A little more than six years ago, a small startup video-sharing website named YouTube received its very first video upload. At the time, few would have believed that videos on YouTube would eventually receive millions of views each day, or that businesses could effectively use the Internet as a way to broadcast commercials to the public. Video taps into the consumer desire for sight and sound, an audiovisual aspect that can provide an experience that may be difficult to translate into words.

More than just a commercial feature on the Internet that a business may use to reach consumers, video also has an ability to affect organic results within search rankings. However, using web video to aid in a search marketing strategy is not quite as simple as just creating a YouTube channel and uploading a video. In that case, it is unlikely that a video will have any impact on search results. Video SEO is a comprehensive method which draws on the way Google looks at the relevance of the video.

According to a March 2010 article in TechCrunch, Google’s indexing methods can make web video more likely to rank on first page results than the traditional web page. Yet, with all of the sophistication and technology available, when it comes to the algorithms and crawlers that scour the Internet for content, the video itself is actually unseen by Google. Video SEO actually comes down to video sitemaps, robot text files, titles and keywords. In essence, it is still the written word that will factor how Google finds and ultimately ranks videos rather than the content actually contained within the video. Yet it is that content that can funnel traffic to your website.

At Get Page One, we believe video can be an integral part of an overall search marketing strategy and one that taps into the consumer desire to see and hear information that entertains, educates and engages them. If you would like to know how a Video SEO strategy could work for your business, contact us today.

Google Me lets users fill out their very own profile, and it was released just a few days ago. Fill out enough information on it, and it’ll likely show up at the bottom of the first page of results when someone searches for your name at Google.com.

Another online profile? Yawn. Well, hang on a second. Google Me is useful for online reputation management.

If you do a Google search for your name, what comes up on the first page? Maybe it’s a mix of results for several people who share your name, maybe it’s all about you, or maybe nothing useful comes up. If you’ve never thought much about what shows up when someone searches for you, we strongly suggest that you start paying close attention to this. Whether you’re applying for a job or you’re an established professional, people will search for your name on Google. And you can bet that they’ll look at everything that comes up on the first page and will judge you accordingly.

For this reason we can’t stress enough just how important online reputation management is. The best thing you can do is start working on your online reputation right now, making sure that what comes up for your name on that first page (and, even better, the next couple of pages) of results is positive and factual. A false, inaccurate and/or harmful piece of information someone posts online about you, your product or your company can seriously damage your reputation. Don’t wait around to make sure your first page of Google results is factual and positive.

So take the time to make a Google profile. It takes only a few minutes, and it’s certainly an easy way to get that last spot on Page One filled out with good information about yourself.

Just don’t forget about the other first-page results.

When developing a new site, new page or editing an existing site or page, the following Search Engine Optimization considerations need to be taken into account. This is a summary of Google’s SEO Starter Guide, which you should also read.

Page Titles

• Every page should have unique, accurate page titles
• If page was pre-existing, the page title should stay exactly as it was before
• Title should reflect page’s targeted keyphrase

Description Meta Tags

• Ensure you prevent search engines from displaying Open Directory Project descriptions
• Descriptions should be accurate, unique, descriptive of page content and should reflect page’s targeted keyphrase
• Descriptions will be displayed in search results and should entice a searcher to click
• Use tags if applicable, such as Brand:, Size:, Price:, etc.

URL’s

• Always maintain exact existing URL structure when working on a site or page. If URL structure must change, a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL is absolutely necessary
• When creating new URL’s, use descriptive categories and filenames
• Use only words in URL’s, avoid parameters, search strings or session ID’s
• Never use generic page names such as page1.html
• Do not keyword stuff URL’s
• Create simple, but descriptive directory structure
• Provide only one version of a URL to reach a document
• Always use only www version of a URL to link, such as http://www.domain.com
• Never use capitalization in URL’s

Navigation (for search bots)

• Create logically organized “silo’s” of information
• Create an organized html sitemap
• Create an XML sitemap
• Use mostly text for navigation
• Use breadcrumb navigation
• If part of a URL is removed, the link should always work
• Have a useful 404 page

