Video on the internet is far from new, but most internet marketers have problems getting their videos to be noticed. Uploading videos on YouTube can be effective, especially because Google gives YouTube preferential treatment, but you can increase conversions by bypassing YouTube or other video sharing sites and have Google index your video directly. YouTube is designed to have to user stay on the site as long as possible, while you want the user to get on your site as quickly as possible. Just like a sitemap for a webpage,  Google video sitemaps tell Google exactly what and where the file is. Google uses that information to index videos for video search. The sitemap is just a text file that gives Google the information on how to classify and pull up your video in search.

Clicking on the video will take the user directly to your website. This gives the user one less click to have to go through to get to your site compared to going through Google search, to a video sharing website to your site. Creating a video marketing campaign through video sharing sites is still effective, but the point of this article is using Google as the index. Video marketing is a potentially very profitable enterprise because the competition in videos is much smaller than in websites in general.

The sitemap allows you to tell Googlebot the duration, title, and description that goes along with each video. It is much easier for Googlebot to read text and almost impossible for it to figure out what a video contains otherwise. Almost all types of video except live streaming video are supported. You will use text tags tell where your landing page is, post the video’s URL, specify a video player if necessary, give a thumbnail, and set the duration. The sitemap is added through Google Webmaster Tools and is limited to 50,000 videos. Most Denver internet marketing companies are not near the 50,000 limit yet, but having a large number of quality videos is a good idea, because then Google will start trusting you as an internet video producer.

Instead of a sitemap, you can also use an mRSS feed. RSS 2.0 allows for better video support and may be easier to make than a sitemap. mRSS is older so most browsers and software support this coding. Once your sitemap is uploaded, you can log onto Google Analytics and track the exposure of your video. Creating video costs more than other content so you will want to be able to see what works well and understand what your ROI is. A Denver SEO company would track this by setting up 301 redirects from a unique url within your site for the video you submitted to see which visitors came from where. Without the sitemap uploaded, it is impossible to see if searches came from Google organic or video search.

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You might be surprised to learn that Matt Cutts, who works for the Search Quality group at Google has most recently come out with comments about meta tags or more specifically “keyword” meta tags and stated “Google does not use keyword meta tags” in their rankings. For the longest time many SEO professionals pounded the desk suggesting that keyword meta tags were critical for any SEO campaign.

According to most SEO Companies, Google has for many years completely ignored this tag which has made the use of this meta tag completely pointless. I know as a Denver SEO company, we have definitely utilized the keyword meta tag and we will continue to do so. It is not that we believe that this meta tag would help us in the rankings, rather we have used it to define the theme of each page that we publish. So, although Google has stated that they do not utilize the keyword meta tag, we have still found much use for it.

Usually when speaking to anyone with any knowledge of SEO, they will go over a list of important factors to complete when working on a SEO campaign. One of the first things we hear many SEO companies speak about or write about is the importance of keywords in the keyword meta tag. This might be a warning to those that are looking for the experienced professionals who actually know SEO and focus not only on “onsite Optimization” but “offsite optimization” or link building as well. I have included the Matt Cutts Video in this post about Google’s complete lack of interest in the keyword meta tag, you can read more about their disinterest in the keyword meta tag here on their very own Webmaster Tools blog.

So why would Google disregard the keywords meta tag anyway? It started several years ago when the meta tag was actually abused by many website owners. If Google strictly followed the keywords in the meta tags, than it would be easy to mislead or misdirect the search engines. Google has probably one of the most elaborate and complex algorithms for their search results which has made them a market leader in search. So it is going to take much more than meta tag to throw them off course.

Even though Google has stated that they ignore keywords, we will continue to use this meta tag as previously described. It gives us direction for each page that we produce and keeps our entire campaign organized so we find it very useful even if Google does not. However, when you are talking to that next search engine optimization sales representative or SEO Company that goes through their thorough process of search engine optimization, you might ask,”How important is the meta tag keywords for a SEO campaign?” You might just be talking with one of those that is not in the know and this would be a good way to find out!

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Can alt text really help your SEO campaign?

Often times as I read through all of the resources online for internet marketing, I read about the importance of “on-site” optimization. We have discussed it ourselves in the past (onsite optimization). Something I don’t think we had discussed was the importance of keyword use in the alt text or title tags. Granted many have disagreed with the importance of alt text or title text in the SEO community. It is important to understand that there is not a SEO professional that I have met who knows the algorithms intimately. So while there are many opinions that using alt text or title tags does not provide a benefit to your search engine campaign, I would respectfully disagree as I will prove with an example.

