Baby Laughing Life Insurance

Life Insurance

Very Funny video i found online... and actually pretty powerful.

All in all, a good classic example of viral seoAnd here is the rest of it. Read more!

Honda Insight Vs Toyota Prius NJ Dealer VSEO

Want to see the value of good vseo timing?

Click on this google search result link Open Road Honda Insight

As of the time of the writing of this post, the #1 ranked result was for a Toyota dealer video explaining why someone who is obviously searching for a Honda Insight at a specific Honda dealership might want to give the Toyota Prius consideration.

Also understand this dealer is ranking in top spots in multiple queries as well as multiple top 5 placement in many many more.

With the Insight launch you can bet there is going to be an increase in web search for the product. What better way to capitalize on this "chatter" than with FREE organic placement in search engines to make sure the searching party knows all the options available to them in this market.

Having the first spot ranking is huge. Having it for FREE is even better. Being first, having it for free and seeing results in LESS THAN 24 HOURS is just plain SICK!!!!!

Its all about driving traffic to your website where you can back into the numbers....

This is just an example. Think outside the box. Make it and own it. Maybe go after some long tail searches (Toyota navigation, yellow mr2 spyder, online service appointment setting etc)

Now, I can't come and shoot the video for you but I can come and help you get the results shown here.

Oh, and I wont charge you for this.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Secret Sauce Part 5 - Thumbnails .20T

The last component of our secret formula, and often the most overlooked, is the thumbnail. A thumbnail is the single image that represents your video. This is the image that someone will see before they decide whether or not to watch the video.

If your thumbnail is bad it often doesn't matter if you got all of the other components of the formula right.

So what makes a good thumbnail?

Typically thumbnails that are relevant and match the video title, description and tags are all you need. Beyond this, try to select the image that best captures the essence of your video. Unfortunately, each of the video-sharing sites has a different methodology for determining which frame will comprise the thumbnail.

At one point, for example, YouTube used the frame that is in the very center of your video as the thumbnail, then they used 1:20 into the video, and now you have a choice of three frames. Other sites give you more options. It will pay off to invest the time to understand how the thumbnail is determined for every site where you deploy your video.

Thanks to TubeMogul for the content! Read more!

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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Secret Sauce Part 2 - Content and Production .5C

We know now that 50% of creating a great viral video is about content and production.

The goal in this stage is to create something remarkable, literally, something that causes people to remark - and in doing so to effectively convey your message.

We've noticed that certain categories tend to garner the interest of large audiences. Regardless of your message, utilizing a proven content category to package your message is a good way to spread your message wide and far.

The remarkable comes in many shapes and sizes:

Humor - everyone loves a laugh, but many of us like to make others laugh as well; this is what makes comedic videos so viral.

Avant-gard videos - videos that push the boundaries of what is acceptable can be incredibly viral - especially since this content never makes it to network TV. But be careful not to damage your brand and to obey by the terms and conditions of the respective video-sharing sites.

Talent - true talent is rare and fascinating. If you can showcase true talent people will forward your video.

Celebrities - we are fascinated with celebrities, and any videos featuring a celebrity are very viral, in part because there are hundreds of websites that follow celebrities and will embed these videos. Beyond being viral, celebrities endorsements have a powerful influence on decision making.

Kitsch - don't kill the messenger, but a remarkable number of the most popular videos we are tracking also contain one or more of the following qualities:
Special effects - the Ray Ban sunglass catching video is a great example. In general, any video that generates debate generates viewers

Animal/pet tricks - man is drawn to animals just as he is to fire…it's hard to explain, but it seems to have to do with primitive wiring in the brain

Cute kids - one of the draws of online video is that real people capture real moments, and nothing is as straightforward as a child just being herself

Repetitive, catchy music - certainly not a new concept, but with infinite channels come many more opportunities to put up the experimental jingle

Physical injury - thank goodness it's not me!

