As marketers, we understand the importance of video – both in terms of the opportunity to communicate the brand message as well as the investment in effort in dollars to produce.

Video Distribution

YouTube is certainly the biggest player, but there are several other noteworthy sites.  According to eBiz the top 10 video platforms based on traffic as of April 2011 are:

1. YouTube
2. hulu
3. DailyMotion
4. MetaCafe
5. MegaVideo
6. MySpace videos
7. Yahoo! Video
8. vimeo
9. Break.com
10. tv.com

To complicate matters, let’s look at which platforms get the most results in search engines.  According to an aimClear study from March 2011 Google and bing search results differ quite a bit.

Video Platform Allocation for Google

1. YouTube (84%)
2. DailyMotion (3%)
3. MetaCafe(2%)
4. Google Video (1%)
5. Other (10%)

Video Platform Allocation for bing

1. YouTube (38%)
2. Vevo (9%)
3. Foxnews (4%)
4. CNN (3%)
5. Blastro (2%)
6. Reuters (2%)
7. Other (5%)

In both cases, YouTube is far ahead in the top position.  Interestingly though, positions 2-5 differ greatly.  Search engines like to keep it interesting for SEOs.

It’s also important to note that aimClear observed that videos are returned much less often on bing than Google.

Given YouTube’s overwhelming popularity, let’s take a look at what to focus on for YouTube SEO.

Optimizing videos on YouTube

YouTube search

YouTube uses the typical title and description text and layers on engagement – a key trend in SEO.

Elements used in YouTube search include:

• title – strike a balance between keywords and readability.
• description – you can put a URL in the description but YouTube adds a “nofollow” tag meaning it won’t count as an inbound link for search engines.  However, it may create additional traffic to your web site so don’t disregard it.
• tags
• category
• number of views
• rating
• comments
• votes
• number of embeds
• shares
• playlists
• flagging
• subscribers
• inbound links

Items in bold are the elements you control.  Items in blue are engagement metrics.  Meaning, you can have an impact based on how you publicize and market your video, but you can’t control it.

YouTube lists the most popular videos by category for the day, week, month and all-time.  YouTube works off a calendar for the week and month, so videos uploaded at the beginning of the week or month will have more opportunity for the weekly and monthly popularity.  Time your uploads appropriately, or upload them at your leisure and mark them private until the new week starts.

Elements used by Google and bing:

• title
• description
• tags
• comments
• inbound links

Again, items in bold are the elements you control, items in blue are engagement metrics.

When you add a video to YouTube you can choose whether to allow ratings, comments, votes and embeds.  Given they influence both YouTube search and search engine rankings, I strongly suggest you allow them.

For all search, the thumbnail can have a big impact on click thru rate (CTR).  YouTube gives you 3 choices for the thumbnail – at the ¼, ½ and ¾ mark.  Choose the one that’s most compelling.

YouTube Metrics

YouTube includes an insights section where you can get:

• views
• demographics
• popularity
• inbound links
• community – engagement metrics including shares, ratings, favorites and comments

Similar to your web site metrics, use YouTube Insights to understand how your video is performing.

Optimizing Videos on your Web site

When adding videos to your web site keep the following in mind for improved SEO

• Consider creating a separate page for each video.  With individual pages you can get more targeted with your keywords and descriptive text.  If all your videos are on one big page search engines will index the page equally for keywords for all the videos together.
• Add a video sitemap for your site.  Video sitemaps must include:
  • title
  • description
  • play page URL
  • thumbnail URL
  • raw video file location and/or the player URL (SWF)
• Read more about how to create video sitemaps in this Google Webmaster Tools article.

Other video platforms

While there is a lot less advice about the “other” platforms, general opinion is that the YouTube guidelines and recommendations are good to follow for the other video platforms as well.

Conclusion

Common SEO best practices have influence, as do views and engagement metrics for distribution, popularity and SEO.  Focus on content, keywords and getting users engaged for successful video distribution.

For further reading

• YouTube SEO at reelseo.com
• Video SEO at reelseo.com
• Tips for Optimizing for Universal Search: Video at Directory Journal
• The Key to Top Video Rankings on YouTube and Google at Search Engine Land

Check out our blog tomorrow when I wrap up Deep Dive Week with a look at mobile SEO.

Web sites present lots of data – products, reviews, address, phone number, contact information – and it’s a search engine’s job to pour through it all and determine what it’s about and whether it’s relevant.

Structured data help search engines do just that – figure out what your content is, when it’s relevant to a search, and how to display it.

You may be thinking “I’m in marketing/creative/copy writing so this article isn’t for me” but you’d be wrong – everyone who contributes to a web site needs to understand the basics.

