Conference Notes for the "Video Search Optimization" session at Search Engine Strategies New York '07

Speakers:
Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search, Performics
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst
Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC

[L-R] Gregory Markel (Infuse Creative), Eric Papczun (Performics), Sherwood Stranieri (Catalyst)

Intro

Video search is at the level web search was in '94.

Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst

(Catalyst is a company that specializes in work for the pharmaceutical industry, but is diversifying.)

Video is currently based on buzz, viral, word-of-mouth, and more somewhat difficult for "marketing"...

MarketShare: YouTube (45%), MySpace (15%), Google Video (10%), AOL (6%), MSN (3%), StupidVideos (3%), Yahoo! Video (3%)...

Primarily driven by viral at the moment, and entertainment play, not search engine marketing. But it can be used for marketing. For example: Digg (etc.) -> blogs -> thousands of links to your video -> traffic -> pages perform well in standard search. A video page can outperform a conventional web page in standard SERPs.

Everyone from casual bloggers to TV networks can use video, but especially powerful for entertainment content.

Use a teaser strategy - upload a few key videos to places like YouTube and link back to your web site for the other videos. You want the lasting value (ad revenue, links/PageRank, etc.)

All-in-one "players" cause problems for search engines since the content is locked away in Flash and can't be crawled. HTML + small video player are much better for spiders. YouTube and FrontLine are good examples.

Video for Pharma:

On-site: Interviews with patients make the product more real, more trustworthy. Real testimonials, not dramatizations.

Portal: Newsworthy topics work best: AIDS, bird flu...

Medical Animation is the leading edge and becoming popular.

Video for E-commerce:

Newsworthy, popular topics (iPhone), unanticipated uses (MP3 player out of Altoids tin).

Video for Consumer Packaged Goods:

Unexpected uses are big (Mentos, Diet Coke), humor (Pepto Bismol)...

Most video success stories are accidental. Don't go for product positioning (TV commercial), be credible - add dimension to the product, don't fake it.

Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search, Performics (a division of DoubleClick)

Videos are very social at the moment - 76% share videos they like.

More and more people are searching for video rather than music - more and more video consumption.

Google Video dominates video search (68%), followed by Yahoo! Video (21%) and AOL (8%), Alta Vista Video (2%), Blinkx (<1%).

Roadblocks:

• Lack of consistent taxonomy for producers to use.
• Too dependent on text around video
• Flash "players" not spider friendly
• Ugly URLs with lots of parameters

If you're doing things that are topical, there's a very small window (example: Michael Richards / Kramer).

Make sure to surround video with relevant text.

Keep video in a /video/ directory off the root of the site - the extra keyword in the URL helps.

Video site maps (visual) are a good idea.

Using the keyword 'video' is important since it's a big keyword when people are searching.

It's still all about links - video pages with them will do better.

Tagging is also important - topic tags as well as user-generated comments (get users to add metadata).

Bulk Video Submission:
https://upload.video.google.com
etc.

Best Practices:

• Get editors to think like searchers
• Encode for right keywords in content (title, etc.)
• Use keywords in file name
• One video per page (Avoid Flash and Popup players)
• Add tagging
• Keep video files in one directory
• Surround video with relevant text
• Crosslink to videos usng keywords in anchor text
• Create optimized video site map MRSS feed
• Upload to video search engines
• Embed metadata

Use paid search
Brand yourself with the keyword "video"

For Google Video links and anchor text are still king.

Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC

Started out 5 years ago with entertainment clients.

No cost per action or cost per click for video search.

More men search for videos than females.

Know the demographics of the different sites - sometimes little sites will do much better.

Dominate the space for your own product (negative example - [corvette video]).

Viral/Community - they do your marketing for you, links, comments = relevant text.

Video search engines are growing weekly. Keep an eye out for ones that may become popular (even in a niche).

Make sure you add metadata when you encode the video (e.g. Windows Media Encoder). Also be careful of keywords when you upload to video sites.

You can also submit Media RSS (MRSS) feeds to the major sites.

If your serious about it create a tool to upload and track videos. Infuse's tool will be publicly/commercially available 3rd or 4th quarter this year.

You can do it on a relatively low budget since there's no cost per action. Example: teensource.org - 250,000 views in 2-3 months for non-profit (sex ed for teens).

Make sure you watermark/brand each frame.

Do something with the first frame - readable message for people who don't press play.

Put a call to action in the last frames.

The leading edge is doing speech recognition for video.

Know what the popular keywords will be - for example "commercial" around the Superbowl (labeling a commercial with the keyword 'commercial' actually raised views at this time since people were searching on [Superbowl commercial]).

Look at the video search optimization tips/FAQs put out by the big video sites - they cover most of what you need to know...

Q&A

Put the most popular videos first when a visitor first comes to your site.

MAVS (?) - turns keywords into phonetics and then searches the video for the phonetics.

Transcripts are perfect for non-fiction, but for fiction the transcript often isn't all that helpful.

Use flash as an object - don't use an all inclusive player. Include MPEG version for mobile (video iPod, etc.) as an option.

You can measure the difference of telling someone to do something at the end of the video and not telling them to do anything.

Tags: SEO/SEM, SES-NY, Social Media, Video
Categories: SEO/SEM, Video