http://bit.ly/cFLKJX - The following is my presentation detailing optimization tips and marketing tips for YouTube videos. I presented this at the Dallas Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association and was on a panel with Lane Shackleton of YouTube. The entire focus of my presentation is on practical tips, strategies, and tactics for taking full advantage of the opportunity with YouTube and video marketing and video SEO.

1. ONLINE VIDEO STUFF
Oh Yeah, and YouTube SEO and Marketing
Mark Robertson - ReelSEO.com

2. Why Online Video?
30,317,131,000 *
Vs.15,500,000,000 Search Queries **
*U.S. Comscore Video Metrix - Videos Viewed – April 2010 | ** ComScore Core Search Report – April 2010

3. Search Drives Video Traffic
% of category % ∆ in share of % of category % ∆ in share of
traffic from traffic from traffic from traffic from
Category
search engines search engines Google Google
4/09 4/08-7/09 4/09 4/08 – 4/09
Health & Medical 46.29% 1% 33.88% 10%
Travel 36.82% 8% 27.91% 20%
Shopping & Classifieds 24.04% -5% 17.28% 4%
News & Media 21.35% -2% 15.48% 6%
Entertainment 26.51% 11% 18.78% 24%
Business & Finance 20.91% 16% 15.01% 29%
Sports 14.93% 20% 10.88% 30%
Online Video** 36.04% 25% 27.24% 39%
Social Networking** 17.73% 6% 11.87% 18%
All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users – 4/09. **Denotes a custom category
Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

5. Why YouTube?
13,087,462,000 **
3,705,000,000 **
*U.S. Comscore Video Metrix - Videos Viewed – April 2010 | ** ComScore Core Search Report – April 2010

6. Why YouTube?
YouTube is the most popular video platform for video
engagement in the blogosphere with 81.9% of total
embedded and linked videos; followed by Vimeo
(8.8%), Daily Motion (4%) and MySpace (1.1%).
**Sysomos.com YouTube Report

7. YouTube Fun Facts
• 2 Billion video views/day = 23,000 videos/second
• 24 hours uploaded/min = 2X audience of all 3 major U.S. TV networks combined
• More video is uploaded to YT in 60 days than the traditional TV networks created in 60 years
• Average length of a YouTube video is 4 min 12 sec **
• Popular countries for YouTube within blogs are U.S., Brazil, Spain, U.K. and Canada.**
• In the U.S., most engaged bloggers with video live in CA, NY, TX, PA & FL**
YouTube is Profitable?
• Monetizing (mostly through Google Ads) >1Billion video views per week
*Comscore April Online Video Metrix | **Sysomos.com YouTube Report

8. YouTube Marketing and Optimization
Quality
content
SEO
Audience
Basics

9. Focus on Quality and Engagement
Not TV Advertising - Lean Back vs. Lean Forward
"It's got to be 30 sec?"
• My answer is, tell the story first
– Shorter is almost always sweeter
– Focus on first 15 sec
Telling a story:
• Engage customers
• Educate customers
• Point of differentiation
• Entertain customers http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec
• Be different Sales increased 700%, 5X the company's old record
• Write with keyword in mind (if applicable)

10. Success = More than Keywords & Text
YouTube Ranking Factors
– Title
– Description
– Tags
– Views & frequency
– Likes, dislikes
– Playlist additions
– Flagging
– Shares
– Comments
– Age of video
– Video Responses
– Subscribers
– Favorites
– Embeds & inbound links

11. YouTube Ranking Factors – Holistic Effort
More Possible YouTube Ranking Factors
• Social Media Activity & Buzz • Blogs
• Degree & frequency of community • News/Press/Press Release
interaction • Crowd Sourcing – Influencers & Media
• Playlists • YouTube Partner Program
• Flagging • Close Captioning/transcriptions
• Honors
• Insight/Trends/Analytics indicators
• Bulletins
• Authority Channel (Ex: BMW)
• Google & YouTube searches
• Channel Views
• Social Bookmarking

