Internet Marketing Optimization | SEO Expert

5 Killer Strategies to Boost Your Company’s Product using YouTube

Whether you run a small business from your home or work for a large corporation, you can use YouTube to boost your company. As you probably know, YouTube is a No.1 video sharing community where anyone including you and your business can upload videos for others to view. The trick is to determine the right kind of video to upload, and then finding a way to profit from YouTube viewership.

Using YouTube as a Video Host

Do you already have videos in your business? If your answer is yes, you can easily upload those videos to YouTube, for anyone to view. (Whether anyone wants to view your videos is another story, however, which we’re going to cover shortly.) Aside from making your videos public, there’s one more good reason to upload your videos to YouTube; when YouTube hosts your video, you don’t have to.

That’s right; YouTube is, at its most basic, a giant video hosting website. Instead of taking up valuable storage space on your own web server, you can allow YouTube host your video instead. You will display the video on your own website, of course, but you do it by embedding code for the video in your site’s underlying HTML. The code points to the video on the YouTube site; YouTube then serves the video from its website to appear on your webpage.

Not only you save on storage costs, you also don’t have to pay for all the bandwidth used when visitors watch your videos and YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth. Yes, you still have a slight bandwidth usage when someone views the text of your webpage, but the bandwidth used to deliver the video comes straight from YouTube.

If you run a small business with limits on storage and bandwidth, letting YouTube host your videos can be a real cost saver. And if your video happens to become popular or even viral, you don’t risk having your servers overload and shutdown; YouTube’s servers will handle the load as I said earlier YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth.

Creating an Online Video Presence

What types of videos can your business make for YouTube? It depends on the type of your business and on the way you want to use the Web.

First, look at any existing videos you might have made for use in your business. Perhaps you’ve taped a company meeting, seminar or webinar, or you have a PowerPoint presentation that’s been converted to video. Or maybe you’re a realtor who has recorded video house tours or a motivational speaker who has a speech or two recorded on tape. Any of those videos could make a good beginning point for moving your business to YouTube.

Take the example of realtor. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and then potential buyers view those photos on their website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing that tour into a short video, and then publishing that video on YouTube. You can then embed the YouTube video on your own website, so that potential buyers can view the video. It’s a great improvement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a cent (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).

Here’s one more example for you. If your business is a leader in its category, or if you yourself are an industry specialist, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a peculiar topic or issue of interest. Think of it as a professional video blog; if you truly know what you’re talking about, it will help to establish your professional credentials and polish your company’s image.

For that matter, there are a lot of different types of videos that can help enhance your company’s image. There may be value, for example, in placing a video online of your company’s most recent sales conference or at least the part that introduces forthcoming new products. Or maybe your company has hosted a seminar or conference that is of interest to others outside your company. These videos can be edited for duration and uploaded to YouTube, where any interested party can view them.

That said; there is one type of video that you don’t want to upload. YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of their way to view something online that they try to avoid in the real world. Unless you have a really clever, Super bowl worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself and don’t upload them to YouTube.

Promoting Products and Services via YouTube

So far, I’ve talked about videos that only broadly boost your company, in terms of enhancing your company’s image. You can also use YouTube more directly to boost your company’s products and services that is, to drive potential customers to your website where they can buy what you sell. To do this, you need to make and upload videos that function as online infomercials, subtly boosting your company’s products and services.

Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video, and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of these will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.

Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page URL to solicit business for your consulting services.

Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.

Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a crafts maker with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of his work; and the crafts maker might upload a short video walk-through of pieces she has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.

As an example, Charles Smith Pottery offers a series of instructional videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to use a pottery wheel. Interested viewers can then access the accompanying website (detailed both in the video and in the video’s description) to learn more and to see what products the company has for sale.

Another example is t he San Francisco Electric Tour Company, which offers Segway tours of the San Francisco Bay Area. The company created an entertaining demo video about the Segway and their tours and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Interested people can view the video and then contact the firm to schedule a tour. It’s quite synergistic.

Then there’s John Pullum, a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational regarding the services that he has to offer. Any viewer who likes what they see can then go to his website to learn more or to arrange an engagement.

The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.

Once you get the viewer hooked, you lead him back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process watch the video, then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.

Shooting for YouTube: Proper Production Values

When you’re producing a video for YouTube, keep in mind that the video will be viewed in a small (320 x 240 pixel) window on the viewer’s computer monitor. It won’t be viewed on a high-definition widescreen TV; it won’t even be viewed on the full computer screen. No, your video has to be compelling when viewed in that small YouTube video window.

