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Optimising YouTube Videos For Search Results

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:23:54 +0000

Getting to the top of Google is becoming more and more difficult everyday. One way to help you get to that first page is by using video, in this case YouTube and optimising your videos for search results.

Here Is How To Get Started

Upload your video to YouTube. – The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists. The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Your other alternative is Video SEO
Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that:

Google finds your video content
Google successfully indexes your video content
Google will display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms

Here’s how to make it work:

You Need Video Content – Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually “see” what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.
Submission, Not Discovery – With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools. The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed. You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.
Title and Title Tags – When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.
Video SEO is Long Tail – Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled “Dog” is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled “German Shepherd Police Dog” will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.
New and Small Don’t Matter – With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate. In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.
For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy – As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.

Article Source here

Optimising YouTube Videos For Search Results is a post from: Home

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Google Gives Facebook Pages Some Extra Love

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:43:23 +0000

Google has announced via Twitter that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine’s real-time search feature.

What Does That Mean?
That means the largest social network in the world is getting some love and now appearing in Google’s real-time search results. These real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries. This can allow you to add another top page placement for your business by seeding the right keywords in your updates, proving you a nice boost in targeted visito numbers.

Other Real-Time Indexed Sources:

Twitter tweets
Google News links
Google Blog Search links
Newly created web pages
Freshly updated web pages
FriendFeed updates
Jaiku updates
Identi.ca updates
TwitArmy updates
Google Buzz posts
MySpace updates
Facebook fan page updates

A lot of brands and small businesses who don’t have Facebook pages in place should really consider establishing one after this Google announcement.

Google Gives Facebook Pages Some Extra Love is a post from: Home

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Yahoo! & Twitter Morphing As One

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:13:22 +0000

Yahoo! is partnering with Twitter, making it possible to integrate real-time content into social experiences on Yahoo! You can now see more fascinating and news-worthy tweets when you search on Yahoo!

Last year Yahoo! integrated Twitter results in the Yahoo! News Shortcut and for other buzzing topics. With the new partnership, Yahoo! now have access to the full public feed of Twitter content. This has allowed them to build a real-time index of this feed so you can see what people are tweeting about the topics you’re looking for.

So go and give it a test flight, if you are as big a fan of curling, here is an example of what you could see on Yahoo! Search:

Real-time search involves striking a balance between showing the very latest content and showing slightly older content that may be more interesting or authoritative. In the coming weeks, we will be experimenting along these lines and upgrading tons of stuff to provide better, quicker, and more relevant Twitter results on Yahoo! Search result pages.

Article Source – A Little Bird Just Told Us About a Yahoo! and Twitter Partnership

Yahoo! & Twitter Morphing As One is a post from: Home

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9 Traffic Boosting SEO Tips To Do Now

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:48:36 +0000

The first month of 2010 flew by and the rest of the year is going to do the same. Before it does how much time will you dedicate to your search engine optimisation strategies? Well why not make some changes right now, yep today!

Here are 9 Traffic Boosting SEO Tips To Do Now

Structure your Title Tag – Put your brand/company name at the end of your title tags. The important phrases for search rankings should be at the front of your tags because search engines place more weight on the phrases at the start. Eg, I want this website to rank for Mt Tamborine Accommodation & Mount Tamborine Accommodation so my title tag will start with – Mt Tamborine Accommodation | Mount Tamborine Accommodation
Build Links – A quick way to build a few links to your website is to submit your site to authority directories, Eg, BOTW.org, Demoz.org (can take a long time), Hotfrog.com.au etc
No Follow or Consolidate Links – The chances are you have a “Terms & Conditions” and/or “Privacy Policy” or similar pages on your website and there is most likely a link from every page within your site to these pages, eg, from the footer. Placing a No Follow tag (rel=”nofollow”) on the link or consolidating them into one page will help reduce the authority each page is leaking from your more important pages.
Internal Linking – Linking to the important pages within in your site with the correct anchor text will help search engines determine the important pages within your website. Make sure you link to the correct address, eg, when linking to the home page you should link to www.sixthsensemarketing.com.au/ not www.yousite.com.au/index.html or some other funky combination.
Add Title & Alt Attributes – Make sure every product image, logo, navigation button and link has clear, descriptive ALT and/or Title text so search engines know what is going on.
Domain Trust – Search engines consider domain life (expiration date) of your domain as part of their ranking algorithm, if your site expires in 1 year you may not have the trust value of a domain that expires in 10. Go extend your domain life and rank higher!
Download Link Sluth – A cool tool that can do a few things that are very handy for SEO. Find any broken links within your site or have it crawl your site and create a sitemap to sumbit to search engines.
Use Yahoo Site Explorer – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ – Create yourself an account and submit register your website with Yahoo. Submit your site maps and rss feeds to help Yahoo find pages within your site.
Use Google Webmaster Tools - http://www.google.com/webmasters/ – Look at Diagnostics > HTML Suggestion – To help fix any duplicate title or meta description issues that search engines love to index. Also look at Crawl Errors > Not Found – To help find any broken links from sites or pages that have been removed and their incoming links. Now set up a server 301 redirect to the right/alternative page. This will now boost your link authority to current pages.

