Using Video to Get Your Page One Ranking

A recent study by Forrester Research found that with SEO Video, you stand a 53 times better chance of getting a Page 1 Google ranking.

Now that's an attention grabber.

This entry is courtesy of Steven D. Strauss, one of the world's leading entrepreneurship and small business experts. The senior small business columnist for USATODAY, he is also a recovering lawyer and author of "Small Business Bible." His recent entry on bnet.com. entitled "The New, Easy Way to get a page 1 Google Ranking" really nails it.  From BNET:

Q: Hi Steve: I have read your Top 10 Business Trends columnfor USA TODAY before and was wondering if you are dialed-in to anything new that I might be able to use to improve my Google search rankings? The same old things don’t seem to work as well anymore. — Melissa

A: It is indeed the Holy Grail, is it not –- getting a Page 1 Google search ranking? But it definitely can be done, and yes, there is indeed something new under the sun that can help you get there.

But before I tell you about it, let me first share a cautionary tale:

I am fortunate enough to get to do a lot of public speaking. Mostly, I speak to small business groups, offering strategies and tips for growing their businesses. But speaking isn’t my main gig -– writing books and columns and making media appearances is -– so not long ago, my team and I decided to launch an SEO campaign to (hopefully!) increase the number of my speaking engagements.

We used all of the same strategies you probably use: identifying keywords and phrases, getting incoming links, linking key phrases, etc. We also launched a Google Adwords campaign. Our key words there were “small business speaker.”

The result was, to say the least, not what we expected. Aside from the same ol’, same ol’ SEO tactics yielding mixed results, the Adwords campaign flopped. I paid a lot of money for clicks from people who were looking for a different sort of speaker, namely Bose, Harman Kardon, and other “speakers” for their small businesses.

But today, I am happy to report that there is in fact a new best practice that you can use to spectacularly increase your chances of getting your business a Page 1 Google ranking.

The answer is video.

But I am not talking about any online video. No, what I am talking about is video that has been optimized for search. A recent study by Forrester Research found that with SEO video, you stand a 53 times better chance of getting a Page 1 Google ranking.

Here’s why video is the secret ingredient: When Google (or Bing or Yahoo) gives a search result, that listing is blended — that is, it offers up not only articles, but also images, video, news, and shopping, among others.

But, while every article out there has been SEO’d to death, the same is not true for video. If you optimize your video, you suddenly become a big fish in a small pond, for two reasons:

1. Most people don’t do it, and
2. There still is far less video online than articles

So if you’ve done your job right, a well-optimized video will jump to the top of the search rankings, well ahead of the thousands of articles that may have the same keywords.

But note, what I am not talking about is simply posting videos or embedding a YouTube player on your site. That’s not optimization and you’re likely to give more SEO value to YouTube, not your business.

Instead, here’s how to do it (and excuse me for getting a little geeky on you):

1. Shoot some great video: It could be a product demonstration, a how-to video, whatever. Make it useful, interesting, and not too long.

2. Post it on your site. There are all sorts of video players to choose from. A couple of the more popular ones are the JW Playerand the VLC Player.

3. Optimize it. Just as you do with articles or blogs, make sure that keywords and key phrases are part of the file name, are used in the captions, are in the URL, and so on. So, for example, a bad title for a video would be “Great Pizza Today” (too generic.) Instead, a good title for that same video could be Seattle’s Best Pizza Restaurant (with a corresponding URL: Seattle’s-Best-Pizza-Restaurant.)

4. Submit it: Next, once you have posted the video on your site -– and here’s the geeky part -– you need to submit it to the search engines using XML tools.

That last part may seem daunting, but actually it’s not. There are various services that will index and submit your videos for you, for instance, Fliqz.com. If you have great video content and you’ve done your job to optimize it, it should end up at or near the top of search engine results.

Ready, set, optimize!

Getting your Page One Google Ranking

Recently, iPlayerHD added an SEO feature that's guaranteed to dramatically increase your Video's visibility to Google and the other search engines.

Video SEO is the act of proactively submitting your content, through what's called a "Video Sitemap", so that it's easier for Google and other search engines to find it.

Once your video sitemap is submitted your videos can:

• Appear inline in universal search results
• Send people directly to your video page when clicked on in search results
• Boost overall placement for your page
• Appear in video specific search results, like http://video.google.com

• iPlayerHD will help you create, host, and submit your video sitemap.

