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Though publishing videos on the web has been child’s play for years now, the process of getting them to rank high in search remains enigmatic at best, frustrating at worst. The pace of video publication is accelerating faster than ever, and though video SEO seems to have been left behind the rest of the industry, it’s finally starting to catch up through some exciting developments that will hopefully provide more incentives for publishers to produce great video content.

As we start a new year and a new decade, here’s a look at the state of web video SEO right now.

The State of Web Video

When you produce a video now, there’s no dearth of places to publish it. Though YouTubeYouTube

remains the dominant player in the industry, VimeoVimeo

, Blip.tv, Viddler, Metacafe, and a host of other sites (most of them free) have fragmented the market. There’s no need to build or host your own video player, and you can leave the heavy bandwidth duties to them rather than your own server.

Just as there’s lots of competition in the platform arena, competition among videos themselves is growing wildly. YouTube spokesman Aaron Zamost said over 20 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute, and about 120 decades of video are uploaded each year.

Hundreds of little tweaks and tricks exist in optimizing a webpage for search, yet the entire realm of video SEO right now consists of only a few to-dos and a lot of finger-crossing. Zamost summed up the basics for ranking high in a YouTube search:

“Have a clear, descriptive title, and include as many accurate tags as you can. For example, if you’ve created a video that shows how to tie a bow tie, your title should be ‘How to tie a bow tie.’ That’s really important, because that’s [what] your target viewer probably wanted to learn. So think visually — ties, dress, how to dress nice, how to tie a tie, how to tie a bow tie, etc.

It’s also important to note that many users who are searching for video just want to be entertained, and may not be looking for something that precise. So if you’ve created compelling content, think about how a user would likely find it. Tags like ‘funny video,’ while generic, can be very useful.”

Many publishers, however, are concerned with getting links and traffic to their site, not just their YouTube page. Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of the multi-million dollar SEO agency SEOmoz, emphasizes the importance of placing videos on your own site and submitting a video sitemap to search engines.

“Videovideo

results are often far easier to ‘rank,’ than standard web results, but there are some hoops you’ll need to jump through,” Fishkin said in an e-mail.

However, users sharing videos by embedding or linking to them in their own sites often leads to traffic and link juice being sent to the third party site (like YouTube or Metacafe) that actually hosts the video, rather than a publisher’s own. A vital part of SEO strategy is getting other websites to link to your site. If people are linking to your content on YouTube, your site doesn’t build much (if any) link equity or page rank at all, which can be discouraging for web publishers.

New Developments

Because search engine robots only understand actual text, they can’t determine the quality of a video by the content inside it — only by the links to it and the content around it, like the title or tags. People have muddled over this problem for a long time, and a couple of realistic solutions have recently emerged.

First, YouTube now has the ability to place captions on its videos. The transcript of a video can be attached to its timeline, allowing users seek to specific portions of YouTube videos by phrase. This transcript can be searched and indexed by the engines, meaning your video content itself can count toward ranking now. Whereas originally you had to provide your own captions to attach, YouTube can now do captions automatically. As with any robotic transcription however, human intervention may be required to fix computer-generated mistakes in the text.

Placing a video’s transcript in its description has been a somewhat common SEO practice in the past, but the marriage of the transcript to the video timeline itself is a definite advancement.

Another company to recently stumble on a similar solution for web video SEO is the New York-based SpeakerText. SpeakerText helps you perform the same transcript-to-video matrimony as YouTube captions, but further puts SEO power in publishers’ hands through a concept it calls “QuoteLinks.”

Basically, once your video has been “speakertexted,” you can embed it on your own website with the transcript attached. Visitors can select a chunk of the transcript, copy it, and paste it in their own blog or website as a link to the exact moment in the video where the quote appears. The link goes to the publisher’s site, not YouTube’s. Right now SpeakerText only works with YouTube, but the company says it plans to provide the service for other platforms in the future.

“Anytime somebody quotes, it will link back to the original source, which is good for the end user because they can actually see it in context,” said CEO Matt Mireles, “… and the publisher gets rewarded because it not only sends viral traffic directly, but then the link creates huge SEO.”

SpeakerText is free if you provide your own transcript, and you can order transcription through the site at what it claims is roughly half the cost of traditional transcription services. SpeakerText utilizes an army of “Turkees” at Mechanical Turk to do the transcribing.

The Future

So what’s next for video SEO?