What this means is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on sophisticated video values. Skip the HDTV recording, skip the widescreen aspect ratio, may be even skip the ultra-expensive lights and makeup. Make your video good enough to be viewed at a 320 x 240 size, and don’t waste your money on production values that won’t be visible to the viewer.

In addition, keep that size in mind when deciding what to shoot. Don’t bother with crowd scenes; all those people will be too tiny to see in the small video window. Instead, compose an image that has maximum impact in the small window. What works best, more often than not, is a large subject against a simple background. That might be nothing more than the speaker full-frame against a light background; it’s a big image with good contrast, which is what you want.

You should, however, spend a few bucks for onscreen graphics. You want a title for your video, appropriate subtitles throughout, and your company’s phone number and website URL. These graphics need to look professional, and be large enough to read in the YouTube video window.

You can shoot a video for YouTube using professional video equipment, a consumer-level video camcorder (shooting in digital video format, of course), or even a computer webcam. Many video blogs are shot with simple webcams, just a person in front of the camera, talking about the subject at hand. You’ll probably want to transfer the video to a computer for editing, of course; any consumer-level video editing program, such as Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie, should do the trick.

As to length, YouTube lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long. If you have a longer video say, a half-hour seminar on tape you can simply edit it into several shorter segments. In fact, shorter segments are generally better; I recommend keeping your videos to three minutes or less. Anything longer and you’ll start to bore people and lose viewers. Even if you have a 10-minute video, you might want to edit it into three or four 2- or 3-minute segments. YouTube viewers have a short attention span, and you need to compensate for this.

Uploading Your Videos to YouTube

The hardest part about uploading a video to YouTube is creating and editing the video. The uploading process itself is so simple a CEO can do it.

First, however, you have to make sure that your video file meets YouTube’s requirements, which are as follows:

• MPEG-4 format video with either the DivX or XviD codecs
• MP3 format audio
• 320[ts]240 resolution
• Frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS)
• Length of 10 minutes or less
• File size of 100MB or less

If you shot your video with a digital camcorder or computer webcam, it’s probably in the right format to begin with, so there’s no conversion necessary. Your only concern is to stay within the length and file size limits.

To upload the video, click the Upload Videos link at the top right-hand corner of any YouTube page. This displays the Video Upload page; you now have a little paperwork to do.

First, enter a title for your video. Make sure it’s descriptive without being overly long. Next, enter a description for the video; this can and should be longer and more complete. (And don’t forget to include your phone number and website address in the description.)

Then enter one or more tags for the video, separating each tag by a space. Tags are keywords people use when searching; use as many tags as necessary to capture all possible search words and attract as many potential viewers as possible.

Now pull down the Video Category list and select a category for the video. Click the Upload a Video button when you’re ready to proceed.

Step two of the video upload process is where you specify the file you want to upload. Click the Browse button to open the Select File to Upload dialog box; navigate to and select the file you want and then click Open. This loads the filename into the File box on the Video Upload page.

With all of that done, the final step is to click the Upload Video button. YouTube finds the video on your hard disk and starts uploading it; the progress is shown on the Video Upload page. Once uploaded, take note of the video’s URL (to link to from your site and use in promotional material) and the embed code (to embed the video in your own website). Your video is now ready for viewing!

Improve Link Popularity and Develop a Successful Link Building Campaign (Part 2)

It’s a two part article series, in part 1, I’ve already explained you about mistakes you should avoid in link building, how to categorized your database and create your own master database for link building campaign.

Few Lessons from Your Competitors!

If somehow you are finished with your database and you require more incoming links for your website, you shouldn’t worry about it as far as your competitors are there to guide you. You can easily see how many links are pointing to your competitors from search engines. Google doesn’t show the real figures but you can take it from Yahoo and Msn, now what you have to do is to find out where exactly your competitors are linked and start putting your competitors’ incoming links to your master database with all required fields.
After you finished with all your competitors, don’t waste your time start submitting your website.

Important Aspect of Incoming Links:

Incoming links are evaluated on certain criteria and weight, there are four major aspect of incoming links on the basis of them each links are considered more valuable.

1. Link Age
2. Link Text Relevancy
3. Link Page Relevancy
4. Link Domain Relevancy

1. Link Age

Link age is one of the factors your website or webpage is going to be tested through, the older the links are the better they will be reliable.

