Featured Video SEO Tips and Tutorials

Video SEO Tutorial - Using SWFObject 2.1 to Provide Alternative HTML Content (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced Video SEO, Flash Video, and the importance of using SWFObject to provide alternative content for accessibility and SEO purposes. I explained why you would want to provide alternative content for your flash video projects and how to utilize SWFObject to accomplish this.

In Part 2, we’re going to dig into some code and walk through a tutorial for using SWFObject 2.1. Let’s jump in.

Video SEO Tip - Using SWFObject 2.1 to Provide Alternative HTML Content (Part 1 of 2)

The rise of online video content has led to many questions about Website Video SEO, or how to optimize your videos on your website so they can be crawled and indexed by the search engines.  From a best practices standpoint, there are several things you can do in order to properly optimize your video content (and those items have been covered here on ReelSEO in the past).

One important item on that list is ensuring you provide alternative html content for your flash video that can be crawled by the search engines.  It makes a lot of sense, but you might be asking yourself, “How in the world do I accomplish that?”  Well, that’s exactly what I am going to cover in this two part series.

Public domain footage for video marketing online

If you’re looking for some new creative ideas on buzz marketing with online video, check out the Internet Archive, a virtual digital library of public domain (i.e., free) video content. While its primarily used for research and educational purposes, some companies are drawing from its inventory to create new movie clips for entertainment pieces associated with their own brand.

Gmail Voice & Google Video Chat - A Work in Progress

Google recently switched on the tubes behind Google Video Chat. Mark Robertson and I had a chance to test it out and here are my thoughts on it. The video and audio chats require that you have the Google Talk Plugin v1.0.2.0 installed. Unfortunately, it is limited in operating systems and browsers that it is compatible with. It currently supports Firefox 2.0+, IE 6.0+, Safari 3.0+ and of course Google Chrome. While it states on the help page that Firefox is available for Linux, the Google Talk plugin in fact is not.

Video SEO Interview - Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs

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ReelSEO’s Mark Robertson interviews Grant Crowell – Reel SEO’s Senior Analyst and Founder of Grantastic Designs. Grant shares how got into professional video search engine optimization, his early origins in the search marketing industry, his stint in video production and directing, and  what pisses him off about companies who claim to be Video SEO specialists who aren’t, in his Grant’s Rant!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Video Search Marketing for Local Business – Kelsey Group Conference

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Listen to ReelSEO Mark Robertson’s special report from the recently completed Kelsey Group 2008 Conference in Santa Clara, California, and Mark’s take on how the present and future of online video marketing for small-to-medium businesses is really more of a local search play.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Youtube Gets Bigger - Goes All 16:9 Aspect Ratio Widescreen

As somewhat of a surprise to users, video sharing giant Youtube announced yesterday on their blog that they decided to upgrade the previous player to a new wide-aspect 16:9 ratio video player as the default player on Youtube.  Finally Youtube is joining the ranks of those that have had wide aspect ratio players for some time like Hulu, Blip, Vimeo, and countless others.

According to the announcement, Youtube released this new player in order to users with a “…cleaner, more powerful viewing experience.”

Video SEO Tips for Designing Websites

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Most beginners treat video search engine optimization as just submitting clips to YouTube and other video sharing sites. However, real video SEO is especially about optimizing video content on a website that YOU control and manage. Watch, listen and learn from ReelSEO’s Grant Crowell on the advantages of how optimizing your web design with video content has over YouTube, and the bigger boost you’ll get in search engine results, traffic, engagement, conversions and overall overall customer experience.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

New Distribution Deals Help Google Increase TV Ad Inventory

As of September Google has been selling time through Google TV Adwords for NBC advertising inventory. The announcement was made on September 24th on the Google offline ads blog.

Again they’ve made another deal, this time with Bloomberg TV. Starting November 6th Google started allowing advertisers to target Bloomberg TV viewers in the US. While this was previously available through a partnership with Dish Network it is now a direct link between the two firms and gives advertisers more access to more inventory there. From the looks of things it’s the first of many that will be coming soon to the Google TV Ads flock.

Youtube Videos in High-Defintion? Hack Youtube for HD Video Playback

Boy was I happy to find out about this….  If you remember our Online Video Predictions for 2008 post from last year, our first was…

“1) HD High-definition Video - I expect Youtube and others to follow suite with the sites that already support High Definition content.”

New - Google Analytics Now Measures & Tracks Adobe Flash

Google, in its Analytics Blog, just showed a way to begin tracking user interaction via their Analytics web metrics program.

While there have been homemade systems in the past to accomplish this, Google just now developed, with some third party help including Adobe, and displayed some new ways to do it at the Adobe Developer’s Conference.

Online Local Video Explosion - Kelsey Group ILM:08 Video SuperForum

SuperForum II: Local Video Explosion - This is the Kelsey Group’s ILM:08 conference session that we were most excited about covering.  This is a great panel session with several leaders in local online video marketing solutions.

Brad Inman, Chairman and Founder of TurnHere is up first. TurnHere has created more than 11,000 ads for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) since they started. As you likely already know, TurnHere is really the behemoth in the room.

Brad’s presents “25 things that TurnHere has learned” about local video production and video marketing for businesses:

Custom Video Production with Professional Voiceover for SMBs - New from TurnHere

TurnHere, Inc., a leading Internet video production and advertising company, announced the launch of a premium voiceover video package designed for small and local businesses. Combining custom onsite video footage with professional voiceover, TurnHere’s new turnkey solution lets businesses of all sizes leverage the power of video to connect with customers in a more engaging and effective way.

iPhone Local Search Application Demos at Kelsey Group’s ILM:08

Right now I am in a  session that is showcasing local search apps for the iPhone. Again, some of you may be wondering why the coverage of local search and local interactive media.  Well, in all honesty, I believe that local search + online video is the next wave in terms of online advertising for SMBs.  So, it is important to keep ahead of local search, search, mobile, etc…  Hope you all agree.

If you saw our post from this morning, you will have seen that ComScore presented some great research about the opportunity for mobile and the growth in iPhone market share since the launch of 3G.

Kelsey Group’s ILM:08 Day 2 - New Takes on Local Audience Targeting

It’s day 2 of the Kelsey Group’s ILM:08 conference and we had a great first day.

Aside from the sessions and panels that were extremely informative on the state of interactive local media, we also had the pleasure to interview several folks in the local online video space, including SpotMixer, WellcomeMat, and Mixpo. Today, we are scheduled to conduct interviews with several additional leaders in the online video space including TurnHere, MediaMobz, Jivox, and more… We will be publishing these interviews in the following weeks.

Our first session today is with Brian Jurutka, VP, Marketing Strategies, comScore. His presentation is titled “New Takes on Local Audience Targeting.”  As you will see below, there was great research presented regarding the potential for mobile to take off.