Fishkin believes that new platforms like the iPad and the AndroidAndroid

Marketplace have big implications for the future. “I suspect this divergence of video from the open web to closed platforms (a curious shift indeed) may have some substantive impact in the future,” he said.

Zamost said that “social elements are playing an increasingly important role in the development of new features on YouTube, especially related to search and discovery.” The incorporation of social trends in search algorithms could spell big changes indeed for the SEO industry.

Whatever happens next, it’s clear that video SEO is finally starting to catch up to the rest of the web. With services like SpeakerText and YouTube captions emerging to help eliminate unsearchable content issues, the future likely holds more automated and accurate video-text mapping and perhaps eventually video editing in the cloud.

What changes are you hoping for? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More web video resources from Mashable:

- YouTube Is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade
- 5 Eye-Popping 3D YouTube Videos
- 8 Companies That Are Reinventing TV Online
- 5 Best YouTube Sports Moments of 2009
- The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009
- 7 of the Most Inspiring Videos on the Web

Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto

, parasoley

WAAAY back when i was producing corporate video the hot idea was "evaluation". The idea was to figure out how effective your program was: did the audience actually know, feel or do what you wanted them to. Some of the evaluation was even more basic: did they even watch the program.
So along comes the Internet and now we can measure just about everything a viewer does when they visit our site. And we can make some assumptions about whether we accomplished the know/do/feel objectives.
So, here is program evaluation, 21st century style. Get people to come to your stuff, watch it and then make sure more people watch your stuff.
It's not the analytical program evaluation that was proposed in the 80's but it's a long way from what actual evaluation activity occurred back then. Almost none. Too expensive. "I just paid a fortune to MAKE the video; I don't want to find out if it doesn't work. Haven't you heard there's a recession going on?""
Kinda bittersweet. Wonder what those clients are doing now. I miss them so!

« Is Using "and/or" in a Sentence Just Plain Dumb? | Main

February 01, 2010

Download Social Media Toolkits from Mass.gov

From the National Association of Government Communicators list, I'm reposting information about a great resource: three social media toolkits from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Thanks to Susan Parker, Director of Mass.gov for this info.)  The toolkits cover

• blogging
• Twitter
• legal issues pertaining to social media

You can read the toolkits online or download the blogging and Twitter toolkits as PDFs. (The legal guidelines toolkit isn't available as a PDF.)

Highlights from the toolkits

Legal Guidance Toolkit
I was thrilled when I read the opening sentence of the Legal Guidance Toolkit: "There are no legal prohibitions against state agencies using social media sites or having social media identities." Such unequivocal language should help reduce the unreasonable fear of social media that prevents  many government agencies  from trying new ways of communicating with constituents. 

Blogging Toolkit
The blogging toolkit includes a Blog Preparation Checklist which reminds agencies to answer these questions before they jump into blogging:  

1. "Who is your audience?
2. What business goals can your blog help you meet?
3. What topics will you blog about?
4. How will you administer your blog?
5. What is your publication plan / schedule?
6. What changes do you need to make to the template privacy, terms of use and social media policies? Have they been posted to your Secretariat or agency website?
7. What changes do you need to make to the template comment policy?
8. How will you publicize your blog?"

Twitter Toolkit
The Twitter toolkit includes a Twitter Best Practices  list with plenty of practical advice. In particular, I like these three points for government Twitter-ers:

• "Be transparent. Who exactly is blogging for your agency? Is it a person? Is it a department? Make sure people know how they can reach the party behind the tweets. It makes a big difference in the perceived authenticity of your efforts."
• "Be proactive. Make sure you promote your Twitter page. Include a link to your webpage on your Twitter account, and a link to your Twitter account from your webpage. Include it in your formal communications plans. Insert it into your email signatures."
• "Be realistic. Twitter isn't quite as easy as it seems. You need to plan to devote time and resources to active engagement on Twitter. Additionally, building an audience may take longer than anticipated. Don't let slower than hoped for results diminish your commitment."

Susan Parker promised future Mass.gov toolkits that will cover YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, wikis, and survey tools.  If she posts more information, I'll link to it here.

Does your organization have a social media toolkit or guidelines you could share? If so, please let me know or post a comment. Thanks.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Posted by Leslie O'Flahavan on February 01, 2010 in Blogs, Government Web Writing, Social Media, Twitter | Permalink

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This little tidbit comes from Leslie and Marilyn over at E-WRITE. I'm doing some work for a municipality right now and they just released their "Social Media Policy". It's not like these.