2. Link Text Relevancy

One relevant link is equal to 100 irrelevant links, you better guess how important is the link text relevancy, here relevant link text means the title of the link and very next paragraph after title.

3. Link Page Relevancy

Page relevancy is also very important factor, your pointed links should be placed on the relevant pages. The overall page content should be relevant with your page.

4. Link Domain Relevancy

Link domain relevancy is something that can’t be ignore, if your pointed incoming links are placed on the relevant domain and relevant page they will be highly appreciated and have more weight than your competitors.

Incoming Link Types and Styles:

Link type and style are very important, you should try to maximize their effectives and values in favor of your link building campaign, each link has different value and weight to search engine, and I’ve defined almost all types of incoming links with their styles. I’ve distributed links in five groups with descending order.

1. Title Anchor Links: Title anchor links are area or content focus incoming links on any particular page

2. Title Hyper Links: Title hyper links are those links where the actual linking area is title

3. Description Text Links: Description text links are those links where the actual linking area is description

4. URL Links: URL links are those links where the actual linking area is their website addresses or URLs

5. Static Links: Static links are placed on plain SEO friendly pages that have plain URLs, they are considered very important links

6. Dynamic Links: Dynamic links are placed on dynamically generated pages and considered to be less important

7. One Way Links: One way links can be either dynamic or static but they will be only incoming links, they won’t be linked with your domain

8. Reciprocal Links: Reciprocal links can be either dynamic or static but they will be linked with your domain, if you don’t put their links to your website, they won’t put your link at their website

9. Vote/Rank Base Links: These types of links vary with their reputation, people gives votes or ranks to links and on the basis of those votes/ranks their link position vary

10. Lifetime Links: Lifetime links are those links which will be active for life time as long as the domain is there

11. Periodical Links: Periodical links are those links which will be active for certain period (such as 1 year or 2 years) after that they will be no more, usually these types of links are paid links

12. Same Window Open Links: Same window open links are those links which open in the same window or they refresh themselves

13. Blank Window Open Link: Blank window open links are those links which bring you to blank windows and open the pointed links on them

All these link types and styles have different meanings and values to search engines, being an SEO you should try to utilize your best available resource and try to focus on the right direction rather getting just links coming to your page.

I hope this article will help you in developing a successful link building campaign, since I’ve tried to explain almost all types of links with their values and weight according to search engine.

Quick SEO Guide! 12 Steps of Search Engine Optimization Process

There are just 12 simple steps to follow basic Search Engine Optimization for SEO starters, expertise and in-depth knowledge of these steps can take you to the expert level as well, this article has just an overview of the basic SEO.

1. Research and select appropriate keywords to target
2. Effective page Title Tags
3. Effective and optimized META Description Tag
4. Effective and optimized META Keywords Tag
5. Integrate search keywords within Website copy
6. Web design elements to avoid ensuring your site is search engine compatible
7. Effective Alt Image attributes
8. Effective and optimized text navigation menus
9. Link titles and anchor link effectively
10. Set up search engine friendly site architecture
11. Creation of search engine friendly sitemap
12. Robots.txt and its META tag

1. Research and select appropriate keywords to target

• Collect the business terms
• Check keywords relevancy with industry and conversion
• Check competition
• Check count on word tracker and Overture
• Make estimate traffic chart using Google Adwords
• Distribution of keywords on the basis of their weight

2. Effective page Title Tags

Title tag is the most important tag, almost all search engines evaluate webpage with title tag and check the relevancy with other elements of the page as well, and search engines also present results of a search by displaying webpage titles as links in the first line of each query result.

3. Effective and optimized META Description Tag

Description tag is the very important tag, search engines take webpage description through this tag, though search engines don’t give any importance to this tag in their ranking algorithms but this tag can lead searchers to motivate and visit your website.

4. Effective and optimized META Keywords Tag

Keywords tag has lost its value, search engines keep getting smarter, they have set their own criterion to identify web pages with their relevancies, they take each word as “keyword phrase” that is presented at webpage and they keep those words in priorities with their densities. There is no harm in utilizing this tag for marginally better results.

5. Integrate search keywords within Website copy

Since a very early stage of search engine revolution, search engines were able to evaluate website with relevance to their content, though they were not very efficient and intelligent like they are these days, but they were able to read the content at website and content still plays very important role in top ranking positions.

