video seo essentials 2011

WEB ▪ MARKETING ▪ SOLUTIONS 1

Video SEO Best Practices

Prepared for:

www.somebusiness.org

April 6th, 2011


• Google and other search engines work to have a mix of content types displayed in search results (a.k.a., blended search results). For this reason, they give a higher ranking to video content than other forms of Web content in order to make sure that searches consistently display mixed search results.

Video SEOThe Facts


• There's a relative dearth of video content available today, and only a small fraction of the content available is properly submitted to search engines for inclusion in the search indexes. This combination of disproportionate bias towards video content and the small pool of indexed video content available is a gold mine for publishers.

• A YouTube link to your webpage containing a full video means that YouTube is referencing on your website, adding backlinking value from a site that’s PageRanked 9/10.

• Videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click through rate than their plain text counterparts.

Video SEO The Facts (cont.)


• Stick with YouTube to attract the user’s attention. Most traffic goes there.

• Videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click through rate than their plain text counterparts.

• From YouTube you can direct traffic to the main site by creating a 30 second preview, and have a link in the description section to view the full video on the main site.

Video SEOThe Facts (cont.)


• Utilize traditional SEO elements (description, tags).

• Submit the Video as well as the Page to Google Webmaster tools.

• Engage users.

• Keep the hosted videos short and simple.

• Explain to the video channels that the video genre of the videos are “educational” and/or “family-friendly.”

• Keep full videos on main site, and set up Video SEO foundations for them.

• Use audio transcriptions, and upload text into “closed captions” area (will be discussed in slides 8-11) and/or “description” tab. Google indexes them, more specifically Closed Captions, Speech-to-text & Search.

• Implement a linking strategy.

• Video Sitemaps

• SWFObject or NoEmbed code

Video SEORecommendations


• Each URL entry must contain the following information: Title• Description• Play page URL• Thumbnail URL• Raw video file location and/or the player URL (SWF)• Each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000

entries.• Google can crawl the following video file types:

mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv, .swf.

• Google web crawlers will verify that the information you include in the <video:title> and <video:description> fields matches your live site.

• View your play pages in a text-only browser such as Lynx, or a more conventional browser where you've confirmed that Flash and JavaScript are disabled.

• For more information on Google’s guidelines, go here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

Video SEOVideo Sitemaps

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472


• Alternative HTML Content (Google doesn’t index flash videos)

• Use SWFObject 2.1.– SWFObject is a JavaScript library that enables you to

provide alternative html content in place of your flash content for accessibility and SEO purposes.

– SWFObject is search engine friendly, AS LONG AS YOU USE IT PROPERLY.

– Download it here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

– Add a reference to your HTML page• <script type=”text/javascript”

src=”swfobject.js”></script>– Register Your Flash Movie (SWF) with the

SWFObject library

Video SEOswfobject

http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/


How To: Creating a Video Transcript


• Create your transcript.– You can opt to hire transcriber or pay for a professional

speech-to-text solution, but transcripts are simple enough to do yourself

– There are many transcription software programs that you can test out.

– Save your files as plain text, and include the names of people speaking.

• Save Your Transcript– Must be saved as a plain text file (.txt)

Creating a Video Transcript


• Upload Your Transcript to YouTube– Once logged in, click “My Videos.”– Find the video to which you’d like to add

captions/subtitles to, and check it in the selection box to the right of the video thumbnail. Then select the arrow on the Edit | Insight bar to the right of the thumbnail, and select the Captions and Subtitles button from the drop down menu.

– Click the Add New Captions or Transcript button on the right hand side of the page. You will be prompted to browse for a file to upload. Select a transcript file from your desktop to upload. (Note: Here you will be uploading a transcript file with no time-codes, so be sure to select Transcript file.)

– Select the appropriate language.– Click the Upload File button.– Click Save.



• Review your Transcript– You can watch this in

action by having closed captions turned on.



• Start off each change in speaker with two “greater than” symbols, then the speaker name or group, an a colon. (Example: “>> ROCHELLE:”)

• YouTube also requires a double line break to force a caption break. Otherwise, you may have run-on text.If you have other things going on in my video besides conversation, you could also separate those out with a double line break and a description of that thing in brackets. Here are a couple of examples:– [pause] - When there is a 3 second or greater pause– [description of any activity not captured in speech] – helps hard-of-

hearing people keep flow of the video

YouTube Guidelines to Creating a Video Transcript


• Focus on Readability– Balance proper grammar with audio accuracy.– Proof your transcript– Do shorter caption breaks if you don’t want the speaker in the

video to be overshadowed by the text.– Get the cleanest audio you possibly can for the audio to match

with YouTube’s speech recognition tool.– Identify long pauses (3 seconds or longer) or music in the

transcript with a double line break.– Use double line breaks anytime you want to force a caption break.– Don’t use any special characters

Creating a Video Transcript - Tips


• Maximize Engagement with Proper Presentation– Give your caption track a proper name– If you have an intro graphic or animation at the beginning of

your video. Consider putting in brackets a brief description of that intro, and with proper line breaks after.

– If you have a closing graphic, consider a closing bracket at the end of your video, perhaps with a thank-you or some call-to-action text.

– If you have a speaker or other important visual in the middle of your video, consider having the captions break early and often.



• Maximize the SEO Benefit of Closed Captions:– Inserting keywords at certain points may be

tolerable to YouTube– Do this very sparingly, and not at the expense of

readability. Don’t use your caption file as an opportunity to do “keyword stuffing.”

– Look for keyword opportunities beyond just the conversation.



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video seo essentials 2011

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