SEO Services * Free Search Engine Marketing: Recent Comments

Comment on Maui Search Engine Optimization: Lesson #12

2006-12-21T15:20:07Z

With the explosive popularity of video content on the web, savvy search marketers can be among the first to catch a prime trend this coming year by optimizing video content to outperform in search engines.

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 4-7, 2006, Chicago, IL.

The Video Search Optimization session was designed to educate marketers on how to make relevant video content highly accessible to searchers. Moderated by Chris Sherman, the presenters included Jon Leicht of Intuit, Eric Papczun of Performics, and Gregory Markel of Infuse Creative, LLC. All experts in the field, these three brought invaluable data, strategy, analysis, and anecdotes to help SEOs start mapping the contours of the video terrain.

Video, the wild west of search 2007
As Jon Leicht illustrated, video search is still a new and relatively cumbersome niche. That has its pluses and its minuses. Leicht first and foremost advises that marketers map out a plan and develop what he calls a meta toolkit for a business' video developers. A video developer may understand the importance of good meta information but it's entirely possible that he or she may not know how to do it right. Don't leave it to chance. Give developers solid instructions before they get started. As with any optimization campaign—and even more so with video—it is always better to do it the first time around then to have to go back and do it all over again.

Video search engines are like any regular content search engine. To be successful, and to avoid making mistakes, know where you are submitting your content and what information you need to have for each individual engine. Search engines are all different and results will be enhanced when you understand the medium and can play the field according to the rules. Those rules, however, are rapidly changing. A smart marketer will keep an eye on the trends in the industry, and stay just ahead of the field.

As Leicht reminded us all, video is very new content delivery medium. So new in fact that most people are still doing little to no optimization. Just applying the basics will put a search marketer leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

Leicht's top 3 tips include:

Name your files accurately, with keyword rich filenames. For example: October-space-shuttle-launch.mov rather than 345654-lb.mov

Optimize the content on the webpage that launches your video

Submit, submit, submit
"The Search Engines themselves are very open to working with you. If you have good content, they are happy to help. Call them!" said Leicht.

The power of video site maps
Following Leicht's overview of basic video SEO technique, Eric Papczun recommended optimizing not only for content related keywords, but for generic keywords related to video. "News video," "ipod video," "[location-specific] video." Even popular terms like "travel video" are still relatively easy to rank for.

Contact Mauiseo.com for more information.

Comment on Maui Search Engine Optimization: Lesson #12

2006-12-21T15:17:25Z

When you size up the search marketing industry, you really have to marvel at all the different information sources, many of them conflicting, and how search marketers are able to stay on top of what's current and relevant compared to noise and malarkey.

In the course of talking to prospective clients, prospective business partners, attending conferences and events, reading blogs, books, discussion threads, forums, newsletters and industry publications, you can get exposure to an amazing variety of observations about SEO. Many of them are spot-on. Some of them are tales of a mythical nature. A few are just plain bunk.

For some context on this post, I think it is important to note the distinction in intent for most search engine optimization efforts: SEO for publishers, blog networks and affiliates is a different thing than SEO for lead generation and on-site transactions/sales. Many tactics are the same, but the intentions and outcomes are very different.

The myths outlined below are more concerned with SEO for lead/sales generation that we work with at TopRank.

1. "Search Engine Optimization is a collection of tricks to fool search engines".

If you're "fooling" the search engines, then you're probably fooling users too. Guess how well that kind of activity converts? "Real" SEO involves a lot more than optimizing content, getting links and using disposable marketing "tricks". Tricks and tactics may be a matter of semantics depending on who you talk to, but many of the tactics we associate with productive and long term SEO include:

Search Marketing Strategy

Benchmarks

Competitive Analysis

Keyword Analysis

Creative Copy Writing

Web Design & User Experience

Information Architecture

Server Side Issues

Code Optimization

Other channel marketing that affects SEO (social media, news search, blog search, etc)

Ongoing Content Development

Ongoing Link Building

Web Analytics

Conversion Analysis
2. "People in our market don't use search engines."

I actually used to keep my laughter to myself when people would say this. You don't have to do too much research to find out if a market is viable for marketing via search engines.

According to a study by comScore qSearch, there are 4.9 billion internet searches per month and 133 million unique searchers. Those numbers have actually gone up a bit since the study. It is certainly true that in some market categories in the developed world that search usage is minimal, but I have a hard time thinking of any.

A quick way to start investigating a market is to search and find out if how much relevant content is out there. If your market is brand new, then you may have an easier time dominating it on search engines by becoming an authority on the topic earlier than your competition.

Submitted by -->MAUISEO.COM

Comment on Maui Search Engine Optimization: Lesson #12

2006-12-21T15:13:15Z

For every page you want to have crawled and indexed by search engine spiders, you need to have enough readable content on the page with keywords specific to your site embedded. This will allow the search engines to index your page content.

Your main content should be above the area called the fold in the page; this is where the web page drops off the bottom of your screen before scrolling down. There has been much rumor that when the search engine spider crawls the site it travels so far down looking for relevant information to match with your heading meta tags, if the information is not found it will go to the next page and your page will not be indexed correctly.

Make sure the heading meta tag title, description, and keywords are relevant to the content on the page and to your specific industry. Do a search on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for specific keywords in your industry and see who comes up in the top of the free listings.

Click the view, page source in your browser window and you will see the met tags they use. Compare the 3 different search engine listings and use ideas from each. See how each website has their content laid out and that you can find the meta tag keywords in the page content.

Site navigation is crucial in web site planning. All pages should link to each other and there should be no broken links. Text links give search engine spiders an easy way to get from page to page so use them when ever possible. Many sites are built using PHP and ASP scripts and the navigation links are not found by the spiders.

If you have asp or psp navigation links, create an html site map. There are many free site map generation tools available today. Place this link on every page and you are sure to have all your important pages indexed.

The key to a great web site is quality design layout and great content that is updated often. Rotate banner ads and post newsletters to keep you content fresh. This will keep the search engine spiders coming back for more.

Most importantly design keeping your visitors in mind. If they can't find your products and services, then all of your hard work is just a waste of time. Put yourself in your customers shoes and think about what they want to see when they get to your site and how fast they expect to locate what they are looking for. If they can't find it fairly quickly, then you most likely gave your competition another sale.

Comment on Maui SEO Tutorial: Web Design & SEO

2006-12-13T14:03:43Z

Hello. Thank you for teaching me so much about SEO and search engine optimization. I am going to try you plans and see what happens. Thanks
Lanna

Comment on Maui SEO: Google Changes Search

2006-12-13T13:59:51Z

Search Engines seem to be making a living out of shuffling the deck. Why don't they just come up with something that works and stick with it... SEO Marketing is hard.

Comment on SEO Services Reno Nevada: Copywriting Services

2006-05-31T20:52:18Z

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Comment on SEO Services - Search Engine News

2006-05-20T22:27:56Z

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Comment on SEO Marketing News - Google Changes Daily

2006-05-20T21:22:02Z

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Comment on SEO Marketing News

2006-04-11T22:26:56Z

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Comment on SEO Marketing Services Tutorial

2006-04-06T23:52:06Z

Great copywriting infomation. Thank you so much for teaching this stuff for free... but how do you make any money?

I have had more than 10 web site fail. I think it has to do with never hiring an SEO. I will from now on, that is for sure!

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Thanks
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