According to research from Forrester, a leading technology and market research company, videos that are properly optimized are up to 53 percent more likely to land on the first page of the SERPs than text content. With an increasingly social web, users respond to the “face-to-face” quality that video offers. It is a very interactive medium, and when used well, it can help build strong relationships with potential clients and customers. But how does your business “properly optimize” your video?
According to Yaniv Axem of Business Insider: “With so many spaces saturated, e-tailers need to use every weapon in their arsenals to fend off competing businesses.” And despite the power of video, “few companies have deployed video in a manner that realizes the full potential of the medium. They have yet to extend video and its benefits to their entire product catalogues or apply SEO strategies to their video libraries.” This, of course, will change as businesses feel the heat of competition, but you can get an edge by optimizing now.
In many respects video optimization is very similar to text optimization. The king is, of course, content. Among the most popular videos are “how-tos.” Why? Because they answer a question, they fill a need. This is what your video needs to do as well. Try creating videos around useful tips, how-tos, interviews with experts, and other useful information. Cater to your audience with quality and information.
Blogs are great textual ways to generate content and offer something of value to your audience. Videos should be like blogs – short and to the point. Aim for a minute to a minute and a half and immediately provide a hook to grab the viewer’s attention. You can also produce a few longer videos, from about 8 to 20 minutes, to have available to further engage viewers you have already enticed with your short videos or those who are looking for something a little more in-depth.
YouTube is, of course, a great resource, but also consider posting video on Yahoo, Vimeo, and Facebook. Optimize the descriptions and titles of your video, and link back to your business’s main website, blog, or social media profiles.
Open-source content management systems WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal make up more than 75 percent of the market share, clearly dominating overpaid services like ExpressionEngine. Of these, WordPress makes the biggest splash; not only do 62 percent of the top million websites use the CMS, it has a recognizable face and voice in Matt Mullenweg. Second place Joomla, according to TechCrunch, seems to “fly a bit under the radar.” Why is this? And is Joomla a good choice for your business?
According to data from BuiltWith, Joomla powers about 1.4 million websites. It has recently hit its 23.5 million download mark. As TechCrunch’s Rip Empson points out, Joomla doesn’t have a single figurehead like WordPress does. Instead, it is run by its community of developers, as well as a team that includes OpenSourceMatters.org. This was done purposely to keep Joomla a community-oriented product and to ensure that it was always held accountable by developers and users.
President of OpenSourceMatters, Ryan Ozimek, says that Joomla has taken on a “hippie vibe” because of its image as the “little guy.” While it is relatively unknown in the US, Joomla does have a significant international presence. It is used in more than 200 countries, and what’s more: over 2500 international government agencies power their websites with Joomla. In the US, these include the US Army and Air Force, and NASA.
Joomla is not a money-maker; in fact, its revenue comes entirely from ad services and sponsorship, and it has no heavy-handed investors. This furthers its reputation and image as a hippie CMS, but what does make it a friend to the little guys, so to speak, is its ease of use. This makes Joomla a good fit for smaller companies or those without extensive technical experience because of this, and because it is free. A CMS like Drupal, by contrast, is more intricate and complex and would be a nightmare for the novice.
Joomla doesn’t see itself in competition with other open-source CMSs. Ozimek says that their competition is proprietary software. He adds, “We want to work towards a time when we’re all open coding.”
Joomla is run by a vast network of developers who work on the open-source CMS to offer better functionality, and of course, greater security, for users. One of the biggest drawbacks of opting to go with an open-source CMS is that these are more prone to security vulnerabilities than paid services. In its newly released version 1.6.4, Joomla addresses four security risks that affect versions 1.6.3 and lower.
Joomla 1.6.4, which is available for download, and its corrections include fixes for two cross-site scripting, or XSS, problems, inadequate permission checking that could lead to unauthorized access to sites, and a specific issue with inadequate filtering that led to information disclosure holes. Users are advised to upgrade to this new version to resolve these issues. Also, if you currently have 1.6 and want to upgrade to 1.7 in the future, you’ll need to upgrade to 1.6.4 first.
Joomla powers between 1.4 and 2 million websites and is the United State’ second most popular open-source CMS, behind WordPress. It is used in over 200 countries, and is trusted by governmental agencies, including NASA, the US Army, and the US Air Force. The security issues fixed by version 1.6.4 were all medium- to low-priority.
Version 1.6.4 is available for download via Joomla.org.
Google’s Eric Schmidt admitted that the search giant didn’t concentrate enough effort in the social arena as Facebook grew into a juggernaut of likes, friends, and fans. Schmidt is hoping that Google+ changes that and gives Facebook more competition for a piece of the social pie. Google+ is currently an invitation-only “project” but it is catching some great early buzz. What is Google+ about?
According to the official Google blog announcement for Google+, “Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”
They “aim to fix it” with these core elements: Circles, Instant Upload, Huddle, Sparks, and Hangouts, each of which is designed to facilitate social interaction and networking. Circles, for instance, allows you to group friends and family to make sharing certain information easier. Hangouts allows you to let your friends know you are hanging out online and they should “stop by” and say hi.
Principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, Greg Sterling, says that there is great initial demand for the service, which is currently limited to a small number of invitees. “Some of the people using Google+ are super enthusiastic. Some of their enthusiasm is not exclusively a reaction to the Google+ product but a statement about the desire for a viable alternative.” One alternative that Google+ offers is the ability to have easier private conversations with groups. Facebook’s “group” option is rather limited and clunky at this point, so this is a boon for social media users.
Facebook isn’t sitting idly by. A spokesperson said, in response to the release of Google+, “We’re in the early days of making the Web more social.” They have launched a Skype-Facebook alliance to allow for video chat. But even this is seen as too little by many experts. Google+’s Hangout allows groups to chat, and it’s free. Facebook’s version is one-on-one for now because Skype charges for group chat. It seems Google has the leg up in that respect.
Even though Google+ has had a limited release thus far, it is clear that Google may have finally stumbled upon an effective social solution.
Over a year ago, Google left China because of its refusal to censor search results any longer. It found the Chinese government too restrictive and was not willing to filter results. It was willing, however, to leave the country with the most internet users in the world, a step that, thus far, hasn’t affected Google’s supremacy. This may change as Microsoft and Baidu, China’s largest search engine, plan a partnership to provide China with English search functionality. Could this make Bing the world’s largest search engine?
China has over 420 million internet users – making it the largest market in the world. The US, its next biggest competitor, has about 230 million by comparison. There is a growing need for English search capability, which Baidu admitted it needed help to facilitate. In the US market, Bing has been making incredible strides, and has increased its market share 75 percent in the last year. While it has 14.1 percent of the market, compared to Google’s 65.5 percent (as of May 2011), Bing is generating a tremendous amount of interest. Recent partnerships with Facebook and the launch of Bing for iPad, have helped the young search engine gain traction.
Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group, says that it is possible “that over the next few years Microsoft could, on a worldwide basis, eclipse Google in terms of reach. That would certainly hurt Google.” The key is whether or not Microsoft will be able to monetize English-language searches.
Microsoft still has to contend with China’s rigid censoring of results. Besides Google, Yahoo is well aware of the difficulties presented here. The second-place search engine was made to turn over the identity of a user who had posted material relating to the Tiananmen Square massacre anonymously online. This led to the arrest of the user, Wang Xiaoning, and his resulting torture and 10-year jail term. Bing has a tremendous opportunity – and untold challenges – ahead.
Google is no stranger to legal trouble. They have faced it on both domestic and international fronts, but recently, their legal woes kicked into higher gear. The Federal Trade Commission has been interested in Google, or rather its supposed anti-monopoly infractions, for years. The FTC served Google with formal notice in April that they will be reviewing the search engine’s business practices. What does this mean for Google?
According to Google, it doesn’t mean much. Google issued a response to the FTC investigation saying that, while they will cooperate fully, “It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are.” Executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said that the company has already met with the FTC but he didn’t foresee it having any impact on operations. “We’ve had some meetings internally, (but) we haven’t changed anything.”
At the same time, Google is downplaying the drama publically and proceeding with a big launch of Google+, its new social experiment, and it is increasingly clear that the search giant is not taking the situation lightly. According to various sources, Google has hired no fewer than 12 lobbying firms to represent its interests in Washington.Despite what Schmidt says, the FTC probe and early-stage investigations in New York and Texas do have an impact on Google. Google’s shares have declined by 12 percent so far this year, and Morgan Stanley recently downgraded its rating from “buy” to “neutral.” The market responded immediately. While this is not strictly because of the FTC (Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt cites Google’s increased spending on social as a main factor), it is certainly not helpful to have a government watchdog on your back.
Google designed Chrome specifically to run web apps, or interactive websites, and to be snappy enough to load these sites quickly and seamlessly. The appeal is an incredibly rich array of apps and features that are ideal for creating a user-friendly, dynamic website. Google has a host of tools that are custom-made for marketers trying to leverage the potential of Chrome. Here are a few of our favorites:
Google Global. Global is a great tool for SEOs and marketers because it allows you to see search results as they appear in other countries, and even other regions and cities. It works well for those at opposite ends of the spectrum, from multi-language, multi-national corporations as well as small businesses trying to target local traffic. Google Global has features such as automatic updates, some performance enhancements, Google Chrome support, enabling of AdTest parameters, and more, that make it a useful tool.
MozBar. This works well particularly for those with SEOmoz software. With it, you can analyze page overlay, access SERP overlay with detailed link metrics, view Linkscape Metrics on the toolbar, use the Page Elements tab to display on-page SEO factors, use Page Attributes to get a view of broad data, and access tools like Open Site Explorer, Keyword Difficulty, and Rank Tracker. This is useful for accessing essential search data.