Content

• Write easy to read text
• Do not embed text in an image or flash
• Avoid grammatical and spelling errors
• Stay on topic
• Use relevant language and work keyword variations into a page
• Avoid keyword stuffing
• Create fresh, unique content

Anchor Text

• Chose short but descriptive anchor text, don’t link entire sentences
• Do not use generic anchor text like “click here”
• Do not link to a page with its URL as the anchor text
• Do not use CSS that makes links look like regular text
• Do not keyword stuff links
• Do not overlink

Heading Tags

• Use H tags to reflect the main topic and sub-topic(s), or keyphrases, of a page
• Use H tags to define the structure of a page
• Do not use H tags instead of <em> or <strong> tags.
• Use H tags sparingly

Images

• Use descriptive alt tags
• Use descriptive filenames
• Alt tags and filenames should complement one another
• Avoid long filenames
• Avoid generic filenames like “logo.jpg” or “header.jpg”
• Avoid keyword stuffing alt tags or filenames
• Store images in their own directory

Robots.txt

• Always ensure there is a robots.txt file at the root level of your site and one at each sub-domain of your site
• Use the robots.txt to point to your sitemap.xml
• Use robots.txt to block search results pages

Nofollow

• “Nofollowing” a link is adding rel=”nofollow” inside the links anchor tag and tells Google not to pass your reputation on to the page being linked to
• Nofollow is a controversial subject, but when used for search reasons, nofollow should be used anytime you are linking to an insignificant area of your site such as a contact form. It’s been suggested (not by Google) that nofollow should also be used when linking to documents such as .pdf files. Nofollow should also be used when linking to any outside website that you don’t benefit from passing reputation on to

Promotion (link building)

• Effectively promoting your site will either directly or indirectly build incoming links to your site. These incoming links will help your site be discovered more quickly by search engines, and depending on the search engine and whether or not there was a nofollow tag on the incoming link, will help increase your site’s page rank.
• Blog about new content or services
• Blog about anything, really…Just blog with targeted keyphrases as your topics
• Use social media to promote your site and your blog posts
• Add your site to Google Local Business Center
• Develop incoming links from related websites
• Do NOT EVER purchase links

Google Webmaster Tools

• Use Google Webmaster Tools effectively
• Upload your sitemap.xml
• Analyze or generate your robots.txt file
• Specify the preferred domain
• Identify issues with title or meta tags
• Receive notification of quality guideline violations
• File for a site reconsideration

Google Analytics

Use analytics to measure impact of search engine optimization

Use analytics to ensure your SEO is targeting keyphrases that CONVERT, not just ones that generate traffic

Google

Use the following Google resources

Google Webmaster Help Group

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Webmaster Help Center

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google Analytics

Google Website Optimizer

Tips on Hiring an SEO

Austin Pizza: Where are the major chains in Google SERPs?

“Austin Pizza“. It seems fairly logical that at some time in the last few years, someone, anyone, working for Pizza Hut, Dominos or Mr. Gatti’s would have said, “hey, what happens when someone searches for pizza in their city?” Because, frankly, nothing happens, and that amazes me.

I could understand, I guess, that pizza executives might not see the value of the interwebs. For that matter, they might not even use the internet to look for things like pizza. After all, isn’t the internet just something the “kids” play around on. You know, college kids killing time between classes or late at night instead of studying … and what is the target demographic of these pizza companies? Oh, wait …

Where are Pizza Company Ad Agencies?

What I don’t understand – what I can’t grasp – is where are their ad agencies? The main goal of an ad agency, if I’m not mistaken, is to sell more product. I realize they are working on brand awareness, etc. (I happily await your flames , but if I own a pizza company, I want my agency to sell more pizza. Speaking as someone who searches for everything from his BlackBerry, the first pizza company to show up in my SERPs is the one that gets my call.

It just boils down to, once again, advertising agencies not understanding search. (Just one more example of how little understanding they have of search: I can’t even Google up the current agency representing Pizza Hut. If one were representing Pizza Hut, seems one would want the whole world to know about it.)