9 Traffic Boosting SEO Tips To Do Now is a post from: Home

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Facebook & Your Business

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:23:13 +0000

Facebook can be a tremendous source of traffic for your website and can produce foot traffic if you have a physical store. There’s a good chance that most of the people you know are on it, the ones who aren’t will be eventually. The social network is consuming more and more of people’s time, a major contributor to this is mobile devices, it is always accessible. If you don’t have a Facebook Page (Profile or Fan Page), you may be missing out on not only traffic to your website, but a chance to engage with customers and ultimately help your brand’s reputation.

Before you go and set up your Facebook page, remember you can not just set up the page and sprinkle some magic dust to have it deliver a massive increase in sales. It will take time, energy, you will have to promote it and engage in the community!

Some techniques you can use to promote your Facebook marketing campaign:

Prominent link on your site
Facebook Fan Box
Author Bio section on articles/Blog
Email newsletters
Other social media profiles
Google Profile (which is getting more attention now as a result of Google Buzz)
Business Card
Signage
Email Signatures
Advertisements

Does your Facebook page needs to be a little more exciting? A few handy tips:

Participate
Ask questions
Host events on your page
Highlight contributions from others
Go beyond just text
Integrate your other online presences
Take it easy with apps, boxes, etc.
Run offline events, if you can

Facebook & Your Business is a post from: Home

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Google Maps – Is Your Business Listing Secure?

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:30:16 +0000

Google Maps can be a great tool in marketing your business online. It can drive traffic to your main website where consumers can learn about your business/brand/products and also provide a physical store with foot traffic.

But consider this, Google Map listings do not provide you with security of your business listing!

What if your competitor moved your Google Maps listing to another country, changed the phone number to theirs or changed the link to their website instead of yours.

Read the following story:

A NZ florist changed an online map to steer business away from her competitors and into her store will have to complete 100 hours of community service.

The 40-year-old had confessed to editing the details on Google maps of six of her competitors on 100 occasions between November 1 and December 4 last year, telling police she had an ‘addiction’, agencies reported.
(source)

What Can You Do To Avoid This Happening To You?

Be friendly to your competitors – if things get nasty on both sides of the fence it just creates an unhealthy business environment for you and your consumers.
Google Local Business Center – allows you to take control of your listings. Simply create an account and provide Google with your business name, address, and phone number and you will see a listing of businesses already listed in Google Maps with similar information. You will have the option of claiming one of these listings or you can add a new listing for your business. Go to Google Local Business Center

Google won’t just let you claim any business that you want (advantage over Google Maps). You will be required to validate your ownership of the business listing that you are trying to claim. Google offers two ways to validate your listing, either by post-card mailed to your business address or by phone. Both options will contain a PIN number that you will enter in the Local Business Center to make your listing validated.

Now that you have claimed your listing you should optimize your local business listing to help your business rank better in searches. The easiest place to start is with your business’s title. When entering your business name, try to use keywords in the title.

For example – Instead of using “Tk’s Wedding Photograpahy”, we used

Tk’s Wedding Photography – Launceston Tasmania

This resulted in a listing on the first page of Google (within Google Business Map listings) and traffic to the website within hours of going live, but more importantly inquiries and bookings within days of creating the business.

It is also helpful to include targeted keywords in your business description.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Google will associate reviews of your business from sites like Trip Advisor and others. Having keywords in your reviews can really help boost your rankings as Google will associate the full text of reviews with your listing.

Following these tips and taking control of your Google Maps listing can really help boost leads for your business. While not every company can truly benefit from Google Maps, anyone with a brick-and-mortar location is crazy to not be taking advantage of this excellent (and free!) advertising opportunity.

