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If you are a search engine specialist, or most any online marketing specialist, they you likely that search results are increasingly including more than just text links. One of the newest opportunities for search engine marketing specialists to take advantage of getting their video content included in Google’s general (aka, "blended") search results. Forrester analyst Nate Elliot publishes the results of an in-house study claiming that for search engine visibility, an indexed video stands about a 50x greater chance of ranking on the first page of search results, than any given textual page in the index. What that means is if you are a search engine optimization specialist, or any type of online marketer looking to get quality traffic and conversions from the search engines, then you really should be treating video image thumbnails as a serious opportunity. In this presentation I show you basic overview of what’s involved with optimizing the image thumbnails for your video image content, with examples right from Google’s blended search results. You’ll get to see:• Why Image Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists and SEO specialists in general should pay attention to video image thumbnails in blended search results, • How my own publication (ReelSEO) has been successful with image optimization of video thumbnails, and;• Tips for how SEO professionals can get started with optimizing their own video content for image search results (and blended search results featuring images).
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THE NEW SEO OPPORTUNITY
GRANT CROWELL, ANALYSTDecember 7, 2009
The way to get more images optimized in Google universal search is by optimizing video!
Videos Dominate Universal Search Results
Videos Dominate Universal Search 38% of users who searched Google were served video in Universal search engine results pages
Source – “Google Universal Search Results Searcher Penetration by Result Type” – ComScore – Jan 2008
OPPORTUNITY WITH VIDEO THUMBNAILS
• PROMINENCE– Video thumbnail images prominently appear in Google Search Results as
much as 6 results all together in just one part of the page.• POPULARITY
– “Video” is a popular search term
• RELEAVANCY– More descriptive
content thanimage results in aSERP
• LESS COMPETITION
Universal Search Rankings
• “Thumbnail Power”• Added to Google 11/4• Traffic goes directly to
ReelSEO.com• Page 1 of 184K results
Universal Search Rankings
• “Thumbnail Power”• Added to ReelSEO on
12/22/2009• Displayed in Google’s blended
search results on same day!• Traffic goes directly to
ReelSEO.com• #1 and #2 listing in 2,660
search results in Google.
• How to do it?
• How to get business-relevant images in there?
• How to get images in relevant to MY level of business? (E.g., I don’t do major releases of movies.)
• How to get relevant images to appear. Most video thumbnails aren’t relevant to the keyword search!
• PANELIST CONFESSION: “ I can’t figure YouTube out. I can make the video results rank, but not the video [thumbnail] embedded.” (HELP ME!)
CHALLENGES WITH VIDEO THUMBNAILS
• The text on the page adjacent to the video
• The video caption
• “Dozens of other factors to determine the video content.”
Google’s criteria for video thumbnails
• Easiest = Link to Video File – traffic to video file vs. page• Best = XML Sitemaps
– Google supports both MRSS and XML video sitemaps • MRSS feeds
– Need location of video file– Video file = same domain
• XML sitemaps– Allows you to specify player, and whether to “allow play” in Google Video
• Tips for Sitemaps– Robots.txt - include sitemaps and allow URL crawling– Publish both video sitemap and regular xml sitemap (video + page)– Titles are given disproportionate weighting– Tell search engines which thumbnail to use– Contact search engines for specific guidelines – many outdated
Getting your Video Thumbnails into SERPs
1. Googlebot Crawls the web & finds video1. Process in flux – don’t rely on this
2. MRSS Feeds or XML Sitemaps1. Step 1) Tell Google where your video resides2. Step 2) Google crawls page to verify video exists Video indexed in Google video Available via universal search results
3. Video Sharing Sites1. YouTube is the biggie, but…2. There are MANY more!
How Blended Video Thumbnails get Indexed
• Video Site Map (Done in WordPress with special plug-in)
• MRSS feed
• Regular, consistent video content
• Search-optimized web pages with regular content
• Linking
ReelSEO’s success with video thumbnails
• Video content (Duh!)
• Website video content is best.
• Optimize the web pages with the video content.
• Create a Video Site Map (with the optional “thumbnail” tag)
• You can also do an MRSS feed for good measure (with the MRSS thumbnail tag)
• Make all of your thumbnail images 80 x 60 pixels. (Place them in a separate folder on your site for easier organization.)
WHAT YOU NEED…
#1 Tip: Submit a Video Site Map to Google!
ReelSEO Links:
How to create a Google video sitemap
Video sitemaps in Google – MRSS or Video XML
VIDEO SITE MAP EXAMPLE
VIDEO SITE MAP EXAMPLE
“Thumbnail_loc” tag
MRSS FEED EXAMPLE
Media:thumbnail tag
GOOD or BAD Example?
GOOD or BAD Example?
GOOD or BAD Example?
GOOD or BAD Example?
• Build video content
• Build a video sitemap
• Optimize the thumbnail images for 80 x 60 size (or 4 x 3 dimensions)
• Have your video sitemap include the special code for your images
• Submit the video sitemap to Google
• Tell Google which thumbnail you want, and make sure its relevant to the search results!
RECAP!
Thank YouGrant Crowell, Senior Analyst
Twitter.com/reelseo
Facebook.com/grantcrowell
LinkedIn.com/grantcrowell
