Optimize your Youtube Video for the Search Engines.

We often forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Being a site that hosts videos, we tend to miss the fact that a lot of people also use YouTube as a search engine to find what they want and need. These are the people who like to consume content in the form of video and are usually more qualified buyers and subscribers than the visitors from search engines.

A few years back, if you posted a video on YouTube with the relevant keyword in the title, it would rank in the top 10 results easily. But nowadays there are so many videos being uploaded in YouTube that YouTube SEO has become as important as website SEO. As an added bonus, one can optimize their YouTube videos and move their rankings up in YouTube search result pages just like in Google search results.

Many marketers have talked about YouTube SEO so I will start with the most elusive concepts first and then I will cover the frequently talked about tips as well.

1. Closed Captions

While watching YouTube videos you would have noticed a button ‘CC’ in the bottom right corner. CC stands for closed captions. YouTube is becoming global now and videos created in India are being watched and shared by people in US; videos from Europe are reaching people in Sri Lanka and so on. Captions not only enable more people to consume your video but YouTube also crawls the content in the captions! This has been proved by many experiments where we include a unique text string inside the captions file and when that string is searched on Google or YouTube the video will come up!

Earlier it used to be a complicated process to add CC to a video – one would need to specify the start and end time of each line and it would take hours. But recently YouTube introduced a speech recognition technology/feature which automatically detects the start and end of each line spoken and matches it to the video’s audio. So all you need to do is upload the script of the video and the captions will appear exactly in sync with the video. It is amazing how YouTube does this – but it is also the reason they are the No.1 in this market.

So a video on a topic with CC should definitely outrank the video on the same topic with no CC provided other SEO factors have also been taken care of.

2. Adding the Script in the Description

If you are creating the script for the speech in video, then adding the same script in the description of the video shouldn’t take much time. Google indexes this as well.

3. Naming the Video File with Keywords

If you are uploading a video about the ‘Health Benefits of Organic Foods’ then the file name of the video should be something like organic-food-benefits.avi or something similar. MOV0234.AVI is not going to be meaningful. The viewer of the video does not look at this but YouTube gives a relevancy credit to the file name because if your file name is named with your keyword then there is a better chance that your video is about what it says.

4. Create a More Engaging Video

This probably sounds straight forward and simple and you may even be tempted to skip this paragrapgh – BUT WAIT. I am about to say something which will blow you away.

YouTube gives relevancy credits to videos where people watch it for a longer time. This is not just a theory but has been tested by us. We uploaded two videos with almost the same SEO factors built in but the only change was the perception by the real human visitor. One video was engaging and the other video was not engaging to the real humans. 6 months later the more engaging video was ranking much better than the other video. So yes, YouTube gives credit to videos which are more engaging because it is a good way to measure the quality of the video.

For the purposes of guarding my niche from competition, I cannot reveal the videos I tested – so if you have a hard time trusting me, you can ignore this fact at your own risk.

5. Authoritative YouTube Channel

If you are posting a video on a fresh YouTube channel it is not going to have as much SEO power as the same video uploaded on a channel with has a lot of other good videos on the same topic. This is similar to website SEO – Posting an article in a fresh blog vs. posting an article in a high PR established blog makes a difference between heaven and hell.

Not only the video would get better rankings, but it will grow faster when the subscribers of that YouTube channel like, comment and share that video.

So always try to have established youtube channels for each of your niche and avoid posting videos on fresh channels. Also avoid posting irrelevant videos in the channels – it may dilute the SEO power of all the other videos on that channel.

6. Posting HD Videos Instead of SD

It is astonishing how many marketers do not even mention about uploading HD videos. Again this has been tested by us in several occasions. HD videos out-rank standard definition videos every time.

You may think that YouTube may not prefer HD videos because it costs them a lot of storage space and bandwidth – but they have more resources that you can imagine. The reason why they limit the length of the videos is not because of lack of storage or bandwidth but to prevent people from uploading copyrighted videos. This has been confirmed by YouTube itself.

It makes sense that a HD video should be better than a standard video. If someone is investing the energy and resources in creating a HD video then the content could be equally good.

