ONLINE VIDEO STUFFOh Yeah, and YouTube SEO and Marketing

Mark Robertson - ReelSEO.com

Why Online Video?

30,317,131,000*

Vs.15,500,000,000 Search Queries **

*U.S. Comscore Video Metrix - Videos Viewed – April 2010 | ** ComScore Core Search Report – April 2010

Search Drives Video Traffic

Category

% of category traffic from

search engines 4/09

% ∆ in share of traffic from

search engines 4/08-7/09

% of category traffic from

Google4/09

% ∆ in share of traffic from

Google 4/08 – 4/09

Health & Medical 46.29% 1% 33.88% 10%

Travel 36.82% 8% 27.91% 20%

Shopping & Classifieds 24.04% -5% 17.28% 4%

News & Media 21.35% -2% 15.48% 6%

Entertainment 26.51% 11% 18.78% 24%

Business & Finance 20.91% 16% 15.01% 29%

Sports 14.93% 20% 10.88% 30%

Online Video** 36.04% 25% 27.24% 39%Social Networking** 17.73% 6% 11.87% 18%

All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users – 4/09. **Denotes a custom categorySource: Hitwise, an Experian company

Why YouTube?

13,087,462,000**

3,705,000,000**

*U.S. Comscore Video Metrix - Videos Viewed – April 2010 | ** ComScore Core Search Report – April 2010

Why YouTube?

YouTube is the most popular video platform for video engagement in the blogosphere with 81.9% of total

embedded and linked videos; followed by Vimeo (8.8%), Daily Motion (4%) and MySpace (1.1%).

**Sysomos.com YouTube Report

YouTube Fun Facts

• 2 Billion video views/day = 23,000 videos/second

• 24 hours uploaded/min = 2X audience of all 3 major U.S. TV networks combined

• More video is uploaded to YT in 60 days than the traditional TV networks created in 60 years

• Average length of a YouTube video is 4 min 12 sec **

• Popular countries for YouTube within blogs are U.S., Brazil, Spain, U.K. and Canada.**

• In the U.S., most engaged bloggers with video live in CA, NY, TX, PA & FL**

YouTube is Profitable?• Monetizing (mostly through Google Ads) >1Billion video views per week

*Comscore April Online Video Metrix | **Sysomos.com YouTube Report

Quality content

AudienceSEO Basics

YouTube Marketing and Optimization

Focus on Quality and Engagement

Not TV Advertising - Lean Back vs. Lean Forward

"It's got to be 30 sec?" • My answer is, tell the story first

– Shorter is almost always sweeter– Focus on first 15 sec

Telling a story:• Engage customers• Educate customers • Point of differentiation• Entertain customers• Be different• Write with keyword in mind (if applicable)

http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

Sales increased 700%, 5X the company's old record

Success = More than Keywords & Text

YouTube Ranking Factors– Title – Description– Tags– Views & frequency– Likes, dislikes– Playlist additions– Flagging– Shares– Comments– Age of video– Video Responses– Subscribers– Favorites– Embeds & inbound links

YouTube Ranking Factors – Holistic Effort

More Possible YouTube Ranking Factors

• Social Media Activity & Buzz• Degree & frequency of community

interaction• Playlists• Flagging• Honors• Insight/Trends/Analytics indicators• Bulletins• Authority Channel (Ex: BMW)• Google & YouTube searches• Channel Views• Social Bookmarking

• Blogs• News/Press/Press Release• Crowd Sourcing – Influencers & Media• YouTube Partner Program• Close Captioning/transcriptions

Uploading to YouTube

Recommendations for Uploading to YouTube – Take advantage of HD

• HD – quality, multiple options• 16:9 Aspect Ratio Recommended (4:3) letterboxed• Resolution

– HD = 1280x720 or 1080p– Else = 640x360 (16:9), 480x360 (4:3)

• Mp4 file format• .h264 video compression• AAC or MP3 audio compression• Frames per second: 30 • Maximum length: 10:59 (recommend 2-3 minutes)• Maximum file size: 2 GB

Tips for Uploading to YouTube

Titles are important• Trade-off = Search keywords vs. enticing titles

Maximize descriptive text• Leverage descriptions liberally (5000 characters)

• Leverage tags – optimize & de-optimize (no spam)• Important keywords first in titles, descriptions & tags

Enable interaction• Embedding and sharing• Commenting and rating

Consider manually uploading or API• More characters available for titles, descriptions, tags vs. uploading tools• Geo-tagging, CC, Annotations, etc…• To take advantage of YouTube, you really should be an active community member anyway

Engage the Audience & Drive Interaction

Add URLs to descriptions• Track with tiny URLs

Leverage annotations • Drive viewers to other videos

Engage the community• Subscribe to relevant users• Add video responses when appropriate• Encourage linking and embedding

Don’t Ignore your Channel• Channel URLs followed• Site URL followed

YouTube Marketing - Think outside YouTube

• It’s more than YouTube now. • Competitive keywords require additional effort OUTSIDE of YouTube

Promote and Promote Again

• Distribute via most popular YouTube channel available to you

• Leverage social sharing functionalities• Post to your blog• Crowd source -Target/Use Key Influences

• Spread the word internally– Encourage your company to help seed/spread the word

Track, Measure and Learn!

YOUTUBE CONVERSION TIPSDriving YouTube viewers back to you

Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home

1) URL in Description 2) In-Video Calls to Action

- Must include http://- Use URL shortener – tracking, nofollow

How can you drive interested YouTube viewers back to your website?

- Teasers, Coupons, Promo codes, Call tracking #’s, Unique URLs, Etc…

Driving Video Views – YouTube Promote

YouTube Promoted Videos• Pay Per Click/View• Keyword bidding• Drives video views

Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home

WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW• Bonus = Free call to action overlay• Auto-play on channel = more views• Starts at $0.01 CPC• Cost per click off-site? $0.00• What you don’t know?

– Overlay is yours regardless = FREE

EXTRA YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION TIP

Closed Captions & Speech Recognition

• Sept. 2008 – GAudio launches

• Nov. 2009 - Google Rolls out automated YouTube closed captions (limited)

• Mar. 2010 – Automated captioning for all videos (Beta – English only)

• Apr. 2007 - Google 411

“Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen... The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model … that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.” - Google’s Marissa Mayer

Example Search – “DFWSEM”

What You Didn’t Know

• YouTube & Google Index CC• CC/Subtitles don’t require audio• Can help with longtail searches• Weight = ?? Not much yet

Why Closed Captions?

• Accessibility for hearing impaired • Global Reach - Translations

How to Create YouTube Closed Captions

• Create and upload .SRT file

• Did you create a script?– Upload as a transcript– Google automates temporal matching

• Use Google’s machine transcription– Download –> fix –> re-upload

• Web-based tools & services– DotSub– CaptionTube– Subtitle Horse – SubPly– 3PlayMedia

• Turn off Title & Ratings– &showinfo=0

• Turn off Search– &showsearch=0

• Turn on Related Videos– &rel=1

• Want a custom player?– Use Chrome-less Player (YouTube API)

• More - http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-embed-hacks/

YOUTUBE Tricks|Customize The Embed Code

Please Visit ReelSEO = Video Marketing News, Trends, Tips…

Thank YouMark R. Robertson, Founderwww.reelseo.com

@reelseo

Facebook.com/reelseo