Pranks - thank goodness it's not me!

Spoofs - ride the coattails of the tried and true

The trick, as with any marketing effort, is to both be remarkable AND communicate your message.

Use the right package to make your video a hit, but don't create a vehicle without passengers. Make sure the content is doing what it supposed to do.

In the online video community, discussions around production are typically in reference to video quality - as it relates to camera, sound, compression, and editing.

Some believe that higher production quality is an important component in gaining popularity for ones online videos, while others believe that the popularity of the medium is authenticity, and that lower quality video has a genuine nature that gets lost with higher quality. Given the plethora of widely seen videos over the internet, this concept of quality hasn't seemed to correlate with audience size or popularity.

One thing is for certain: high quality human components of production, such as shooting and editing, make any video more watchable. Paying attention to lighting, framing the shot, and crisp editing is not only more pleasant, it's often required to make the picture viewable in a small window and on sites with file size restrictions.

Bottom line: choose production components that fit with your message, content, and intended audience.

Just some ideas to get the ball rolling.

RETHINK EVERYTHING
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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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Secret Sauce Part 1

Everyday, people ask me whats the secret to having a successful eBusiness operation.

There is no magic bullet. No single line I can tell you that will make your department account for 60% of your store sales and gross. I don't carry around Internet dust that I can just shake over the store in some freaky show of eBusiness Voodoo... You want to know the answer?

Hard Work.

With that said I want to focus on your VSEO in the upcoming weeks. VSEO, or Video Search Engine Optimization, can be considered the "next big thing" in online marketing. Don't take my word for it... check out what Comscore has said...

"9 BILLION videos were watched in December of 2008."

I should add that this was on YouTube alone.

And only in the United States!!!!

Last time I checked (July 2008) there was only about 305 million people in the US. With only 220 million Internet users. That's a penetration rate of around 72%

So, how do you get a piece of this sweet video goodness? VSEO....

Now that we know the "why", lets look at the first step to success, the formula:

.5C+ .15M + .20T + .15P = success

Thanks to Tubemogul.com for this.

Let me break it down for ya.

C=Content and Production, M=metadata, T=thumbnail, P=promotion

In other words in order to position your videos online to have the greatest impact and exposure, Tubemogul suggests spending 50% time on the actual video production and creation, 15% of time on creating metadata, 20% of time on choosing the correct thumbnail, and the remaining 15% of your efforts on promotion and marketing of the video once it is online. And I agree with their suggestion.

Hopefully one day I will figure out what this all means... Seriously, confused by all those terms? I will touch on each term in future posts.

For now, just let it sink in. Put your hand on the screen, touch the words. Close your eyes and take a few deep, slow breaths.

Stay tuned.

Comments?

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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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Conversion Rates

Conversion Rate, in internetland, is defined as the ratio of visitors who convert from casual (passive) content or page views into desired actions (active) based on subtle or direct requests.

For you old schoolers out there, think of it as how many people call or come into your store due to the ad in the newspaper.

Now that we cleared that up, how does your conversion rate measure up?

National average is 2% - 4% for email only. No data is available for phone.

Dealers on the Toyota eCertification program show consistent 5% - 8% conversion rate for email only leads. When we add the phone leads to the mix EVERY SINGLE DEALER on this program have total conversion rates above 18%. With some in the mid 20's!!!!!!

ABOVE 18%!!!!

Do the math - is your site generating 2 to 4 "leads" for every 100 visitors or 20?

If we know our overall closing ratio (typically around 15% just dogging it...) you need to have 5 TIMES as many leads to sell the same amount as dealers on the program. How are you getting those leads? You buying them? Thats a whole other topic..... but I will say this for now, SEO and VSEO...

Quality over Quantity.

Want to increase your conversion rate? Want to increase closing ratio?

Want to SELL MORE while SPENDING LESS?

Contact the region or comment here on this topic.

RETHINK EVERYTHING.

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