If you’re a digital marketer

• Know what to look for when reviewing comps and mock ups
• Know what kinds of content to focus on when planning a new site
• Know the right questions to ask your technology team when your site is being built

If you’re a creative

• Know what to design as HTML text for better SEO
• Know what kinds of content is important to be on its own page
• Know when Flash is or isn’t an appropriate solution

If you’re a copy writer

• Know how to identify structured data opportunities and work them into the copy
• Know how structured data is discovered to give the site the best chance of having that data used by search engines

Once Upon a Time…

Google identified that web sites create many different types of content (e.g. images, videos, products, reviews) and enhanced their functionality to offer ways to search on just that type of content.  You may be familiar with Google Image search, Google Video search or Google Product search.  When you use one of these specialty searches you’re using what’s called a vertical search.  Instead of searching the entire web, you’re limiting your results to a specific kind of search – images, videos or products.

Over time, Google observed that people weren’t opting to use the vertical searches.  Instead, they just did what they grew accustomed to doing – going to the Google home page and typing in a search query.  Google even added some options to the home page and it didn’t make much of an impact.

Google is known for adjusting their results pages, and often run small experiments to test tweaks and enhancements before rolling them out to everyone.  They learned that people liked the types of results they got from vertical search but they had to find a better way to deliver those results.

Enter Universal Search

In May 2007 Google rolled out Universal Search – blending vertical search results right on default results pages.

Take a look at this example search for “calzone recipe”

Highlighted in blue are 2 recipes with images and ratings stars – those images come from structured data on the recipe’s web page.

At the bottom, highlighted in red, we see two video results.  Videos are added to search pages for several reasons, including structured data.

Note: Look for a Deep Dive Week post on video later this week.

On the left you see specialized search options that Google shows when you’re searching for recipes – ingredients, cook time, calories.  Google gets this from structured data available from web sites.

Similarly, if Google found any news or books relevant to your search, they would also be on that page.

If you’re searching for a recipe, which results might you be more inclined the click on – the one with the image and rating stars, or the one that’s just text?  The images grab your attention and stand out.  If you want your content to stand out you need to take advantage of structured data.

Structured Data Types

There are several types of markup supported by Google – microformats, RDFa, and Google’s own “rich snippets”.  I won’t go into the syntactical differences (that’s for your tech team) but the types of markup are important for you to know.  They include:

• Reviews
• Products
• Videos
• Recipes
• People
• Businesses and Organizations (basic name and address info) – used by Google Places
• Events – used by Google Places

Note: We go into more detail on Google Places in tomorrow’s Deep Dive Week post on Local Search.

How to Use Structured Data

Take the list above and review the content on your site.  It’s likely you’ll find several instances where structured data can be added.  A restaurant may have reviews, recipe and events in addition to their name and address.

E-commerce sites with brick and mortar locations may want to add mark up to their store listings as well as products and reviews.

If your web site uses a content management system (CMS) for products, reviews or recipes your technical team should be able to modify the CMS to take advantage of the appropriate mark up.

Common Questions and Issues

I added mark up but we’re still not coming up in search results.

Structured data doesn’t take the place of traditional SEO – it only enhances it.  You still need to focus on SEO best practices – keyword-rich title tags and copy and in-bound links have a significant impact.  Mark up won’t make you place higher – it will just make your results look more appealing.

We added mark up but the additional data still isn’t being shown in search results.

First step – make sure your mark up is valid.  Run your page through the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool to confirm.  If it is valid, be patient.  Google can take a while before adjusting your search results.

I don’t want the additional data to be visible on the page.  Can I hide it so only Google sees it?

Do not do this! Serving web sites in one way for users and another way for search engines can lead to penalties.  Additionally, if a user clicks on a search result only to see it’s not on the page they’re likely to hit the back button and go somewhere else.  Now you’ve taken a chance with search engines and you’ve disappointed a prospective customer.  Don’t do it!  Work with your copy, creative and usability teams to devise a way to fit the structured content onto the site in a pleasing way.

Further Reading

As you can imagine, there is a lot of content on structured data, microformats and rich snippets.  Here are some additional articles to help you continue your reading:

• Rich snippets (microdata, microformats, RDFa) – Google Webmaster Central
• Google’s Semantic Web Push: Rich Snippets Usage Growing – Read Write Web
• Google Universal Search – Search Engine Land
• Use of rich snippets expands to shopping results – Holistic Search Marketing

Tune in tomorrow when Nick Pirlis, Integrated Media Supervisor, talks about local search trends and opportunities.