Getting Your Video in Search Results
Have you ever "Googled" anything and noticed a video response for what you Googled? This is a very powerful view getter depending on the key phrase you want to be listed under. If you want to be listed for "Shindaka Space Shuttle Replacement Bolts', you are not going to get very many hits. But getting listed for such a non-competitive key phrase is going to be easy. However, if you want to be listed for "Bolts", it is going to take a lot of effort, but your hit counter may start smoking from all of the views you would get. The first thing you need to do is strategically select a key phrase for your video using the keyword tool from Google. There, you will be able to type in the preferred word or phrase you want to target, and it will give suggestions with each ones competition level and search volume. You want to go for high search volume with low competition level.
Now you have decided on a phrase, go to You Tube and edit your video to optimize for that phrase by making it the Title of your video capitalizing only the first letter in each word of the phrase. In the description, use it in the first sentence towards the front of the sentence but not the first words of the first sentence. The second sentence, use the phrase in part, and again throughout the rest of the description. Do not use it in every sentence, but be sure to use it in the last sentence. Using your key phrase in incomplete sentences will hurt you also. The description needs to read comfortably to humans, and search engines. The Tags need to have the phrase in double quotes. Example: "space shuttle bolts" as well as "bolts for a space shuttle" . Normally you would pack the tags with what ever you could think of, but here a search engine is your audience. You Tube will show your video based on the description more than the tags anyway. If your tags are related to the users search query, and the description confirms You Tube's idea that your video might be what the user is looking for, they will list it. So, don't worry about your SERPs (search engine results page) on You Tube right now. Especially if your video's subject is something being Googled a lot.
Now that you have selected a key phrase and optimized for it on You Tube, lets do the off-page optimization for your video. On-page optimization, what you just did, is just the first half of what has to take place to get a video in search results. Quality back links, and lots of them, is the name of the game, along with how old your video is, weather people watch the video all the way or not, weather or not people watch it again later from the same IP address they watched it from the first time, etc. How many five star rates does it have? Has anyone flagged it? Has any comments been removed? Has the video owner put web addresses in other video comments? (that is really frowned upon by search engines) Google remembers everything you do. So, all of this seems to be up to par, lets go build some back links. A back link is the most important part of Google's algorithm for determining PR (page rank) for a web site and/or video in search results.
You have probably seen the links in a video's description, right? That is a back link. However, a back link from You Tube is what they call a "no follow" which means it functions for driving traffic, but search engines don't count it as a quality back link. A back link needs to be in the form of anchor text using HTML and video description boxes don't allow HTML. If you want to put a link in your description to a web site, just type http:// before the URL to the site as it is in the address bar at the top of your screen.
A quality back link is one utilizing the anchor attribute and title attribute on a high PR site leading to your video on You Tube. If a high PR site sends traffic to You Tube with a phrase underlined in blue, that lets the search engine know what the video is about. It can not watch the video, so it depends on all of this to know for sure. You can not make a video about red shoes and get it on search results for space shuttle parts. People would not re-watch, and they would not finish watching the video. The search engine makes record of this and knows not to show it because people are not liking it.
So, how and where do you build back links?
Using HTML code to build links on popular related blogs, classified listings, eBay, and even your web site are good places to start. Having your video embedded with your key phrase near it is critical also. A good place to Embed is Backpage.com and Craigslist.org. When placing ads, use at least 150-200 words in your description, make the title your key phrase, and utilize the following HTML code to link to your video. Make sure when using images in your ads, that the name of the image is related to your video and one of them is named with you key phrase. Here is an example of a quality back link for online classifieds, popular forum discussions, eBay, etc.
I want the link to read- "Here at Southern RobotX, our Remote Control Mower prices are well below the MSRP!!" So I type it like this:
Here at Southern RobotX, our <a href=http://www.remotemower,com" title="remote control lawn mowers">Remote Control Mower</a> prices are well below the MSRP!!
***Note - I replaced the dot in the URL with a comma so it would show you the coding.***
The title attribute can be left out, but it helps the search engine get extra words to relate to your video with. It should never match the anchor text.
Backpage and Craigslist has terms and conditions about putting ads that you need to learn and understand. You can't just place meaningless ads for search engines, you have to be talking to humans and do so for search engines. Craigslist doesn't allow embedding, but does allow HTML. Backpage allows both and has a multiple city listing option that is really helpful. However, you want to limit your duplicate ads to 5 to avoid duplicate content penalties from search engines. So, you would list five and re-write another ad for five more cities, and so on. They have an auto re-post option also that re-posts your ad to the top of the list every 3 days to get even more responses. If your link is getting used, it looks better to the search engines than if it was a dead link.
Get popular blogs to do a story on your video, or web site with your video on it. You can sign up with pay-per-post.com and they pay bloggers to write about you. If the blogger likes the content he is publishing, and your offer is accepted, this could really get your hit counter screaming!! Especially if you get 1000 bloggers, who each have 1000 a day reading his column, embedding your video with a anchor text link and a unique story on each one. You get to decide which phrase they are to use for the anchor text link. This is only needed if you are targeting a highly competitive key phrase. Exposure like this can cost as little as $200 and as much as 10 grand, but depending on your intention, it would put your video and/or website in front of maybe 10 million interested viewers. -really.
Another technique, is to do press releases and article submissions for low PR bloggers to pick up and use as content for their site. It is a link, just not always a quality one. I have had a few high PR pick ups come from press releases, though. I recommend PRweb and PRnewswire for press releases and Ezine articles for your article submissions.
