Today was an especially productive day – I sent the final draft of an article I wrote for Streaming Media Magazine on The “search” for real VSEO…  to the editor.

It was an exhaustive journey into the realm of SEO.   I spent a lot of time in WebEx sessions and engaged on my own traveling the paths of the end user to discover video on-line.  I asked myself a lot of questions, went a step further and really tried to listen to some experts for guidance.  I’d like to thank Mark Robertson publisher and founder of ReelSEO for his patience and enthusiasm, Accordent Technolgy’s for being my Enterprise go-to guys/gals and EveryZing that let me get inside their product and their minds!

Here is just one of the fascinating revelations passed down to me from Tom Wilde, CEO of Everyzing :

There are many tools that can be used to help users select keywords that result in good positioning for Google results; such as Google Insight for Search.

Google Search Insight provides... Insight

Google Insight reports that over the last 90 days, searches with the keyword video outnumbered keywords searches for sex, god, and Obama. So what do the numbers on the graph mean? According to Google Insight for Search, “The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.”

In practice, simply adding the word video to a site makes it more likely to come up in a search, but there are also 3.38 billion other results for the keyword video on Google, so the competition is tight. The trick is to find the magic combination of keywords that eliminate the competition and push results for your content to the top of the list. You must take the same route one would take to Carnegie Hall, “Practice, practice, practice.”

When asked, “What makes for good VSEO,” Wilde points back toward the fundamentals of “old school” SEO: “Optimize the video’s presentation page using standard SEO techniques; this is also true for videos uploaded to sharing sites. Logical file naming schemes, site structure, use sitemaps and relevant keyword usage throughout the landing page will result in good VSEO.”

If you upload a video to YouTube, you will see how often it is viewed in different geographic regions as well as how popular it is relative to all videos in its market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of a video, determining how long it takes for it to become popular and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. (figure 2) YouTube is also rolling out paid search, a new feature that enables video distributors to buy keywords in YouTube on a pay-per-click basis. Currently, this is only available to agencies.

It’s faster to get a video indexed when uploaded to YouTube or an existing site that is already in Google and the other major search engines. When a site is submitted manually, it takes at least 90 days to begin showing up in search results, but YouTube, MySpace, and other established sites can list the same site in less than 24 hours. Just make sure you don’t rely soley on an up-load of your video, but create a full “channel page” for your videos, those weigh more in Google and others. Make sure you clearly indicate the link back to the site you want end users to go to, include links in the channel pages, and include a lower-third graphic in the video itself with a text advertising your site.

*************  End of Excerpt ***  To read more, you will have to subscribe to Streaming Media Magazine or check out StreamingMedia.com for possible a digital version

Ok, maybe it comes off as kind of hostile, but I am having a hard time actually finding an ROI on SEO for on-line video content — e.g. If I am a website with Video that is expertly tagged and optimized, where exactly will I see the results? Google? Yahoo? Or does the end-user have to be looking specifically for video on the “video” portal for the major SE’s? Wouldn’t a person searching on-line benefit as much from seeing a video about milking cows as they would from reading about milking cows?

The subject of VIDEO SEO frustrates me because everyone is telling us we need it, but for who and to what end?

Join me on my journey as I seek out what VSEO is and why we should give a crap-dang-it about it ;-p
I welcome your feedback.

** All the early feedback focuses on Metrics starting with the end user already at the video view stage, and I am focusing on what VSEO promises, more or less, how the end user arrives at the video not what they do once there… but I know my Peeps will keep me in check

There is a lot of noise lately regarding how video content and SEO work together – there are many companies evangelizing their ‘wares to the hungry marketers of such video property; however, I don’t believe any of it for a second – it’s not working as advertised.

Recently I sat through a demo of a product that promised enhanced search-ability for video content that was essentially “tagged” by their product.  At the end of the demo, I asked if we could examine how the tagging impacted the SEO of the client sites we looked at, using organic keywords that pertained to the video content we had just reviewed.

They proceeded to “plant” ordered keywords into Google to show how their tagged video appeared magically – with a rigid set of keywords that no human would “organically” input for a search.  Having said that, the tagged video did not come up first nor did it come up as a prioritized web asset with more or less relevance than any other web page that pertained to the keyword set they used.

The tagged video appeared third and had no special indicator that this was a link to video enhanced web content.

On Google the special video category is relegated to video content originating from YouTube, so many of the products and “specialists” out there on VIDEO SEO are just going to post clips on YouTube and point back to the client website – so save your money and do it yourself.

Google search for interviews with Madonna

Here is an example, if I do a search for keywords “interviews with madonna” on Google, I get the quick drop down from the homepage that tell me there are over 4 million results that have relevance. read this entry »