It’s no surprise that Google has made lots of changes to its algorithm lately. But what can be a surprise is how each change may have impacted your natural search rankings. I have conversations every day with customers that are in a near panic, because all the time and investment they’ve put into SEO has gone out the window and their search rankings have dropped dramatically. I’ll tell you what I tell them – the answer is video.

Even as Google continues to make tweaks, video continues to help companies get better rankings. This shouldn’t be earth-shattering news. For one thing, Google owns YouTube, so it makes sense that they give video more weight. But it’s not enough to just have video on your site. It has to be relevant, it has to be engaging, and it has to be indexed. The answer to all of this lies in automated videos.

Relevance. Like your product choices and all the content on your site, your videos need to be relevant to your audience and what they’re seeking. One way to ensure relevance is by including appropriate videos on each product page. If you’ve done your homework and labeled your videos correctly, you can easily serve up video that answers a consumer’s needs. A solution like Treepodia – that automatically creates videos from your product data feed – is a great way to do this. Not only are videos relevant, you can actually have thousands of them on your site in a few days.

Engaging. Video is undoubtedly the best way to engage shoppers and keep them on your site longer. In fact, time spent viewing is another measurement weighed by Google as it determines how to serve up search results. When tested side-by-side with full-production videos, Treepodia videos are often viewed in their entirety and result in more conversions than other videos, so their ability to engage customers is high.

Ensure They’re Indexed. To make sure your videos are indexed by Google (and other search engines), a video sitemap must be submitted manually via Google’s webmaster tools or through a third-party service. After that, Google indexes video content almost instantly (unlike other content, which can take several days), and it will quickly begin to rise in search rankings. And since thumbnail images appear with video listings, your results are more likely to get clicked. Treepodia offers a Dynamic Video Sitemap, which makes the process of submitting your videos to be indexed painless and instantaneous, with no work on your part.

If you want more information about how to put video to work today to help your Search Engine Optimization efforts, while also boosting sales on your site, feel free to drop me a line at melodyk@treepodia.com.

Team Google remain strong! Thanks to Google, Google assisted YouTube through the whole agreement with major music publishers. According to the article, “YouTube Makes a Deal with Music Publishers,” Google has made an arrangement that will allow YouTube to put the copyrighted materials online with a group of music publishers, including the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and Harry Fox Agency (HFA).  Of  course, Google will take care of the royalty’s fee.

YouTube announced this great news on Wednesday, August 17^th on YouTube official blog page.  Both YouTube and a group of music publishers expect profits to increase from the great number of YouTube users and fans. With the agreement with HFA, YouTube will be able to represent 46,000 music publishers and license their musical compositions. While users play their music video, YouTube will run ads alongside, which represent the compositions, publishers and singer songwriters. In this way, publishers are able to generate profits. YouTube will continue encouraging HFA to invite more music publishers to join their services.

Another advantage in taking a part of new YouTube community is YouTube’s Content ID system. Using this Content ID system, YouTube can easily identify the precise information on each music video. It will not only improve YouTube creative aspect, but also help increasing the revenue for the composition of music. Content ID will provide more performance opportunities for their song as well. It is indeed a win-win situation for both YouTube and Music Publishers.

Although the deal was made between YouTube and publishers, it will also benefit recording artists and record labels. YouTube can run ads alongside only when the copyright holders authorize, and YouTube has already made agreements with four major record labels and many independent labels. Now, YouTube will be able to make even more profits with this agreement with music publishers that we all will benefit from.

Vid.ly, a video uploading service, has the ability to provide for all your video needs. The site has recently been revamped and is ready for the general public. Any video can be uploaded with your free account and Vid.ly makes that video available on any browser, application, or device. This means your video can be seen by anyone whether they’re on an iPad, Google Chrome, or a Blackberry.

Vid.ly has recently become more popular with browsers and devices, as seen on Vid.ly’s website:

According to data collected by Vid.ly, the iPhone uses Vid.ly for about 62% of its video use while Blackberry and Android also use Vid.ly at a significant percentage.  Though the iPad does not use Vid.ly as much, there’s a strong chance that as Vid.ly’s popularity grows, more Mac products will adopt this method of video use.

According to Christophor Rick’s blog, Vid.ly has also reported various browsers’ usage of their service. Firefox uses it 50% of the time while Chrome and Internet Explorer use it 20% of the time. This is good news for Vid.ly and as their service becomes more popular, chances are these numbers will increase as well.

