Monday 25 March 2013

Video SEO Benefits - Good Sense or Nonsense?

First things first. A short background to my perspective.

I don't come from a media or film production background but rather from a 3D furniture / product / exhibition design education with a career in helping retailers and brands sell goods in high street stores. The bulk of that time has been spent creating visual content to sell a concept to the client for how it would look, function or be produced.

Video for me is therefore a sales and marketing communications tool.

It is a relatively new phenomenon created by the growth of the internet and fuelled by Google's preference for websites that have invested in it. The market for web video is so large that an army of suppliers has blossomed to meet the potential demand from happy DIYers on their GoPros or Smart phones to sophisticated film production companies more used to making content for TV.

Google's preference for video and its effect on your page ranking has however absolutely nothing to do with how good your video is. It's an algorithm formulated to a logic that calculates and ranks the value of your video based on how well it meets those logic-based Google tick boxes which have absolutely nothing to do with how beautiful or even relevant your video might be.

However, your audience is only interested in whether your website video is relevant to them. The more entertaining and informative it is the more likely they will be to watch it to the end. The more engaging it is the more likely that your visitor will dwell on your website and take some form of positive action as a result.

Having good quality video content is important but it's not going to help you get a high page rank on Google if this is all you do and this is why I'm writing this.

Who is making sure that you are getting the maximum SEO benefit from your web video?

Do you know what boxes Google likes to see ticked? Does your website designer / web master understand and are they happy to undertake this work as a part of their brief? Perhaps you have opted to engage a Search Engine Optimisation specialist for this task and is online video SEO something they understand?

If you believe that your web video producer is providing this then think again. My experience is that few appear to understand that the inclusion of a few basic elements in the service they offer will make a significant difference to your potential page ranking.


  • Stick it on YouTube with a title that reflects the title of your web page.
  • Your YouTube video description should be preceded with your full URL.
  • The YouTube description should also contain all the keywords you are using on your web page.
  • The TAGs should be completed to match the keywords in your title and description.


The above list is a bare minimum and will provide some effect but if you "go the whole hog" and max out using your video to help get a high Google page rank then the results can be startling as we found when we checked the progress of an experiment we recorded last year.

A progress check last week showed that our Video SEO Benefits exercise titled Googling Gecco is producing a double page one listing for the key words "Somerset Builder" despite our belief that it may have been penalised by Google's latest changes to its search criteria. Yes two page one references!!!

So we know that web video is an incredibly powerful online marketing tool but that its success in this respect has more to do with what you do with it after it has been produced than the video itself.

If you feel that you're not getting the value you were led to believe you would get from investing in a video for your website then perhaps it's time to take a closer look at your supplier and question whether they just make nice videos rather than one that provides a service that aims to achieve an effect for your investment.









Friday 8 March 2013

Is Talking to a Crowd Easier than to Camera?

Video testimonials and case studies have huge value as a marketing tool, are simple to acquire and should be easy to produce.

Yet my experience is that most people find talking to a video camera makes them feel self conscious, uncomfortable, awkward and anxious. Why should this be the case? After all, if you don't like what has been recorded, it can be deleted. 

What you see on the screen is neither remarkable or unusual.  It is no more than everyone else sees every time you meet them.

Yet there appears to be a natural aversion to the whole talking to camera experience. It causes mouths to dry, palms to sweat and exaggerated unnatural behaviours to unfold even when the interviewee is a confident and regular public speaker.

In my view the key to gathering natural content is to take the time to just have a chat. 

Video content that is recorded during the course of a structured conversation, about a subject that the interviewee knows inside out, helps to remove some of the stress. The most usable content tends to be recorded towards the end of the conversation when the interviewee has relaxed and the questions posed have already been more formally answered. 

It also helps if the recording equipment has been chosen for its small size rather than to impress and one accepts that, provided the audio recording is good, then the lighting of the subject can be less than perfect.

This is in part due to my belief that the real power behind video is in its ability to provide visual reference in support of what is being said by the speaker. Without the combination of the two then one might as well use a Podcast that frees the listener's imagination to provide the visual tapestry. 

Acquiring visual references to support and reinforce a story can not always be practical but it should be the "Gold Standard" one always tries to achieve. Budgets permitting. ;-)

I recently provided the following testimonial for Sparkol whose software I use. It was filmed and produced by Nick Jones, a young film maker whose work I like.