Smart vidEO - Video SEO Service - Video SEO Company

Video in SEO Factors and Trends Report 2011 from Bruce Clay Inc.

The Bruce Clay Inc.  SEO Factors & Trends Report for 2011 covers the key search engine optimization (SEO) factors that changed in the search engine marketplace in 2010 and the key potential SEO trends in 2011. Chapter 5 of the report discusses video content and highlights four important recommended actions. In summary:

'Video content has long been a difficult medium for search engines to understand, however during 2010 Google introduced several new services and standards to help Webmasters provide valuable metadata to search engines about their video content. In doing so Google now has the ability to understand video content in ways never possible before.

How to track video in search engine results pages.

Just a quick post to update you on some  changes to Webmaster Tools that you may or may not be aware of. Over the last few months Google have quietly been tweaking the Webmaster Tools interface to include a number of nice features that allow you to keep track of what is going on with your various search phrases in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

The one of most interest to us is the option to filter the result by vertical - so for example you can see how many impressions are being generated by Google's Video search vertical - i.e how much search exposure is coming specifically from Video content.

This is really useful for anyone who is using video as a means of driving traffic to their site and allows you to clearly see the differences in traffic received from different Google search verticals.

Its also possible to drill down results on a page by page basis - so you can see which specific pages are ranking and for which key phrase, handy if you want to know what phrases a video is showing up for.

Its important to remember that these impressions are "pre-click" so its showing impressions in Google as apposed to people actually visiting your site for these phrases (as shown in analytics). You do get an indication of CTR and of whether your pages are on the rise or fall. This is handy to measure the difference in CTR between Video pages and normal text pages. We are finding that video CTRs are significantly higher across the board so video is a great way to get more traffic to your site - particularly when combined with an existing high ranking page.

All in all its a useful tool to use and I get the feeling that there may well be some more changes to come in the next few months.

Video SEO - the missing link - Smart-vidEO.tv - Episode 2

Professor Hans Schmart introduces the second episode of Smart-vidEOs Video SEO tutorial series - for more information on Video SEO check back soon for the next episode in the series. Why not follow the Professor on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook?

Introduction to Video SEO - Smart-vidEO.tv - Episode 1

Professor Hans Schmart introduces the first episode of Smart-vidEOs Video SEO tutorial series - for more information on Video SEO check back soon for the next episode in the series.

Auto generation of Google Video Sitemaps

Video sitemaps seem to be the talk of the online town at the moment and in particular the use of said sitemaps to improve the chances of Google finding and indexing video content for both locally and third party hosted video.

When it comes to online video you have two options -

Option 1: Submit your videos to a site like YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe or one of the many others and then post the generated embed code into your own pages.

Option 2: Host the videos on your own server and use your own flash or similar player.

Both options have their good points and bad points but the best choice really comes down to the type of site you run.

For many people YouTube is the best choice offering a cost effective way to get your videos online and exposed to the masses.

Your videos are pretty much gauranteed to get indexed in Google Video and provided you choose your titles and descriptions carefully you will get views of your video.

The biggest downside is that whilst your video will be indexed it will be YouTube that gets the traffic boost as their URL will show in the video search results on Google. This is fine if you just want people to see your video - but what if you actually want to get people to your own site.

With video hosted on your own site this is possible - any video that is indexed will drive traffic straight to your own site. But you will need to make sure that sitemaps are created and updated, pages are optimised for video and so on - basically it's down to you.

Smart-vidEO offers an elegant sulution which essentially delivers a combination of the two - a hosted video solution that makes life easy for the publisher and allows traffic to be driven direct to the publishers site from search results.

The great thing is it requires no technical knowledge on the publishers part - sitemaps are auto generated and updated each time a video is added and a custom page complete with meta tags is provided via the Smart-vidEO interface.

Now there is talk at the moment of Google being keen to educate people on how to generate YouTube friendly sitemaps that will potentially offer publishers the chance to have their URL indexed in Google for YouTube embedded videos.

However this solution, if indeed it is fourthcoming, will still likely fall short of the requirements of many brand conscious publishers who will not want YouTube branding in their videos and will be looking for a more customisable option, albeit with the same potential for organic traffic generation.

Either way the options for publishers are only likely to increase in the coming months and Googles involvement will certainly ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have their videos found.

Video SEO - What's it all about? (Alfie)

So, it seems that a lot of people are talking about Video - "So what?" you say - "Haven't they been talking about it for a while?" Okay - fair point. So, it seems that a lot of people are not just talking about Video but are actually looking to use it as a means of enhancing their websites and increasing sales.

Now, this has not just happened over night -  publishers in the know have been adding video to their sites for a while now and of course the behemoths of the video sharing world have made it easy for everyone to get their content out there if that's how you want to roll. But for those who don't want third-party branding, or want a little more control over their content, it has been difficult to find a way to ensure that valuable video content is found where it should be - in the top results pages of the major search engines linking back to relevant websites.