In a time of economic downturn and an ever changing online universe,  the end consumer has always dictated what the future holds for businesses and technologies alike.  According to some recent Nielsen ratings and Lightspeed research, video is becoming the hottest social medium on the web.  With over 116 million consumers watching and interacting with online video, you can now say that online video viewership is comparable to television viewership.

Consumers are now not only watching videos but sharing them with others.  According to Lightspeed research the most popular methods consumers are using to share videos include : email to friends (50%) , Send to a social network friend (23%) and Instant message a video clip to a friend or colleague (21%)

In conclusion, if your watching videos online your interacting with them more than ever. If your an online business or product online without video optimization and distribution you are definitely missing the picture or should I say online video!

Receiving information via television is so 2000 Late! If you want to view your favorite TV shows, movies, trailers, etc, you can do it by going to Hulu.com, download them from your iTunes account, PS3 video store, Amazon video, YouTube, and now you can even view videos through Twitter. Social Media is becoming more than anyone ever imagined!

There is a new site called twitmatic that allows you to search for any search term you want. It then performs a search from all tweets posted with a video link and presents them to you in a nice legible format. If you type in Star Wars for example, you are presented with trailers, spoofs, Star Trek vs Star Wars video, and much more. This is why Social Media for businesses are becoming so vital.

Business who have not embraced Social Media yet, need to know that everyone else is embracing it. If your business has a video online, it is important that it is a compelling video you want to showcase to the world. If you want it to be found via YouTube, ot in this case via twitmatic from posted tweets – it needs to be compelling.

Social Media is here to stay. It has been embraced by radio stations, newscasters, celebrities, and pretty soon everyone else around you.

Optimized video content is a key element in a well rounded search engine optimization campaign.  With Google’s newest algorithms and Universal Search features, a company must optimize not only it’s website but also ALL other digital assets such as video content.  YouTube.com videos are some of the best video content to embed on a website because Google gives them the most relevance. 

Video files can be optimized in the same way you optimize a web page with title tags, meta descriptions, etc.  Those videos then can be blasted out through networks such as Tube Mogul.  The idea being that when users run searches, they may not get your website everytime but a video result can be just as powerful.  Video optimization is a great Internet marketing tactic that enhances brand image and supports both SEO and social media strategies.

Here are some great tips for optimizing videos:

Upload the video to YouTube and write an optimized title and description, plus add a link to your site from that YouTube page

Video should ALSO be located within one of the company’s domains, IF POSSIBLE, and have the page itself optimized for the video which includes the Title Tags, META Description, & content.

Embed both the YouTube video and a link to the raw video on the client server

Video should not be in FLASH

Have all videos within one subdirectory or subdomain

Create a video XML feed file for iTunes and other podcast readers, to include BOTH the YouTube video AND the client server download URL for readers – adding the video location to both the site’s current HTML & XML sitemap would be an added benefit

The XML file should contain the description, Title, Client Server URL, YouTube embed, link to blog post/client page and other meta data

Enable a CALL TO ACTION be located in the video, especially a link to where they could purchase something similar to what’s in the video

If there are issues hosting videos on the client server then YouTube videos alone should suffice but its best if you can have both in tandem since there will NOT be duplication penalties applied

NOTE – The YouTube video will rank fairly quickly while the client hosted video would be a slow climb in the rankings

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As we all know, social media is an emerging trend and companies large and small are harnessing the new powers of the world wide web.  The web used to be “read only” content and now it is a ”read and write” interactive experience where consumers can engage in conversations and share information.  Companies seeking to improve their online marketing strategy want to know more about how to get involved in social media marketing and how to measure the success.

First, you must know why social media is important and why it can be an effective tool.  Now that users can interact with one another, they no longer just go to Google to research products and services.  There is a sea of user-generated content out there that has the real information…not just the marketing pitch from the company trying to sell you.  Through rating and review sites, social networks like Facebook and Twitter, video sites like YouTube.com, and all kinds of blogs and forums, people can get the real scoop.  So now that we know that people are out there online talking about issues relevant to your industry, you have to go find them.  Once you find them, you should be prepared to get involved in the conversations.

How does your company get involved in the conversation?

Carefully.  You want to make sure you are adding value and building trust among your current and potential customers.  You can’t simply use Facebook or Twitter to spam the network and expect to get anything but rejection.  You need to add value to the community and build a trusted brand.  If you already have a trusted brand, you could be at an advantage but still need to follow the rules of engagement. 

