Videos and how they affect SEO - #seopdocast 177

Welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. You are tuning in to podcast number 177. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast. The reason we give a small tip is because we don't want to redo the previous podcast in this podcast. We just really don't want to give a long tip. Yeah, it'd just be a waste. Here we go. The tip is revamping your content is worth doing. Use the 11-point checklist to make sure your efforts are effective. Where do they find that 11-point checklist? On Facebook. We Facebooked it. But yeah, we want to make sure when you're redoing your content, you want to make sure that you take the time to make sure that that content is relevant, make sure that it's unique, and make sure that it's enjoyable and entertaining so that way people will share it and enjoy it. Please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood Top Position Snatchers, where our mantra is... Don't be a douche. If you can, if you're in front of some sort of electric device, please tweet now. You want to just borrow this or hold it? No, I don't feel right. We have identified that surrogate cell phones do not work. At least not with Chuck. Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 177. Make sure you tag us in it, at E-Web Style. That way we can network and do all of that social stuff we like to do. You can chase us, follow us, hack us. No, don't hack us. Stalk us, whatever. Or facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Twitter.com slash eWebStyle. YouTube.com slash eWebStyle. And you can email us, podcast at e-webstyle.com. There's two things that you can do us. Let's get all this housekeeping just right out of the way. If you could, go to e-webstyle.com slash s. Oh, yeah. No, no. That's better. That's the one that I wanted to go to. Let's try that again. Snap. Take two. E-webstyle.com slash g

plus. Or g plus. Or Google plus. Or Google plus. And when you get there, that will actually automatically forward you to our g plus page. Amazingly. Hopefully, yeah, but if you didn't figure that out by the end, then shame on you. And write a review right there. Give us a five-star sentence, a notice at the email we just gave you. The other thing you could do, short, simple, sweet, easy, three steps. Go to iTunes, create an account, write a review. If you choose to, again, send us an email, let us know, and we will give you a punch in the face. Remember, real quickly, if you're an SEO expert and you have an account that you don't really want to handle, maybe we do, and we do have compensation for you from our referral program. Got a couple of reviews you noticed? No tears? Yeah, I'll figure that. You know, second one in the new year. No tears. Look at that. G plus reviews. Three. Fancy. They're all good this week. We did get that email. We didn't decide if we wanted to add that. I intended to print it. We just was running short on time. We'll cover it next time. We'll say it's not positive. Yeah, we've got to, you know. We'll throw it out there. This one is GR8 Show. Great. Also known as Great Five Stars. This is by Lost Witness 88. Thank you, guys. Been wired into your show for several weeks now. Easy listening show. I have implemented several techniques and enjoy a first page ranking on Google for several search terms. Wow. Good to hear people share their search knowledge. Usually people are all top secret and do not share their knowledge. Yeah. Well, we just realized it's a time-consuming process. Let's share it. Anybody who can do it should do it. And if you can't, then call us. Yeah, exactly. I'd be interested to know, Lost Witness, how long did it take? Were you already ranking before you implemented some of our techniques? Or did, after you

implement those techniques, you saw your ranking increase? Hit us up, podcast at edashwebstyle.com. Let us know, you know, give us some details on what you did. And it's signed, Love From Scotland. Actually, that was British. I do have a Scottish accent. It just won't arrive right now. Mark, helpvid.net. That's his punch in the face. Helpvid.net. Go check it out. Actually, it's videos to teach you how to make websites. So, I kind of got some in common. It's cool. Next, we've got Bill. This is on our G Plus page. Punch in the face to Bill, man. I've been tweeting. Going back and forth. I really enjoy listening to these guys. Only found them a couple of weeks ago. I've already listened to over 50 of the most recent podcasts. I'm getting it in. Yeah. You got a long way to go. Is he doing it two-time? Two-time fast? Probably. Do you sound like the chipmunks? Or I sound like a chipmunk? And Chuck sounds normal? So, entertaining and informative. Their SIVO videos are highly informative as well. Giant punch in the face. Appreciate it, man. For those who don't know, the SIVO videos is when we do a website analysis on somebody's site who submits it on our site. And we'll actually do it on the screen, point out what's right with it, what's wrong with it. So, yeah. If you want your website, what's the word I'm looking for? Analyze. I often say analyze. But I didn't sound right. Analyze. Then hit us up. We're glad to do one for you. Let's do one more. Tim calling. The title is Quality Excellent. I've been listening to it. That's not the title. That's the level of quality. Excellent. I have been listening to this. Yeah, Tim. Let's look, Tim. If all of these review sites could just review the exact same way, then I wouldn't have that confusion. Here we go. I have been listening to this company's SEO podcast for over a year, and it's my favorite. The information they provide is excellent, but the