Google Loves Pizza

Google loves pizza. In fact, Google loves anything that is relevant to keyphrases its users are looking for. Google wants these companies to show up in the SERPs. Dominos, Pizza Hut and Mr. Gatti’s are all really, really relevant results for someone looking for pizza in Austin. So, since Google loves pizza and relevant results, why is it so hard to Google up some pizza at 3 am?

Pizza Chains and Google Organic Ranking

Pizza hut achieves the amazing feat of hiding all its pizza stores from Google by having a store locator that requires you to type your address, city and state into a form and click “find”. They provide no crawlable means of discovering any of their zillion stores.Papa John’s, ditto. (Did someone have a fire sale on this interface?)

Mr. Gatti’s, smallest entity in our sample, has, believe it or not, a crawlable store locator, yet they still manage to thwart ol’ Googlebot. How? Well, they have bad URL’s, code, text, H tag selections, meta tags (for a unique location, meta name=”description” content=”Gatti’s Pizza” / and meta name=”keywords” content=”pizza, restaurant”), page content… etc.

In fact, the only thing these pizza chains aren’t doing to keep Google out is forbidding access in their robots.txt file. They aren’t, are they?

Submit Business Locations to Google Local

I’ll play my own devil’s advocate here for a minute. Maybe the user experience, design or GUI is more important that organic search. Maybe they don’t want to build a crawlable directory of store locations for fear that a user might actually find it on Google.

Maybe these things are important. Maybe arguments such as “that person would never have become a customer if they hadn’t been able to Google your less than ideal locator page” should just be put aside. What then?

Well, there’s an extremely simple solution to these arguments. Google Local.

It’s incredibly easy to submit your business to Google Local. I submitted ours in 10 minutes. I submitted an excel spreadsheet with a listing of a client’s 500 locations in less than an hour. In fact, I’m guessing an agency could have an intern submit every Pizza Hut location in the world in less than a day. So, in less than a day (and the month it takes for the submitted locations to show up in Google Local), Pizza Hut could begin showing up for every variation of “city”+pizza. This would tap into a HUGE long tail keyphrase list and translate directly into increased sales of pizza … for the cost of an intern’s day. There is no excuse.

What’s that? You’re not interested in long tail, only high-volume keyphrases? Don’t get me started on the lack of SEO for pizza coupons.

Google Maps adds “Send to Garmin” – Garmin Adds Google Local Search

It sounds like a big game of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”, but the end result is a great boost in functionality for end users of both Google Maps and Garmin GPS devices, including Garmin Mobile subscription service for the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices.

Google “Send to Garmin”

The Google “Send to Garmin” feature works pretty much just like it sounds. You map out your route using Google maps, including any points of interest you might want to see along the way, such as this cool store for high end cowboy boots in Austin, and then simply click the “send to Garmin” button. Easy Peasy.

Google Local Search on Garmin Mobile

Alternatively, if you use the Garmin Mobile subscription service, you can now use it to directly search Google local to find those cool points of interest such as the cheapest gas or even the best Barbecue in the world (it’s so good, I’m giving them that link and they’re not even a client

Google Maps on BlackBerry

Or, as an alternative to the above, if you have a BlackBerry with a GPS (also supported on many other phones, but I can’t vouch for them), you can save yourself some money and simply download the excellent Google Maps for Mobile application. I got a new BlackBerry (OMG, would someone please write them a letter explaining search engine friendly urls?) with Tele-Nav and tried that once. I then tried Google Maps for mobile and never even launched Tele-Nav again. My one caveat, if you need turn by turn talking navigation, Google Maps can’t help you…yet, though I can’t imagine they aren’t working on that.

Overall, “send to Garmin” is a good idea. I just think it’s a better idea to simply install Google Maps on your phone in the first place.

Well, the Google Street View team is certainly busy. They launched Street View for Austin, and caught a street view shot of Get Page One that’s pretty recent. The building next door is finished now, but they just took down that scaffolding last week.

Street view is fun, they catch lots of strange things on camera. It’s a great way to kill a few hours until, say, happy hour on Friday

It’s a first, the Google Webmaster Help Group Chat. Big G is actually going to talk to webmasters about how to improve their website’s position in the search results! Why is this such a big deal? Well, Google can be the typical evasive, faceless, “please refer to the help pages” monster corporation. This is a huge shift in how they deal with webmasters. Hopefully, it will last.