BuiltWith. It is always useful to analyze and audit your own site, as well as take a close look at what the competition is doing. BuiltWith helps you do that. It profiles any website you choose and gives you information on their analytics, content delivery network, and ad server, as well as other details, including frameworks, widgets, CNDs, standards, and hosting software. It can be useful to see what technologies other sites are using to see if they would work for you.
Google has built a powerful browser that is fast, sleek, and tailored for business. The Chrome Web Store has a host of tools, many of them free, that can help you leverage it to its fullest.
Blekko is the anti-Google. The small “alternative” search engine made its mark by being the engine that “slashes the web” to produce more targeted, relevant search results. It bills itself as being low-spam, low-malware, and low-content farm. Its recent “Zorro Update” doesn’t focus on “slashing out spam,” like the Panda Update from Google; instead it tackles aesthetic issues and auto-including up to 1000 slashtags. What will the changes on Blekko look like for users?
One change that users are likely to notice immediately is the link color. Once red, Blekko has switched over to blue – a choice that makes its links look very much like those from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Blekko has also worked on de-cluttering its display. The bar on the left is gone, and the information that would have been contained there is instead placed in a “less obtrusive” location, which is underneath the search box. Here, you can refine your searches and search by /date, /images, or /videos.
On the right side of the screen, users will see one element per page to reduce clutter. The elements are:
• “People who make this search better.” This links you to contributors or editors of the slashtags you’re using.
• Discuss on Facebook.
• Browse or create slashtags.
• Slashtag of the day.
• “Facebook connect with Blekko” option.
• Link to the Blekkogear page.
Zorro also changed some backend features. Until now, only a handful of slashtags have been auto-included in searches. Blekko expanded this to about 1000. What does this mean for users? That more of the results will be hand-picked and “known to have high quality content.” It also produces more relevant results.
According to TechCrunch, “Search for ‘pregnancy tips’ and you’ll see to slash tags, for /pregnancy and /health, and quite good results compared to Google. But on Blekko you’re not done. Click on one of those slash tags to drill down into results relevant to that tag. Answer relevance goes even higher. On Google, you’d have to visit the next page of results, or rephrase your query. Both are time-consuming.”
Blekko wants to distinguish itself from Google; it seems like Zorro has helped them do this even more effectively.
The world of SEO is mysterious to many who aren’t in-the-know so I thought it’d be appropriate to provide a simplified comparison to explain the fundamentals. Here’s why search engines and SEO are just like high school kids and what you can learn from it.
Popularity is everything
The Breakfast Club
Regardless of how nice, smart, or talented your kid is, his/her social success in school depends only on one thing, friends. The same goes for search engines. Regardless of content quality (and don’t give me any, “but Panda” garbage), the link and social media popularity of a website or piece of content is (almost) everything in determining it’s search visibility. No links/likes/pluses/etc. = no love from the Big Goog(le). To attain SEO success, get back to doing whichever questionable tactics earned you the title of prom queen in high school and make sure that your website earns the popularity which it deserves. After all, it was worth it back then…
Search engines are temperamental
Teen Wolf
Move a page, whhaaak. Server goes down, whhhaaaak. Forget to implement optimized title tags on your fancy new website, whaaaak. One minute you think you’re getting Google love, the next, Google has lost visibility of your content because your unsuspecting developer decided he wanted dashes in your URLs instead of underscores (because he thought it ‘looked better’!). Treat search engines like children and avoid simultaneous, large-scale changes. Follow the technical rules, implement large changes slowly and measure results before going ‘all-in’ (if possible). Just like dealing with children, change is ok, just not all at one time.
SE’s have one thing on their mind, food
High school kids live for their next meal and so do search engines. That’s why you always hear the popular slogan, Content is King. In theory, search engines will eat just about anything you feed them, as long as (they think) it has value and is unique. Take advantage of this childish characteristic by creating a proverbial ice cream truck full of (unique) content and cranking that loud speaker next time the Google Monster comes around. Reward the Google Monster with a sweet treat and she may reward you with more traffic and hopefully, more business.
While we love them, we know that (most) are still slightly, well, dumb
Fast Times at Ridgemount High
Sure, we love our kids and think they smart, talented and will grow up to be president (is that even a desirable job anymore?). But we all know that, left to their own accord, most would never make it past their PlayStation in the morning. Same goes for search engines. After all, that’s why we’re still fiddling with title tags, heading tags, alt text and optimizing keyword anchor text to help them ‘understand’ our content.
In short, there is still a need for ‘spelling out’ our content for the SE’s as they’ve yet to mature to have a reliable level of artificial intelligence. Need proof? Consider that most SEO’s wouldn’t have jobs if Google could figure it out all by itself. Like high school kids, search engines are getting smarter, but they still have a long way to go. Following programming best practices is the best way to deal with this childish characteristic.
That’s it. The key to good SEO- treat the search engines like children and hopefully they won’t bite, scream, cry, or worse yet, ignore you when you get old.