program is also entertaining, and they aren't all full of themselves the way that some of the other SEO experts seem to be. Someday, when I'm ready to hire an SEO consulting firm for my companies, I like the sound of that, these guys will likely be the ones who get my business. Tim, appreciate your support. Punch in the face to you. Thanks for tuning in. And, you know, just let us know if we can help you. And, actually, we've got one more, and it's also, I think it's a repeat from Mark, who also went on our G Plus page. We helped him. He was trying to figure out how to do Google author tags. Oh, with the incorrect spelling? Yeah. Well, we had incorrect spelling in the email, and then we went back and forth. And, ultimately, I'll be honest, I don't remember. He had to do something, he didn't have contributor links back to his website, and he had to do something in order to get those contributor links to work. I don't remember what that is. We'll post that and or cover it next time, because that was one little step that he was missing that clearly was pretty important. We do have a little bit of news. I thought, the pieces of news that I thought were relevant and interesting. CES is going on. I wish I could be in Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. Vegas. I don't know if you just enjoy the debauchery of Vegas or the debauchery of CES. I mean, it's like Vegas and CES. Wow. Right. Sounds like a blast. So we can get drunk and play with something new. I thought this was really cool. I thought this was really cool. NASA deems Earth safe. I would hope so. I just read, I love that headline, and then it continues to say, safe from an asteroid. There's an asteroid, Apopolis. Apophis. I think it's Opophis. We'll go with that. It says it's now got a one. They thought initially it was like a one in 27 chance of hitting

Earth. One in 27? And it's like three football fields long and traveling at a gazillion miles an hour. It's now a one in a million chance. It's going to pass probably 19,000 miles away, which will make it a record-setting closeness for that size asteroid. By the way, in the middle of February, a good-sized one is supposed to be passing us at 17,000 miles away, which sounds like a lot, and in the grand scheme of universes, not that much. IBM is the patent king, crowned the patent king for the 20th year in a row. They had 6,478 patents in 2012. Wow. How many? 6,478. You're just seeing if I can read my rating. No, I was just trying to process that. That just seemed like a lot of patents. It's a lot of patents. Yeah. The next nearest one was at least under 4,000. So, okay. They're 50% higher than the next closest competitor in that range. And I thought this was interesting. Windows real-time has already been hacked. Or what did I write? It's already been hackeded. Hackeded? It's done been hackeded. All right. So, that was potatoes? That's all the potatoes. I'm sorry. I didn't have this kind of ramp down. Take three. That's our potatoes. Let's get to the meat. Take it away, Chuck. Thank you. I need that segue so I know. All right. Yeah. So, I found a pretty good article on Search Engine Watch today I wanted to discuss. And it was interesting because it's about video. Because I've been dealing with Flint Media. Check those guys out. They do some great production. About to work on some new SEO rapper stuff with them. But I came across this video posted by Ms. Christensen, 12 valuable tips for video SEO beginners. And the reason I pulled it is because once I began reviewing the tips, some I agreed with, some I didn't. I wanted to see what you guys thought about it. So, we'll get right into it. The first one was a content quality check. And she goes on

to say, ensure your videos are relevant, informative, and rich with content. And that's the obvious, right? I think that goes without saying. If you're going to take the time to put some video out there, make sure that it's not a video full of fluff or just keyword stuffing. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't have any value to anyone. Because then you won't get the result that you're looking for. Remember, Google's tracking how many people actually watch the whole video. Exactly. And so, if everyone who starts your video stops it, then eventually Google's going to stop ranking that. Because that's clearly not a good experience for the Google user. Number two was title, right? This is kind of typical SEO stuff. Make sure the title is extremely important, right? So, make sure the title of your video has at least, at the very least, the most important keyword that you're targeting. But if not, whatever phrase that that video is about. Make sure that title is there. If you can, maybe you need to do some branding. Take advantage of branding in the title. This is the eWebStyle SEO podcast, right? We're branding. Number three was tags. Take advantage of the tags. But the key about tags, what to remember is you want your tags to be what people may search for. So, you don't want your tags to be loaded with industry jargon or a whole bunch of technical info that people just don't know about or may not search. Make sure your tag is SEO and not search engine optimization. Another good example, we've used this regularly, is the MAP, mechanical electrical pressure or whatever, which people in the air conditioning industry know. And people who aren't in the industry don't know. So, that's a term you shouldn't use if you're talking about your air conditioning video. Unless you're going after entirely commercial accounts and that kind of thing. So, understanding your target market is probably the big value there. Definitely. Number four, description. Take advantage of that description area. Especially on other