12. Uploading to YouTube
Recommendations for Uploading to YouTube – Take advantage of HD
• HD – quality, multiple options
• 16:9 Aspect Ratio Recommended (4:3) letterboxed
• Resolution
– HD = 1280x720 or 1080p
– Else = 640x360 (16:9), 480x360 (4:3)
• Mp4 file format
• .h264 video compression
• AAC or MP3 audio compression
• Frames per second: 30
• Maximum length: 10:59 (recommend 2-3 minutes)
• Maximum file size: 2 GB

13. Tips for Uploading to YouTube
Titles are important
• Trade-off = Search keywords vs. enticing titles
Maximize descriptive text
• Leverage descriptions liberally (5000 characters)
• Leverage tags – optimize & de-optimize (no spam)
• Important keywords first in titles, descriptions & tags
Enable interaction
• Embedding and sharing
• Commenting and rating
Consider manually uploading or API
• More characters available for titles, descriptions, tags vs. uploading tools
• Geo-tagging, CC, Annotations, etc…
• To take advantage of YouTube, you really should be an active community member anyway

14. Engage the Audience & Drive Interaction
Add URLs to descriptions
• Track with tiny URLs
Leverage annotations
• Drive viewers to other videos
Engage the community
• Subscribe to relevant users
• Add video responses when appropriate
• Encourage linking and embedding
Don’t Ignore your Channel
• Channel URLs followed
• Site URL followed

15. YouTube Marketing - Think outside YouTube
• It’s more than YouTube now.
• Competitive keywords require additional effort OUTSIDE of YouTube

16. Promote and Promote Again
• Distribute via most popular YouTube channel
available to you
• Leverage social sharing functionalities
• Post to your blog
• Crowd source -Target/Use Key Influences
• Spread the word internally
– Encourage your company to help seed/spread the word

17. Track, Measure and Learn!

18. YOUTUBE CONVERSION TIPS
Driving YouTube viewers back to you

19. Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home
How can you drive interested YouTube viewers back to your website?
1) URL in Description 2) In-Video Calls to Action
- Must include http://
- Use URL shortener – tracking, nofollow
- Teasers, Coupons, Promo codes, Call
tracking #’s, Unique URLs, Etc…

20. Driving Video Views – YouTube Promote
YouTube Promoted Videos
• Pay Per Click/View
• Keyword bidding
• Drives video views

21. Video Conversion - Driving Viewers Home
WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW
• Bonus = Free call to action overlay
• Auto-play on channel = more views
• Starts at $0.01 CPC
• Cost per click off-site? $0.00
• What you don’t know?
– Overlay is yours regardless = FREE

22. EXTRA YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION TIP

23. Closed Captions & Speech Recognition
• Apr. 2007 - Google 411
“Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is
yet to be seen... The reason we really did it is because we need
to build a great speech-to-text model … that we can use for all
kinds of different things, including video search.” - Google’s
Marissa Mayer
• Sept. 2008 – GAudio launches
• Nov. 2009 - Google Rolls out automated YouTube closed captions (limited)
• Mar. 2010 – Automated captioning for all videos (Beta – English only)

24. Example Search – “DFWSEM”

25. What You Didn’t Know
• YouTube & Google Index CC
• CC/Subtitles don’t require audio
• Can help with longtail searches
• Weight = ?? Not much yet

26. Why Closed Captions?
• Accessibility for hearing impaired • Global Reach - Translations

27. How to Create YouTube Closed Captions
• Create and upload .SRT file
• Did you create a script?
– Upload as a transcript
– Google automates temporal matching
• Use Google’s machine transcription
– Download –> fix –> re-upload
• Web-based tools & services
– DotSub
– CaptionTube
– Subtitle Horse
– SubPly
– 3PlayMedia

28. YOUTUBE Tricks|Customize The Embed Code
• Turn off Title & Ratings
– &showinfo=0
• Turn off Search
– &showsearch=0
• Turn on Related Videos
– &rel=1
• Want a custom player?
– Use Chrome-less Player (YouTube API)
• More - http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-embed-hacks/

29. Please Visit ReelSEO = Video Marketing News, Trends, Tips…
Thank You
Mark R. Robertson, Founder
www.reelseo.com
@reelseo
Facebook.com/reelseo