(edit, if you didn’t copy the webex Q&A chat window before it closed, you can borrow my copy of the Google Webmaster Help Group Chat Q&A Transcript)

What’s going on at the Google Webmaster Help Group Chat

8:45 Doors open
This is a great time to get logged in to the chat!
9:05 Welcome!
Introductions, and how to get the most out of the event.
9:15 Site Clinic: Emphasis on good fundamentals
We’ll examine and give feedback on one of your sites.
9:40 Advanced topic: Images in search results
Presented by our own Maile Ohye.
9:50 Additional Q&A time
We guides will tackle your questions about images and other webmaster issues
10:00 End
Time to say goodbye.

The official information page about how to attend the Google webmaster help group chat live page is here.

How Open is this New “Open Attitude?”

Just how open is this new “open” attitude Google seems to be taking with webmasters? Well, I’m as curious as you are. Are they going to give out any “SEO secrets”? Any Search Marketing tips, tricks and techniques? Maybe they are just going to go with their old fallback of “create good content blah, blah” I guess we’ll know soon enough. And if you aren’t going to be able to make it, you can read about it here. I’m going to be “blogging” the Google Webmaster Help Group Chat live as it unfolds. Stay tuned to hear more…

Google Webmaster Help Group Chat Starting in 5 Minutes

Hopefully, they will be starting in 5 minutes. Still can’t log in. Wondering if they will be having problems, as they themselves say, “There will be bumps. We’ve planned and practiced, but inevitably a (technological, meteorological, philosophical or other) snafu will pop up… especially in v1. We’ll do our best to keep things running smoothly, and we thank you in advance for your understanding .” As just about everything else is at Google, the event is labeled “beta”. Gotta’ love the Google attitude!

Google Webmaster Help Group Chat Begins

One of the first ones in, one minute early, Matt Cutts beat me though! The list of people is really adding up. This might just be a popular event Quite a few peeps from Google are logged in as well. They brought the troops. Right now it’s Adam Lasnik, John Meuller, Maile Ohye, Matt Cutts, Susan Maskwa and several one namers. I can hear lots of typing…

Adam is announcing that people can’t chat with each other…the first “snafu”. Beginning in 7 minutes.

Now They’re Talkin

Starting to chat away. One of the very first messages, “What’s up, all my SEO people”. Well, they’re definitely acknowledging us. They’ve fixed the chat room, everyone can chat with everyone. Not sure that’s such a great idea.

The Phone call begins

Guidelines:

no specific sites
info about presenter
general issues

Presenters:

Adam Lasnik is the “Search Evangelist”.
Jessica, search quality
Myli, search engineer
Reed, search quality
Evan, search quality
MattD, search quality team
Matt Cutts, Web spam, search quality
Susan, webmaster trends analyst
John Muir, webmaster trends analyst
Maria, who can’t talk…in Ireland
Johnathan Simon, webmaster trends analyst

Sorry didn’t get full names and titles, they were going fast. If anyone has them, send them in and I’ll add them.

Google Webmaster Help Group Chat Site Clinic

Starting to review Pictureline.com

Now they popped open a window with the web-browser…it took over the computer for a second, thankfully they’re nuking that idea. They say they planned this…hmm.

Now with the tips:

Not sure I agree with some of it. One of the guys/gals said the site name is not in the title, so people might not be able to find that site. I disagree somewhat. Google knows who PictureLine is, so it’s not necessary for ranking. Maybe he was saying people can’t find the specific company in the SERPs b/c of that?

Lots of “look and feel” stuff. Width of site, UI type things…Why are search engine engineers doing a UI review?? We want juicy SEO info!

Now with accessibility tips…oh, hey…there you go, a good tip. One of the guys/gals mentioned to not have javascript in the main navigation. Great point, but nothing new. Says to have text links, not graphical, and to have alt tags. All good points.

Johnathan:

choose www or non-www, points out you can do that in webmaster tools
fix duplicate url’s
make sure sitemap has no broken links
make sure sitemap is in robots.txt
mentions load times…this is a new one and important

Reed:

Found duplicate content, apparently they moved the site from somewhere else…oops!