6. Web design elements to avoid ensuring your site is search engine compatible

Usually a website is designed keeping few elements in mind such as user friendliness, attractive design, beautiful flash animation, easy navigation, client specific or functionality oriented. In fact all these elements are very useful and important but what benefit is your web site if it has no visitors, search engine compatible websites are designed and developed keeping search engine policies and algorithms in mind, which enable websites to be easily crawled and understood by search engines.

7. Effective Alt Image attributes

Alternate text commonly referred to as Alt, is a text description that can be added to the HTML tag that displays an image. The ALT text is displayed by the browser when the cursor is moved over the picture. If pictures are turned off in the browser, the Alt text is automatically displayed instead.

8. Effective and optimized text navigation menus

Navigation is a very important part of any website; it gives guidelines to website visitors and directs them to relevant part of the website.

9. Link titles and anchor link effectively

Link title is displayed text by the browser when cursor is moved over the link.
An Anchor link is a little different from a hyperlink, a hyperlink directs to a complete webpage but anchor link directs to a specific area of a particular webpage, it may be at same page or different page or even at different domain.

10. Set up search engine friendly site architecture

A Website’s information architecture can greatly affect on its search engine visibility. Specific page elements, such as the site navigation scheme, and design technologies, such as CSS and JavaScript, can interfere with search engines ability to spider a site.

11. Creation of search engine friendly sitemap

A site map helps visitors navigate large, complicated sites by showing its entire structure. It is also used as a master diagram of the Web site for Web designers.

12. Robots.txt and its META tag

Robots.txt is a file placed on your server to guide the various search engine spiders not to crawl or index certain sections or pages of your site. You can use it to prevent indexing totally, prevent certain areas of your site from being indexes or to issue individual indexing instructions to specific search engines.

How Reliable Google Keyword Tool is? Is it there to Guide or Misguide?

Google is great! We all know that and except it by all means, whatever Google produces it’s 100% successful tool / product, “adwords keyword tool” is one of the tools that Google has launched, there are some confusions related to this tool, how reliable this tool is? Is this tool for organic searches too? I’ll elaborate them and explain my personal experience with it.

What is Google Keyword Tool?

After the successful launch of Google adwords in 2000, Google realizes the need of a keyword tool that will help PPC advertisers to build or refine their keyword lists and review keywords popularities and performances information in advance before going live, that’s why Google has launched its “Google Keyword Tool”

Keyword Tool Features like “Site related keywords, Keywords Performance Statistics, Synonyms, Cost and Estimated Ad Positions” are available in Google keyword tool.

Why Google Shows Junk Keywords by its Keyword Tool?

Google will be in a better position to answer this question, as far as my little knowledge is concern, Google has global audience and when it comes to serve everybody you have all types of inputs, same thing happens with Google, it welcomes everybody and is prepared to serve in its style, there is nothing bad in it, but Google makes this kind of information available through Google Keyword Tool, as a result we get to see some rubbish or junk keywords.

Google Never says Keyword Tool is for Organic Search

Google never gives any statement related to reliability of its keyword tool and using Google keyword tool for organic is not a good idea, since we’ve practical experience of plenty of keywords, which bring thousands of visitors to our website from Google but Google gives no hint related to those keywords, in fact when we searched those keywords, few have no suggestions, and few have very less volume of searches.

Why Google Doesn’t Show Great Keyword? Is Google Cheating?

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Is Google ready to share its own information with world? That’s really one of the concerning point for all of us, what’s hurting Google to show its information? Is Google afraid of Yahoo or Msn?

Google must be having very useful and exact information related to keywords, keywords search frequency, quality, audience type, behavior and keywords effectiveness, since Google is biggest search engine in the world, and it shares more than 57% of overall search engine visitors. We get to have very useful information from our small sites, you can have an idea of the information Google has related to world.

Google is Unable to Share its Real Information

Even though Google is not afraid of Yahoo, Msn and Ask but somehow they are healthy competitors, as smart player Google will never let its competitor know what kind of traffic is there at Google? What are the most searched keywords? Which keywords are costly? This type of information is very critical and if Yahoo or Msn has this information, with no time they can give Google a very tough time. We all know Microsoft has been trying very hard to get close to Google and Microsoft has the capability to do that.

Google privacy is its success! I don’t say that Google is cheating us, it’s not giving rubbish data at all, but Google mixes the rubbish with quality data together and it never shows its most searched keywords.