I'll keep my eyes open for the future toolkits that are promised.

A set of standardised icons for popular social networking services and tools.

I've been looking for a nice set of social media icons for my personal and client sites. After a bit of digging through the Google Pile I found these from Britisher Paul Robert Lloyd.
There are 60 different sites or tools represented in 4 different sizes.
Hope you like 'em.

Way back, when I told my parents I wanted a degree in communications they said "How nice. The phone company has a great pension plan."
As a Communications grad (which is right up there with it's cousin, the English major) We were told straight out that we would not get rich. Maybe famous, but not rich. And that we would mostly get people coffee for the first few years of our career. And we would have to move to Dubuque. And we should be happy about it.
So this little video clip brightened my day and renewed my hope that my little pot of gold was waiting at the end of the tunnel. Ooo wait! I think I see two pieces of gold right now! And they're getting bigger. [What's that sound?]
Have a happy day! I know I will!

SocialMediaToday has published this free RFP template for hiring a social media partner.
Whether you're hiring a firm to do work for you or you contract your services in social media consulting this seems like a good starting point to establish expectations from either perspective.

The first time (I thought) that New Media was a upon us was in the '90s. (There was even a magazine called New Media.) It was the heyday of CD-ROM, video laserdisc and postage stamp QuickTime movies.
The second time (I thought) that New Media came upon us again was in the '00s with digital video, podcasting and user generated content.
Boy was I wrong! All of this New media wouldn't be possible without the experimenters from Radical Software magazine. Read the History section of the site and you'll read many references to the concepts of democratization of media based on portable and cheap equipment.
So, what do you think will be the next "new" media?

120 West 30th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10001
tel 212.465.9366 fax 212.465.9369
info@evc.org

This looks like a great resource to teach kids about doing video and community media. Thanks ACM Forum list!

How to Construct Your Privacy Policy Constructing a privacy policy is a simple process. Simply fill out the questions below and submit it to us - we'll send you a Web page to post to your site. The DMA's Privacy Policy Generator Consumer notification of information policies is a basic element of a direct and interactive marketer's information practices. DMA believes that all marketers operating online sites should make available their information policies to consumers in a prominent place. On this page, Webmasters and administrators can complete a questionnaire (basing their answers on their site information policies) and create a privacy policy statement to be posted on their own Web page. This tool has been developed to help marketers create policies that are consistent with The DMA's Privacy Principles for Online Marketing. Based on your company's information policies, either fill in the blank or select the proper response to each of the following questions. Your privacy policy statement will then be emailed to you for final editing and posting to your Website. (Note: If one or more of the below statements does not apply to your practices, you may leave that section blank and it will not appear on the draft statement that we send to you). You can edit the statement once you receive it. Privacy Policy Tips: Keep It Simple. Make the policy easy to read, easy to understand and easy to find on your Website. Promote your policy internally in employee communications. Consumers are concerned about this issue, and your employees should know how your company responds to those concerns. Promote your policy with key stakeholders, including customers, investors, contributors, and policymakers. Privacy policies put consumers in charge of their information. Update your policy as needed to stay current with changes in your business. *Special note for marketers who collect personally identifiable information from California Residents via Websites or online services. Effective July 2004, the California Online Privacy Protection Act requires operators of a commercial Website or online service that collect Personally Identifiable Information from California residents through the Internet to conspicuously post a privacy policy on their Website that complies with prescribed disclosures. The privacy policy must: (1) identify the categories of Personally Identifiable Information that the operator collects through the Website or online service and the categories of third-party persons or entities with whom the operator may share Personally Identifiable Information; (2) describe how a consumer can review and make changes to his or her personally identifiable information, if the operator allows such review and changes; (3) describe how consumers can learn of changes in the operator’s privacy policy; and (4) identify the effective date of the privacy policy. The questions marked with an asterisk are designed to elicit information from such companies to assist them with compliance obligations in connection with this law. Create Your Privacy Policy Now: Changes, clean-uped page and adjustments --> For more information, contact ethics@the-dma.org back to top   © Direct Marketing Association | Privacy Statement | Site Map | Share

The Direct Marketing Association has a cool Privacy Policy Generator.
From the DMA site: Effective July 2004, the California Online Privacy Protection Act requires operators of a commercial Website or online service that collect Personally Identifiable Information from California residents through the Internet to conspicuously post a privacy policy on their Website that complies with prescribed disclosures.
That would include subscribers to any blog pretty much.