So try to upload 1080P videos whenever possible and if you are doing screen cast or presentation videos – 720P should do the job.

Some of the other commonly talked about SEO methods are

• Having a relevant headline with proper keywords
• Putting your link in the description above other content with http://
• Including tags from other videos which rank well for the keywords that you are targeting
• Giving a call to action at the end of the video for liking your video and/or subscribing to your channel.

Hope you found my insights useful. Please leave you comments.

Social Media tips fo the Eye Care Professional, Internet Marketing for the Vision Care Community.

It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.

Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.

While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.

Here’s how to get started.

Step 1: See Where You Stand

Before you can manage your online reputation, you have to assess it. Type your names in search engines. Set up search alerts for your name (Google recently made this easier to do from the Google dashboard through a new “Me on the Web” tool).

If you find something unflattering, ask yourself:

• Did I post it? If, for instance, photos from your Flickr account that you’d rather keep private are showing up in search results for your name, you can simply delete the photos or adjust your privacy settings.
  After you’ve removed the offensive content, you can use Google’s URL removal tool to stop it from appearing as a cached copy or snippet in search results. If you do nothing, the content will still eventually drop from Google’s index — it will just take a bit longer to disappear.
• Is it personal information that could be used in a crime? If someone posts your social security number, bank account number, credit card number or an image of your handwritten signature, Google will makeefforts to remove it from search results. It will also contact the site’s hosting company to request that the page be taken down.
• Is it posted on a high-traffic news site? Competing for search results with a popular news site is difficult. ButPatrick Ambron, the cofounder of a personal online reputation management service called Brand-Yourself, says that all hope is not lost. “Google usually only likes to rank one result per domain name per page,” he says. “So if you could get another result on the same domain name like Huffington Post that was better optimized for your name, you could theoretically knock the bad article off.” One way to do this is to create a profile on that news site using your full name. Use as many links as possible, and link to the profile from all of your other web properties.

If you can’t answer “yes” to either of these questions, your best bet for reducing the visibility of negative content is to compete for top search results using positive content.

If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”

In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.

Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook andTwitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.


Step 2: Post Positive Content

“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”

In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.

Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook andTwitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.

Step 3. Create an Identity Hub

One secret to pushing your positive online presence further up in search results is to make a hub that links to all of your content. Ambron recommends these tips for pushing your hub to the top of search results for your name.

• Claim your domain name. Including the search term (in this case, your name) in the URL of your web page tells search engines what the page is about.
• Mention yourself. You’re trying to tell search spiders, “This page is about me!” A good way to do that is to use your name a lot. Use your name in tabs and headers.
• Link to your content. “[Google] considers each link to your site a vote for the site,” Ambron says. “Google has gotten pretty smart, so where those links come from is very important. The more reputable links are better votes. A vote from CNN is better than some site you made that you just linked to yourself.”
  Remember all of those social media profiles that you created in step two? They’re attached to reputable sources like Facebook and Twitter, which makes their “votes” count as much more reputable than a page you just created.
  Sign up for as many of them as possible (use one of these sites to see what is available), and then link them all to your hub.
• Post often. Search engines like fresh content. One easy way to create it is to post your social media feeds to your blog.

• Step 4. Consider Automating the Process

  
  
  There are several services that will help you with your quest for a pristine online reputation for a small fee.Brand-Yourself, for instance, keeps track of your reputation on a dashboard and helps you improve it by helping you raise existing positive content or helping you create new positive content. Vizibility allows users to pre-select the information they want displayed in “search results” from a special button or URL that can be added to online profiles, websites, resumes, email signatures and business cards.
  
  
  This article was reposted form Mashable. http://mashable.com/2011/06/27/manage-online-reputation-seo/
  
  
  
  

  Series Supported by SES San Francisco Conference & Expo

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  The Future of Search Series is supported by SES San Francisco Conference & Expo. Join more than 6,000 marketers August 15-19 at the Moscone Center for five days of education, inspiration and conversations with the most important voices online. Learn about the industry’s most pressing developments — everything from Google Panda to YouTube LIVE — and every essential topic, including email, display, mobile, search, social media, video and more. Register with “MASH20″ to save 20%. Join the discussion: #SESSF.