Video Takes To The Web - Be Optimized

Video is growing into an incredibly popular marketing medium. The Web is rapidly emerging as the largest video-distribution platform in history, and it is imperative that search engines can find your videos as easily as they can find your other Web content.
In today's post, ClipBlast CEO Gary Baker gives us some tips for making sure your video is indexed and found on search engines. Because video search is a completely different animal than traditional text search, take these five steps to help video search engines find your clips:

Create quality metadata for each video you post Video-search engines use metadata to index, categorize and rank video content.

The most important metadata are:

* Title — accurately describe your video in 40 characters or less, using upper- and lowercase letters for optimal readability.
* Description — explain exactly what users will see, emphasizing the keywords and terms for which people might search.
* Categories, tags or keywords — specify any and all relevant terms for which users are likely to search.
* Image — include a visually descriptive thumbnail, typically 60-by-60, 80-by-80 or 100-by-100 pixels.
* Publish date — typically the day you actually publish.
* Link — spell out and include the URL where a video resides.

Register your site with video search engines If you create good metadata, any video search engine worth its salt should eventually index your content. However, you can speed things up by registering with specific video search engines.

Create a media RSS feed RSS is the preferred way for most video search engines to index and update your video content.

The media RSS format uses standard fields to categorize content, virtually ensuring quality metadata. When video search engines have access to your RSS feed, they instantaneously get new video content as soon as you add it.

Have a robust library of video content Having a large library of video content, as apposed to just a clip or two, is one of the ways you can set your site apart as a serious video content provider that ranks high in search results.

Post several clips with related video content If you post more than one video on a similar topic, video search engines will leverage your other content to make “more like this” recommendations.

This will help to drive up your overall viewership and bring in more traffic.

Gary Baker is founder and CEO of ClipBlast, Agoura Hills, CA Reach him at gary@clipblast.com.
Posted by Michael Fleischner - Marketing Expert at 8:14 AM 0 comments
Labels: internet marketing, seo, video marketing
Friday, May 23, 2008
Landing Pages Improve Conversions
Today's Marketing Tip: Improve your performance with landing pages that work.

Landing pages are created to improve conversions for marketers spending on email and PPC advertising. When thinking about paid search and email, email is the cheaper route, and allows more freedom and speed in testing. Paid search is more difficult because it's not overly intrusive. As might be obvious, email puts a marketer's message directly in front of the consumer whereas search requires not only the consumer to actively seek out but to not be blind to advertisements.

As an extension to that, most effective marketers believe that landing pages should not be subtle. She prefers the "buy it now" approach, especially with smaller ticket items for sale that don't require a lot of research.

Knowing the intent of the consumer then, plays a big part in developing a landing page. Make sure the landing page matches where the consumer expects to be taken. Consumers hate to see someone come in and hit the search button immediately. That's making consumers work too hard and costing you good marketing dollars. Landing pages more closely aligned to PPC ads can also reduce click costs. Here are some other things to consider...

1. Get top-level buy-in for strategic projects; not all projects produce immediate sales, but have more strategic implications for the business.

2. Create urgency, such as a deadline to increase CTR and conversion

3. Print destination URLs on pages in your catalog

4. Sepertate CSS and data points for ease of use

5. Make sure landing pages deliver on a promise that drove the shopper to the site with consistent products, benefits, offers and branding

6. Split test different paid search landing pages

7. Split test different email landing pages. Don't throw consumers to a category page, but a specifically designed page using the email messaging, creative and extended product offering

8. Track key performance on all pages

9. With landing pages - think like a consumer

10. Test, test, test

Landing pages are a good investment, especially when they're done right. Follow these landing page guidelines and optimize your conversions.