Luke Brown Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Better videos + more views = greater traffic

Online video is here to stay and you’re either using it or getting crushed by your competition who’s using it. Using the following tips will make your videos search engine friendly, which will generate more traffic to your website.

1. All your video files should include metadata coding for  titles (very important), keywords, descriptions, dates and authors.

2. Enable comments, without captchas. The trade-off of slightly more spam for an engaged audience is well worth it.

3. Allow visitors to subscribe to your videos.

4. Generally, shorter videos (1 minute or less) are better. Turn a 10 minute video into 10 one-minute videos.

5. Set up a Google video XML sitemap. While optional, Google highly recommends sitemaps.

6. Use TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser (some people love it, but I hate it) to populate dozens of appropriate video sites with your visual magic.

7. Just like with any other marketing campaign, make sure you track viewership. Use the information to get focused analytics about your viewers.

8. Including social bookmarking tools gives others a chance to share and spread your video. It probably won’t go viral, but at least it has the opportunity to do so.

9. Use one video per URL. If you have 2 or more videos per URL, somebody may not find what they were looking for or they might not want to spend the time to find it. Either way, they won’t come back. Make it easy for them to stay.

10. Offer multiple formats and a video converter.

11. Include keywords and the word “video” in the filename.

12. Use the most relevant keyword phrase for your video. Use keyword search tools like WordStream, WordTracker, or SpyFu.

13. Create a video site map with an RSS feed.

14. If you use Google Maps to advertise locally, include videos in your profile.

15. Remember to use internal linking for maximum SEO value. The footer is an ideal place for these links.

16. Let your viewers easily grab your embed code, with a link.

17. Use an embedded player rather than a pop-up or a link.

18. Include end slates with all URLs.

19. Create navigation links to the video content, then use the video to drive traffic to your site.

20. Put all video files in a central directory off the root of your folder structure. Call it (no surprise here) “videos”.

21. On the page, follow basic SEO guidelines for on-page optimization (title tags, meta descriptions, H1 headers, tags and URLs).

22. Videos should ‘live’ on your domain. Use 3rd parties to distribute them.

Got an appropriate piece of advice regarding online video? Share it here! Good karma awaits you.