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.
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.
The results themselves reveal a great deal about the subjectivity of Google search and how video relevance relates to the results – YouTube video posts are the only featured video posts on the results page. The irony is that the official Madonna website did not rank in this search, even though it has plenty of video and News from Madonna.
Of course this is an exaggerated example, but I think it speaks to the topic and gets the point across quite elegantly.
Where is the proof of the secret sauce I hear so much about? I for one know there are no short cuts or freebies in good SEO. It takes a substantial investment in financing or time; daily nurture and care to get up in the rankings and stay up there… Especially since companies like Google are capable of pushing out updates to their platform and without telling you – the only way you would know there are changes to analytics or adword services is often to actually log in and check for updates.
Regardless, I am taking a journey and inviting the VIDEO SEO guru’s of the world to SHOW ME THE SAUCE and help me, and the readers of Streaming Media Magazine (Article on Video SEO – due for April 2009 Issue), to uncover the truth.
Resources:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&pwst=1&q=interviews+with+madonna&start=0&sa=N
http://www.reelseo.com/video/seo/