Next site: learningguitarnow.com

Hints:

True 404′s in headers
301 redirects to WWW domains are good
fix alt attributes in blog
upgrade to newest version of wordpress
embedded youtube video, have an html link directly to the video

Next site:

digitalbase.eu
alt tags, blah, blah
versions of the site: he has multiple versions of the site, use 301 redirects to get rid of that.
titles, make more compelling…not really search engine optimization info, but a good point
windows IIS server, url’s can be upper and lower case, this is not good

Interesting side note…there is a Q&A chat that seems to be a completely different meeting. It’s been commandeered by someone with question after question to Matt Cutts about her site. I understand why she would take the opportunity, I’d do just about anything if one of our sites had been dumped by Google, but I think in the future they need to be more strict about “no personal site questions” or it’s going to get out of hand.

More technical problems…phone out…now they’re back.

Now we’re on to the Image search portion of the meeting.

Discussing how to optimize for Google image search results.

Starting with discussion of how image works, how to use the tools, filtering, etc. Nothing about how to rank better (grammer is losing out to speed here, sorry).

Tips:

How Google Ranks Images

Quality of the site
Img attributes, alt text
Image filename
Domain referrer and the image’s host site…hotlinking…don’t do it!
Make images accessible. NO FLASH! No Flash slideshow
Don’t duplicate the image by having Flash and the same image, dilute’s page rank
Image size is important, large images rank higher
Write relevant text around your image, very important
Alt and title tags both? Yes
Use descriptive file names
Not important to have in sitemap.xml

Now the Juicy SEO Tips

Sitelinks:
Triggered algorithmically
You can remove individual site links
Create more original and compelling content (I called that one)

Apparently, that was pretty much it…

Now they’re discussing how to get more information, go to Google Webmaster Tools, of course!

Oh, hey, they are going to stick around and help us more…Google Rocks!

Universal search and video:

They only show sites with really high bandwidth in the serps, that’s why Google shows Youtube in the serps
Create video sitemap

Bought links:

If you BUY or SELL links, and they pass page rank, they are emphasizing that they will either “lose trust in your site” or remove you altogether.

Look at your backlinks from webmaster tools to make sure there aren’t any bought links.

Subdomains:

When should I use subdomains? When it makes sense for your users. Basically, if you have a large sections, not single pages, use subdomains. They say single pages don’t work.

Personally, I think there are a lot of examples showing that is NOT CORRECT.

rant
Subdomain landing or doorway pages work, which is unfortunate, because they’re spammy and lessen the quality of the SERPs. It’s also unfortunate because we ceased using sub-domains for SEO when Matt Cutts said to, and apparently we should have “kept on keepin’ on”. I wish Google would put the same smack-down on these guys they are hitting the paid link people with!
/rant

Duplicate content?
no answer, common sense test

How many links on a page?
no more than 100

How long should pages be?
no answer, common sense test

Blogging:

Discussing spam prevention, etc. nofollows, etc. Take care of your blog and maintain a good neighborhood.

What if you bought links and can’t get them removed?
Submit reconsideration request with as much detail as you can

Page Rank Sculpting, good or bad?
Don’t bother, site architecture is the most important thing.
Again, SITE ARCHITECTURE is really important.

Splogs:

De-prioritize in favor of other concentrating on main site.

Aggregators like Digg:

rank high, but as they fall off home page they lessen in importance.

However, note that the Digg to this blog post was ranking in the top 10 for google webmaster help group chat before the event was even over. If you’re in a hurry, Digg is the way to go.

Submitting Spam Reports:

Spam reports from webmaster tools are prioritized. Cool.

When will Webmaster tools telling us if we are penalized?

They want to be careful to not aid spammers, so probably not going to warn about much, but they do show some things, and sound like they’re going to show others.

Ok, well, that’s it. A user going by the name of SchoolsGalore said he was recording the event in it’s entirety. I’ll try to find a link to that.

Thanks, Google, for a great session. It ended up being very helpful, and I’m sure the 250+ attendees appreciated it tremendously. I’m just amazed there weren’t more.

Any questions, comments? Contact us!