Start Here:

Step one requires you to authorize iPlayerHD to host your video sitemap and reference pages on your site. This is done through the robots.txt file on your web server. The robots.txt is a website file that helps search engines know what content they can and cannot index. The robots.txt also has the ability to inform and authorize sitemaps for your website.

To get started, in your "Manage Account" find your "Video Sitemap" address. It should look like this: http://www.iplayerhd.com/video-sitemap/uniquenumber.aspx. You will also find this address in every Video you create below "Valid referrers". Add this address to the end of your robots.txt file like this:

Sitemap: http://www.iplayerhd.com/video-sitemap/uniquenumber.aspx

You are now ready to add entries to your video sitemap from iPlayerHD.

Once a video sitemap entry is made, it will be automatically picked up by Google and your content will be indexed according to Google's indexing queue.

Creating a video sitemap entry

This entry is made at the time you are creating a Video and it may be changed at any time simply by editing the Video. While in the create/edit mode of your Video, place a check mark in the box next to "Include in Video Sitemap". Next, enter your information in Title, Description and Tags, using commas in the Tags section to distinguish separate words and phrases. When done and after all other edits are completed in the Video, click Save. Your sitemap will then be automatically updated and we will inform Google that there are new changes that should be indexed.

It's that simple!

New Video Hosting Features

Whew! I feel like I've been running a non-stop marathon the last few months. In March, iPlayerHD conducted a survey asking our customers to tell us which of 34 potential features they wanted most. Well, you responded and made your voices heard. Since then, we've added over a dozen new features and we're not done yet. Here's the list so far:

• Delete multiple files in your Library.
  This makes your life so much easier.
• You may now integrate Google Analytics into every Video.
  Track your videos wherever they are embedded.
• The percentage of each video viewed is now displayed on your Videos page.
  Now you'll know which videos are worth keeping and which may be broomed.
• Option to restrict video URLs by Password.
  It's like Fort Knox for your videos.
• Option to restrict embedding by domain.
  It's like Fort Knox for your embeds. 
• Option to restrict viewing by password.
  Give your viewers the key to Fort Knox.
• A major workflow change.
  After encoding, we create an embeddable Video and a Playlist page for quick viewing.
• Choosing Videos for Playlists is much easier.
  No more dragging and dropping. Just choose.
• Facebook embedding.
  We still have a bug in this but we'll fix it in the next few days.
• Video history.
  All of your videos now have a view history going back to their date of upload.
• Video SEO
  You now have the tools to uniquely optimize all of your Videos.
• HTTPS option.
  If you need to embed on secure pages, choose this option.

Coming soon:

• End of Video post roll.
  These will be call to action links.
• Social bar
  If you enable this, your viewers may embed your Videos on any page or blog and share them on Facebook, Twitter and others.
• Video popover lightbox.
  This makes embedding easy on crowded web pages.
• Dramatic new customizable playlists for embedding. These will be REALLY COOL. We're saving the best for last.

That's it for now. Gotta take a nap.

Cheers.

Seven Tips for Increasing Your Twitter Followers

This blog post is courtesy of Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager at Inmannews.com.

Seven Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers

You can post great content all day long – but if no one is following you then it’s not as effective as it could be. You need followers to get followers; it’s a Catch 22. The quality of your tweets is only one factor. I am proud to say I’ve never played any games or purchased lists to get more followers. I don’t think those methods will produce the type of followers you want.

Here are my top 7 tips for increasing your followers today:

1. Understand it is a numbers game. The more people you follow, the more followers you will have. If you follow a lot more people, a lot more people will follow you back.
2. Follow people with similar interests who also have a high likelihood of following you back. Search for key people in real estate OR in key people in your community and follow them. Then look to see who their followers are, and then work through the list, following selected followers. By selectively following people who follow leaders in your industry, you tap into people who want to be connected, have things in common with you, and will likely connect to you too.
3. Use hashtags (#) to find followers. In my case, I am always looking for great social media tweeters, so I often search for tweets under #sm or #facebook. In real estate, search #realestate or #realtors. I also love to search #mobile, #ipad, or #iphone. I know I will always find good people to follow there, as well as followers to follow me. I also always search event hashtags to follow like-minded people.
4. Be sure to add appropriate hashtags to your tweets so that they will show up in those Twitter streams and thereby increase your chances of getting re-tweeted.
5. Get re-tweeted. Having your followers re-tweet your great content is like getting an unsolicited endorsement. How do you get re-tweets? You must re-tweet others. Make it a point to re-tweet 3-5 posts a day.
6. Repeat hot tweets. I am a big fan of the repeat tweet. Key messages repeat 2-3 x a day or 1x a day for 3 days in a row!
7. Promote it. Make sure your Twitter profile is part of your email address, linked to your Facebook, LinkedIn, email signature, blog, and prominent on your homepage

