How do videos get more SEO?

Here are some quick and easy ways to make discovering your video a bit more likely:

Make tags relevant and use a lot. When it comes to tags it’s always bad news if you use fake tags, in fact it usually makes search engines index you with a ‘nofollow’ meaning; no search. So don’t go saying it’s a Justin Bieber video unless it is k?

Try to use consistent tagging across all videos, this helps aggregators. Also; using adjectives in those tags is a good idea

Match your titles and descriptions to tags

Don’t use natural language in tags (don’t waste space on words like ‘such, and, or, to’)

SEO on YouTube

A huge number of people stick to YouTube, ain’t nothing wrong with that! So here are some tips and tricks when you’re dealing with this huge player in the video space:

Use this Keyword Research tool as the first step in finding relevant tags for your video. (Yes, Justin Bieber was searched 13,516,800 times this month)

As discussed above, Tags are the only way for search engines (other than special ones like Blinkx) to find your video. Also; consider dropping the URL to your homepage in the description so you can get some backlinks

Use the ability to set the thumbnail image of your video, make it something compelling so users want to click your video. A picture is worth… screw it sex sells, just look at Ray William Johnson; his stills are always some celebrity looking scandalous or something

Allow comments, haters gonna hate so just let it go

Embed your video on your website to help transfer traffic and views

Share over social media channels! (Obvious right? Sorry…:) )

Places to host your Video

Amateur Sites to use:

YouTube

Google Video

MySpace Video

Yahoo! Video

AOL Video

DailyMotion

MetaCafe

Revver

Giant cheat sheet here (Please note, though extensive this page was written in 2007 some services may no longer exist, I’ve just never found a better list with links and criteria)

Submission to Video Searching sites:

AOL Video http://video.aol.com/

Or you can use a Media RSS (MRSS) feed to submit content hosted elsewhere (This Media RSS feed would exist on your webpage, so it would drive traffic back to your website)

Blinkx – Use this form to ask for submission to the database

Yahoo! – Use this form for submission

It’s been a Pleasure

This brings to a close my guest blog series for the wonderful Lara Wellman. I hope you got some great information and took something useful away rather than just wasted like 3 minutes of your life. I know I had fun writing these articles, I always have more fun carrying on conversations so come see me on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or in the comments.

Seo table

Image via CrunchBase

I’m thrilled to welcome Brandon for part two about Search Engine Optimization. If you missed his first post, check it out here.

Brandon is a consultant, business marketing grad, strategist, house music junkie, avid reader, speaker, and coffee fiend. He likes to make and break stuff, currently working in the Light Apps division at Corel and the CEO of his own start-up Incentify.

You can find him @BrandonWaselnuk

SEO in Facebook Posts

Facebook is a wonderful platform that almost every business has taken to. It has many benefits and few drawbacks; one of those benefits is boosting your SEO ‘juice’ as some cool kids would say.
When looking at your Facebook posts there’s two pretty big questions most ask when thinking about SEO:

How do Facebook Posts get SEO?

How do I Increase the odds of Feedback on my Posts?

How do Facebook Posts get SEO?

The first step in getting any SEO on your Facebook posts is to make sure they are flagged as ‘Public’ posts. Anything that isn’t can never get SEO as they are closed behind the firewall basically.

The More a Post is Shared

Any post you make now has the ability of being shared (and you can track who shared it!) the more people who decide to share the more SEO that post gets. Remember though, it’s a pretty drastically high amount of sharing you require if you’re hoping for your post to show up on a Google search, however if someone is doing a Facebook search, they can come across your Page rather than a competitor if your content is more often shared.
Note: The idea of getting someone to share your posts is simple but difficult in practice. A few tips and tricks are to think like your readers, what would make them enact the need to share what you’ve said with their friends? Also consider the ‘selfish sharing’ factor, something I got from Scott Stratten (unMarketing) it’s the idea that people share things that are important to them, regardless of whether they think all their friends will care. So connect with the individual in your posts if at all possible.

The More Comments and Likes a Post Receives

The more commenting you get the higher your SEO, it’s pretty basic. Much like above, it’s all about giving your readers a reason to engage with you, think like them, what’s a good conversation piece?

How Do I Increase the Odds of Feedback on my Posts?

These are two simple rules to consider, on top of the tips above, but definitely help when you’re thinking about making your posts count.

Increase the ‘Awesome’

Better content means more feedback, engagement, sharing and more, not frequency. There’s no equation for awesome unfortunately so it’s up to you and your understanding of your market, what’s awesome to them? Find it and talk about it to help give your page the boost it needs.

Note: Consider looking at competition for the ‘angle’ they are taking, you can pretty easily see by the number of fans they have VS. The comments and likes a post gets what their feedback % is. Then you have a benchmark to work against.

Ask Questions

Asking open ended questions is usually a really great way to get your audience engaging with you. You can stimulate conversation from there and start to learn who in your audience is really connected to what issues (worldly, work related, or other depending on your page’s function).

E.g. ‘The newest article from SEOMOZ (a popular SEO blog) talks about Google+ implications to SEO. What are your thoughts on all this G+ news lately?’

It’s Too Long

Again, I think that’s enough of a run through some SEO for one blog post. I hope you’ve enjoyed the discussion on Facebook and I’d love to answer any questions you may have, so please comment and/or send them my way!