sites that allow you to put HTML in the description area. If you can, put a link there. But at the very least, put a transcription, which I think is one of the next ones coming up, a transcription of the video there. A great description of the video may be some more of the keywords that you're talking about, a bulleted list, things like that. Because people, if it's a song, for example, and it's just playing, then people tend to read the description. Well, I do anyways. While it's playing. While it's playing. Exactly. Number five, links. Links are very important. But in regards to video SEO, I think what she's saying is take advantage of the fact that people are watching this video. And so, give them links to other content, maybe that's not next to the video, but that's similar to the content that that video is about. So, if you have a video, let's say, about HVAC repair, right, then maybe you have a link in your description to your HVAC repair page that's on your site where they can get more information. Because now that's a link. It's a relevant link. And it's to your site coming from your video. With all help. Okay, here's transcripts. So, yeah, provide the transcripts. Good old HTML. It still works. Google loves it. And, hey, it'll help your video rank higher. Remember, also, that Google is transcribing the video. Yes. So, don't try and game Google and say, oh, here's the transcript, you know, with keyword stuffing at the top. Yeah, because they'll be like this. They're not the transcript. Yeah, it's not the transcript. It's just going to be content. And, speaking of keyword stuffing at the top, make sure that you mention your keywords if you're speaking in your video. Yeah. And, by the way, you should be. Make sure that the keywords that you're targeting are mentioned in the first two, three sentences. Again, Google does translate the video or the audio in the video. And, you want to make sure that the keywords

are mentioned early on. Definitely. Number seven, the length of the video. I think this one is key. A lot of times, she says, go ahead and keep your videos at five minutes or less. The average amount of time a user spends on YouTube is around one and a half minutes. That's about right, unless you're watching a music video. It's like three to four minutes. Or, you're watching some sort of, you know, recorded webinar or something like that. But, yeah, if it's just a quick video about one of your products or maybe a service you provide, keep it short, keep it sweet, keep it right to the point. And, that's actually value for that user. I think, so, doesn't she really mean to say, like, never have them exceed five minutes? Right, because if the average time of a user on YouTube is a minute and a half, and you're, she's, and she's making the recommendation of making your videos five minutes. Well, she says that five minutes or less. Yeah, I think your target should be a minute and a half, maybe push it to two. Three, maybe. Right? Two, three. Five minutes starts to get outside the time that people spend on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to, yeah. Number eight, video site maps. By the way, our next podcast will be two minutes long. Oh, so we have to do it in a chipmunk voice? Yeah. Video site maps. Now, for real, submit a video site map to Google. Make sure that the video, make sure that the search in the spiders can find your video content and index it accordingly. This is just typical SEO stuff. You build a website, you submit that site map to Google. So, submit your video site maps. Branding. Branding is a great way to generate brand awareness and prospects. So, watermark your videos if you can. Or if you notice, people who maybe watch this podcast frequently, we alternate. Maybe next week you'll see our logo behind us. And that's for the purpose of branding.

And so, take advantage of branding. Last thing you want to do is create a video and it happens to go viral and you didn't take advantage of the branding. So, yeah, a million views and no calls. Yeah. Or nobody knows who you are. Yeah. Right? So, yeah, take advantage of branding. Embedding options. These help your video go viral. And I encourage this. YouTube makes it extremely easy to embed videos on other sites. And so, take it a step further and encourage people to embed your videos on their sites if they appreciate the content. This one here, I kind of disagree with somewhat. She says syndication. Submit your video to various online platforms. The more, the merrier. I think it really depends. Totally depends. It really depends because sometimes there's value in driving traffic to one source. Right? So, rather than have the same video on YouTube, Vimeo, and let's say Twit video, or Facebook even, and now you have, you know, 20 visits on each one, let's put it all in one place and have that one have 100. Right. And so, you know, I think there's value in having everything at one location. Lastly, share, share, share. Get social with it. You post that video, share it, tweet it, Facebook it, Gplus it, ask your friends to share it, Facebook it, and then rinse and repeat and do it all over again. So, in summary, video optimization can be a great way for you to expose your brand to users who may not be familiar with your brand. People watch video. I mean, we say this all the time. You know, people will sit down and watch a five-minute video before they read two paragraphs. Right. That'll take them, you know, 10 seconds. So, yeah, that happens all the time. Optimize the videos. And don't rely only on video because you want the two paragraphs because there are people who won't watch the video and will turn it off and bounce if they can't turn it off. But will read those two paragraphs. In

fact, would probably read 20 paragraphs. So, you really got to appeal to all of your audience, not just some of it. Definitely. Do we have any blanks there? Oh, I did have some blanks there, and I'm drawing a blank. And I'm drawing a blank. Yeah, no. So, we have a blank stare about how the fact that you don't have blanks, that you almost have blanks there? No. No. Not this time. All right. Well, this has been podcast number 177. You guys have been listening to the most popular SEO and internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of you, you, you, all y'all. Because we're from Texas, we can say that. Go Texas. Woo-hoo. So, make sure you tune in next time. Is there anything else? I feel like I'm missing something. I know. Me too. I can't think of it. It's been a quick Bam Bam podcast. We went through the potatoes. We went through the meat. Now, it's time to say goodbye. Yeah. Maybe we'll start working on some dessert for them. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that. Oh, yeah. Well, blank stare was almost dessert, right? Okay. Yeah. My bad. I missed some dessert. Next time, we'll have dessert. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. And I'm Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now.