HTML5 - What You Need to Know

Unless you've been in a cave for the last year, you've heard there's a new web language called HTML5 and that it seems to be the future of web page creation and video delivery. Like most, you're probably confused as to what it means for your website and for your future web video. Well, let not your heart be troubled because I have all the answers right here in my Blog. Or not. Sorry. In fact, the subject of HTML5 video is as complicated as it is compelling and there's not a soul - including me - who truly understands where this new technology is headed. I did, however, find two articles on the web that should help you understand a lot more about HTML5 video.

The first, Video on the Web - Dive into HTML5 - written by Mark Pilgrim, reads like an HTML5 for Dummies and is well worth reading. Mark covers everything web video from codecs, containers, players, encoding, licenses, as well as browsers and smart phones like Apple and Android Devices. He relates all of it to HTML5 in a way that makes sense.

The second, HTML5: What you Need to Know, by Jan Ozer, is another must-read. Jan provides a behind the scenes look that goes a little deeper into the economics of HTML video and the players (no pun here) who are driving the bus.

The common theme among both authors is this: HTML5 has a future on the web, but the shape of that future is very unclear. As Jan writes "....until that point, which is clearly well off in the distance, the burdens of supporting HTML5 outweigh the benefits.......general support for HTML5 on your primary website doesn’t need to be a priority."

Happy reading!

Motionbox Users Make the Move to iPlayerHD

On July 13, Motionbox, a mostly free video sharing platform, announced the sale of the company to Snapfish, a mostly free photo sharing platform. It seems Snapfish looks to integrate Motionbox's video technology into its platform and extend video sharing services to its millions of subscribers. While Snapfish subscribers might celebrate the new services this acquistion brings, Motionbox users are hardly celebrating.

Turns out Snapfish does not intend to offer all of Motionbox's features including, and especially, the ability to embed videos. This has caused widespread grief and anger among the many Motionbox subscribers whose videos, on August 10, will be disabled and left out in the cold. It has also caused a widespread exodus from Motionbox as subscribers seek alternatives.

Many Motionbox subscribers used the service to deliver important video content for their businesses, schools and churches. Some paid a subscription for their relationship with Motionbox. They are all looking for an alternative and many have found iPlayerHD.

We've been busy helping them download their source and optimized video files as well as assisting them with the upload to iPlayerHD. iPlayerHD offers something they did not get with Motionbox - live support - and plenty of it. In the end, they will all land on their feet and for those who chose iPlayerHD, they will sleep well knowing that their videos are in good hands and out of the cold.

iPlayerHD is a profitable, debt-free company that delivers an excellent product at a fair price. We welcome our new subscribers with open arms and we're glad to have them with us. Welcome aboard!

Encoding Video for the Web: Handbrake Tutorial

For about a year, I’ve been promoting QuickTime Player Pro as the best and easiest to use encoding tool for the Web. At $29.95, QTPP is a good tool. However, it is limited in that it does not accept all video formats into its encoder. Another tool has come along, one that is rapidly growing in popularity, not only because it is free, but because it simply has it all. Going forward, it is the tool that I will now recommend. I’m talking about Handbrake.

Handbrake is a free, no strings attached, video encoder. It will encode almost every video format (I don’t know of a video type that it won’t encode) and every DVD into an MP4 format you can display on the Web or your handheld device.

Handbrake uses the H264 codec and the encoding process it uses delivers a stunning end result that matches any encoder on the market.

You’ll first need to download this PC and MAC compatible tool. You’ll find it at http://handbrake.fr/

We've created a Handbrake tutorial with lots of screenshots. Get it here.