programming and sponsorship," said Denuo VP Timothy Hanlon