Google Maps – Is Your Business Listing Secure? is a post from: Home

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Website Relevance or Speed For Higher Rankings

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:17:24 +0000

After Matt Cutts made the comment that page speed could become a factor Google looks at for ranking search results. His comments received a lot of attention, because Google has never taken this into consideration for ranking websites in the past.

Despite the fact that Cutts never said that page speed would become any more important of a ranking factor than anything else, many people around the web and Blogosphere jumped to conclusions. While many more have remained sensible about the concept, not expecting page speed to trump relevant content, Cutts has now provided a video setting the record straight.

There you go, the record is straight, relevance will win!

Even with relevance as the main focus point, please keep in mind and plan how speed will play apart in your search engine optimsation and end user strategies. There is nothing worse than finding a website that will promises to provide the golden goose that takes an eternity to load!

Website Relevance or Speed For Higher Rankings is a post from: Home

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The Best Of Yahoo Ads In 09

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:55:25 +0000

Need some inspiration for your display ads?
Take a look at the Best Of Yahoo Ads In 2009 video to help get your creative juices flowing!

Video Source here

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Google Buzz = Gmail + Social Media

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:36:10 +0000

Google Buzz is a new tool for Google, it is integrated with Gmail and other Google products such as Google Reader and Picasa, plus other sharing tools such as Flickr and Twitter. Google Buzz could be the missing link in tying Google together as a social network tool.

I personally really hope that Google gets this right and you can bring all the social media channels into one interface to allow for easy tracking of topics and what is happening in your social realm.

What Does Google Have To Say About Google Buzz?

Google says Buzz has five key elements:
1. Auto Following
2. Rich, Fast Sharing experience…
3. Support for public and private sharing….
4. In-box integration
5. Just the good stuff…

Google Buzz & Your Business

Buzz may benefit businesses as an orgnizational tool. The first thing that comes to mind is the expansion of communication with existing contacts. When you’re frequently seeing what your Gmail contacts are saying, it will not only keep those people fresh in your mind, but it can cultivate further communication.

The feature could possibly lend to better organization of your communication, which could in turn save time. Again, depending on how many of the possibilities (if any) mentioned in this article actually come to fruition, it could become a central place for that communication. The more services Buzz gets integrated with, the better it could become for organization.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he wrote an op-ed piece, posted it to Google Buzz, and quickly had 50 comments, and edited based on feedback. He finds it efficient as an editing tool.

The Future Of Google Buzz

Google says it wants Buzz to be as open as possible. That means there is plenty of room to grow and increase integration with different services. The company says it will be wired up to other parts of Google and other parts of the Internet. Facebook Connect integration is “something they’ll think about”, but it’s not happening yet. Google says it will bring Twitter content in, but will not yet let you push it out to Twitter…yett. That could change in time. Think about being able to do all of your social media and email communication from one place. That is something Mozilla is trying to develop with its in-progress Raindrop project. What if Google was able to do it with an established product like Gmail? Google says theyr’e “just getting started” with Buzz.

I think it’s safe to expect Buzz integration with a lot of other Google features. Google has already said that it places Wave as “high on the list of things they can do” as far as integration.

Google could potentially integrate the feature with any product it chooses (and it has a lot to choose from). What if it became available with the click of a button on the Chrome browser (which is gaining popularity)? What if it were integrated with the already social Google Reader? Google Docs? Wave? There could be a Google gadget, for users’ iGoogle home pages. There are a lot of ways tha Google could potentially get people using Buzz. Google says Buzz will be launched as an enterprise product eventually as well.

On a sidenote, it’s pretty interesting that Google and Yahoo both now have products called “Buzz.”
(Source)

Google Buzz = Gmail + Social Media is a post from: Home

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Google Content Network

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:42:35 +0000

For anyone that has used Google Adowrds the chances are you have probably burnt a lot of cash very quickly on the Content Network by not understanding how to master the system. Well the cool cats at Google have put together a series of video instructions for you, this will help you get more out of your Google Adwords advertising campaigns, both search and content network. Take a look at how to optimise and become a Yoda of the Google Content Netwrok with your Google Adwords.

1 – Content Network Campaign Set Up

2 – Content Network Ad Group Set Up

3 – Content Network Keyword Set Up

4 – Content Network Ad Text Set Up

5 – Content Network Setting Up Bids

6 – Content Network Conversion Tracking

All the best for making the most of the Google Content Network with your Google Adwords!

Google Content Network is a post from: Home

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