Video - Im not making this stuff up people

A few posts ago I wrote about how popular video is becoming on the web and its importance to search as well as how it directly relates to your stores online presence.

It was December data of 9 BILLION videos watched on YouTube in the US alone and how Google considers video as relevant as text in SEO. Well comScore has just published their January data. OMG! From 9 BILLION videos watched in December 2008 to 14.8 BILLION - in just the US.

Just one more reason why YOU need to seriously consider VSEO.

Click the link to read it. Americans’ Time Spent Viewing Jumps 15 Percent versus Previous Month



RESTON, VA, March 4, 2009 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released January 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that U.S. Internet users viewed 14.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 4 percent versus December 2008.YouTube led the growth charge, accounting for 91 percent of the incremental gain in the number of videos viewed versus December, as it surpassed 100 million viewers for the first time.



Google Sites Adds to Lead in Video Market Share

In January, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 6.4 billion videos viewed (43 percent online video market share), with YouTube.com accounting for more than99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 552 million videos (3.7 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 374 million (2.5 percent) and Viacom Digital with 288 million (1.9 percent). Megavideo climbed 15 percent (103 million videos) in January to capture a spot in the top ten for the first time.



Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed

January 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property
Videos

(000)
Share (%) of

Videos

Total Internet
14,831,607
100.0

Google Sites
6,367,638
42.9

Fox Interactive Media
551,991
3.7

Yahoo! Sites
374,161
2.5

Viacom Digital
287,615
1.9

Microsoft Sites
267,475
1.8

HULU.COM
250,473
1.7

Turner Network
195,983
1.3

AOL LLC
184,808
1.2

Disney Online
141,452
1.0

MEGAVIDEO.COM
102,857
0.7


*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.



Google Sites Surpasses 100 Million Viewers in January

More than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 101 videos per viewer in January. Google Sites grew to 102 million online video viewers during the month, or more than two out of every three Internet users who watched video. Fox Interactiveranked second with 62.1 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (41.9 million) and Microsoft Sites (30.0 million).



Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Unique Viewers

January 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Average Videos per Viewer

Total Internet
147,322
100.7

Google Sites
101,870
62.5

Fox Interactive Media
62,109
8.9

Yahoo! Sites
41,859
8.9

Microsoft Sites
30,042
8.9

AOL LLC
27,198
6.8

HULU.COM
24,448
10.2

CBS Corporation
24,215
4.2

Viacom Digital
24,126
11.9

Turner Network
22,979
8.5

Disney Online
13,435
10.5


*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.



Other notable findings from January 2009 include:

76.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 356 minutes of video (approximately 6 hours), up 15 percent versus December.
100.9 million viewers watched 6.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (62.6 videos per viewer).
54.1 million viewers watched 473 million videos on MySpace.com (8.7 videos per viewer).
The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes, up from 3.2 minutes per video in December.
The duration of the average online video viewed at Megavideo was 24.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.
And here is the rest of it. Read more!

Secret Sauce Part 2 - Metadata .15m

Meta wha??? Relax. I'll explain...

Each video-sharing site let's you create "tags," which are words that describe your video. These tags, along with the title and description of the video, are the basis for how your video is located by end users on video-sharing sites like Search engine optimization and search engine marketing used to be the realm of text only, but with search engines like Google and Ask adding video to their search results, optimizing the metadata around your videos is increasingly important. This means creating rich and relevant video titles, descriptions and tags.

There are only a few specifics that you need to know about tags.

First, max out the tags, title and description for every site. The more metadata describing your video, the more likely someone is to find your video. It's surprising to see so many uploaders let so much opportunity go to waste by adding few or non-descriptive tags.

Second, your tags, and particularly the category you choose, should be relevant to your video.

We have seen video creators go from little viewership to becoming regularly featured producers simply through a better choice of category.

If you are hosting a video on your own site, the same rules apply. But in such a case, be sure to create a relevant file name for your video.

It is also advisable to have just one video per page with a simple text title and description place near the video itself. Many videos are watched on social networking sites such as facebook and myspace.

This means that while you may post your video to YouTube or MetaCafe, many of the views are a result of people embedding that video into another site. The implication is that your video should be hosted on both your website and the video sharing sites for maximum exposure.

One more hint on tags - the TubeMogul "Load and Track" tool shows you how your tags will look on each site as you are uploading videos, and soon will show you the most popular tags and video search terms to help you select appropriate metadata.
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Im FIRST on the Google

Wanted to give you guys an example of the VSEO I am talking about.

On 2/9/2009 around 10 am I pushed the Toyota Tundra Heat commercial up to 3 or 4 videos sites (YouTube, metacafe etc) with proper SEO on it.

As of 6 am 2/10/2009 I am the first result and 2 of the top 4 results on google with a search of "tundra heat commercial"

Took me a total of 5 minutes to tag it and upload it. Less than 24 hours later I'm the number one result and half of the top four results.

Cost me NOTHING but 5 minutes of my time.

Imagine if you did the same for "tundra insert city name here" or "civic insert city name here" for some competition annihilation or "2009 Camry Bluetooth operation" or "why us" or "customer testimonials". It goes on and on.

We just spoke about the 9 BILLION people in the US who watched videos on YouTube in December 2008. Its a pretty safe bet some of those 9 BILLION videos were automotive related. Start building those video libraries.

You get the idea.

RETHINK EVERYTHING
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Google THIS...

"toyota corolla torrance"

This is BIG people... really big. With a little work (lifting those weights people) you can do the same....

Site indexing by search engines can take up to 6 months to fully propagate and having UNSURPASSED SEO is a must but theres more...

With the recent YOUTUBE passing of Yahoo as the 2nd highest search engine its even more important now to understand and utilize VSEO.

You MUST start keeping a library of video clips and pushing them to the web.. to EVERY SITE that will let you.. there are services that can assist you with this such as TubeMogul and Traffic Geyser to name a couple. They will basically take your footage and push to multiple video hosting sites such as:

AOL Video
Blip.TV
Crackle.com
Daily Motion.com
Google video
MetaCafe.com
Myspace
Revver
Stupid Videos
Veoh
Yahoo video
YouTube

But it takes more than just pushing the videos up to the web. MUCH MORE.

Here are a few pointers to get you started:

1. File Names - Give the video file a catchy and relevant name that is related to your keyword or phrase. Once you have uploaded your video site map there is added opportunity for these keywords and phrases to be found and indexed by the search engines.
2. Meta Data - Add meta data to your video files. Again, use relevant meta data, like you would when you are carrying out other Search engine optimisation campaigns.
3. Transcripts - Transcripts of the video will add credible content to the page and give the spiders relevant information to crawl. The transcript should make reference to keywords, relevant content and your brand.
4. Outbound Linking - If you add video content to other sites such as You Tube, make sure that you avail of their ability to link back to your own site.
5. Video Length - Add shorter videos to keep your audience interested. If your video is quite lengthy, consider breaking it down into smaller chunks. This will also give more quality video content to optimise.
6. Branding – Have your branding displayed in your video to enhance your brand awareness.
7. Inbound Linking – link your videos to important keywords throughout your site to enhance their value.
8. Rating – allow users / visitors to rate your video

Oh and one more thing... VSEO only takes about 5 days to propagate... not 6 months like traditional SEO...

YOU CAN BE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE, IF NOT THE FIRST RESULT, WITHIN 24 HOURS PEOPLE!!!!

RETHINK EVERYTHING
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