Once you are involved in the conversations, what is the strategy?

Many businesses fear the transparency of social media.  You have to be prepared for the good and the bad.  Your biggest critics could be your most useful source of feedback.  Now of course you want to avoid any potential PR dissasters, but what doesn’t kill us might just make us stronger.  If there is a negative message floating around about your products or services, do not fear.  Don’t just draft a defensive response.  Do your research, find the truth in what is being said and fix it.  Once you do that you should stay involved in the conversation and regularly update the consumers and what went wrong and all the steps you are taking to fix it.  You could end up in a better position than when you started if you handle the issues appropriately.

Now of course using social media as a reputation management and PR tool is only one aspect to the strategy.  From an Internet marketing perspective, it can be incredibly valuable.  But you should not get into a habit of referring to any marketing strategy as a “branding” tactic…usually when people refer to something as a “branding” spend that means it had no measurable ROI. Granted, even the biggest social media enthusiasts are trying to determine the best way to measure impact of the various social media elements.  However, like anything else in marketing it is about how you approach it.

Let’s say for example your business wants to launch a viral video campaign but you are not sure how well it will do or how you will measure the effectiveness.  BlendTec is a great example of how powerful this can be.  The CEO created a video of himself blending iPhones with one of his company’s powerful blenders.  The video was done very well and was outrageously funny (mostly because it was so random).  Naturally, these things can be hit or miss but when they are a hit it is because all of the elements work well together.

If you are using a viral video campaign on YouTube.com to drive traffic to your site and expect to increase sales, make sure your site is set up to convert that traffic into sales/transactions.  If it is not, you might have just spent a lot of time and money creating videos – but with no real return on the investment.

Social media must be approached with a specific goal in mind and executed correctly for it to be measurable…again, just like all areas of Internet marketing.  So define goals and develop a plan before running of into the world of viral marketing.

People are always asking more about video optimization these days.  It makes sense…even my 2 year old watches videos of trash trucks and airplanes on YouTube.com all the time.  We live in an interactive age where people expect their media messages to come in all forms, especially video.

Video optimization is a great Internet marketing tool which is not only viral but supports the organic search engine optimization efforts.  The video below is from a new campaign launched by T-Mobile.  This was shot live at a train station in Liverpool, England.  Only the dancers knew what was about to happen!

With Google moving toward a universal search model , video optimization has become a must as part of your internet marketing campaign. This is just one more way to attract your target market and keep them coming back.  Similar to the content on your website you need the videos you add to be relevant to your website and give something back to the user.
Make the video for your users! No matter if you are selling products or services you can create videos that your viewers will want to see. Video sites are growing tremendously Yahoo video has grown over 400% and Youtube is still growing at about 160% a year. This is a great time to get your videos in front of your target market.
Here are a couple of tips for your video optimization:
1.    Make sure that your video is relevant! If you want people to keep on coming back to your website you have to give them what they want … useful information.  If your company is selling software don’t teach people how to cook a casserole. Tell them about all the different uses for the software and add how to videos that teach the viewer. These are great and will keep them coming back for more.

2.    Viral Video Marketing – Expose yourself:  we have all heard of viral marketing and the great effects it has. So don’t keep your videos to yourself! This social media aspect gets people talking about them, share your video with the world. Upload your video to sites like Youtube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, AOL Video etc. A few tips when uploading your video to different websites:

• Make sure the video links back to your website.
• Tag it! Always include keywords in the title and description of the video you are pushing out to video sites.
• Let people use you! Seriously, give people the option to embed your video on blogs, forums and websites by giving them the embed code.
• Power to the people: let people rank your video. Search engines pay attention to this when ranking your videos.

3.    Attract attention to your video; make it stand out on the page! Make sure to include information about the video in the title. A great idea is to incorporate keywords into the title of the video. Make sure that the video that you are embedding is relevant to the page its on. Make sure your metadata for the page is relevant to the video.

4.    Keep it short and Concise. Don’t bore your viewers, keep your video short and sweet while still keeping it entertaining and informative. I would suggest a 5 minute max.

5.    Include a brief intro with your logo and make sure each and every video has this 2-3 second intro to build brand loyalty.

6.    Create a video sitemap: this makes it easier for search engines to find and identify your videos.  Make sure to put your keywords in the video anchor text.