We should probably begin with the explanation of “alt text“. The entire purpose of alt text was to give a description of the image if the image could not be loaded properly as well as a resource for the handicapped (especially the blind) so that as their “text reading” program described and read the page, they would be provided with a description of the image. The attribute can be applied to many different forms of media including video, but is primarily used for images.

So, why bother with alt text on images? As previously stated, alt text will provide screen readers and text readers with a description of the image, this also applies for the spiders that index the content of your website. By labeling images and media with alt text you are giving the search engines a description of media that they could not otherwise relate to your media. Surely by now you know that Google or any other search engine for that matter cannot see or comprehend what your image is without some kind of description from you the webmaster. So, they (the search engines) actually need you to tell them what an image represents. This is an awesome opportunity for you to influence the position in the search engines.

In the case of a project that we managed for a pet related business, we took the opportunity to label all pictures of the dogs with the name and breed of the dog. We resubmitted the sitemap to all the major search engines as well as created links to the pages as usual. Over the next several weeks we started to see a huge increase in the amount of traffic that we were obtaining for this account. The images were actually bringing in traffic themselves as they had been indexed and those searchers that were looking for images of the dogs that we had described were visiting our customer’s site after they had located the images!

Over the next several weeks, we noticed yet another increase in traffic as other sites were linking to our images and the pages containing the images from their sites. This brought in another wave of traffic. This project realized over 100% increase in organic traffic by simply utilizing alt text and title tags throughout the pages of our customer’s website.

I am not suggesting that alt text on all of the images of your site will increase traffic by 100%. At the end of the day, most of us are not in the pet industry or any industry for that matter where customers are looking for pictures of our product or services regularly. For example, if I labeled everyone of the images on our site with the keywords “Denver SEO“, it is very unlikely that I will obtain that many visitors from the images of my site; however, if I could get one of my images to show up in the organic rankings then perhaps my listing would stick out among all of my competitors as I would be one of the only results that had an image next to my title.

In conclusion, there is absolutely no way that completing alt text could hurt your campaign. Sure it is an additional step while completing your onsite optimization, but the time invested seems like it would be worthwhile considering that it is a small investment. I do want to emphasize that I do not believe that alt text will make or break your search engine optimization campaign, but I do believe it is worthwhile to add this element to your site. Making your site more useful to your users is what we all want to accomplish, so make certain that you are not keyword stuffing the tags and using legitimate short descriptions as this could definitely help your rankings for long tail keywords as well. At the end of the day, if nothing else, alt text will at least make your site more accessible to the search engines and those that access your site with screen readers, etc. If you are working with a seo company you would definitely want to check your images and make sure that they have been optimized with alt text or title tags.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) entails a maelstrom of techniques and tactics with the end goal being to improve the ranking of a particular website in the search results of major search engines. Denver SEO can be broken down into two main categories, on site SEO and off site SEO.

On site SEO relies upon excellent content first and foremost. Content must be on topic, relevant, and contain a 5% – 8% keyword (words or phrases) density. This means that for every 100 words of content, five to eight keywords should be used. The keywords that will be used must be carefully researched using tools such as the free Google AdWords keyword tool. When choosing keywords, it is important to remember to think like the customer. What will they be searching for? These same keywords should also be embedded into the website source code via Meta, Title and Heading tags. This will help ensure a high page ranking for these search terms.

Also, the website should be organized with a clear hierarchical structure. Creating a site map will significantly enhance site structure and ability to be scanned by search engines. This will allow search engines to more efficiently scan the target website. The most important information on a given website should be placed at or near the top of the page. This will make it easier for search engines to find the content that you want them to find. Use text instead of images; search engines can only scan text, so all important information must be included in text. This should be done even if the message(s) being conveyed are duplicated in images, banners, etc.

Of even greater importance is off site SEO. This includes back linking to highly ranked sites. For example, you can submit articles to free online repositories with links to your target website embedded in the text. The Google search engine will interpret a page with many back links to highly ranked pages as being of greater importance, and will therefore increase its page ranking. Another tactic is to submit entries to a highly ranked online blog, with excellent content, important keywords and back links where possible. Furthermore, you can join appropriate, and highly ranked, online forums and post useful content with a signature containing a back link to the target website. You should submit your website to the major search engines’ web indices. This will speed up and enhance the optimization process greatly.

SEO is a multifaceted endeavor, and requires ongoing maintenance and tuning. There are many competent companies that are dedicated to carrying out SEO campaigns. If page ranking is extremely important to you, consider outsourcing the project to a professional Denver SEO company.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can serve as the linchpin to your overall marketing plan for your business.  Gone are the days when all you needed was an ad in the local phone book.  The most efficient way to drive leads to your business is through Internet marketing.  You need more than just a website, though.

A website that has not been optimized for search engine results pages (SERPs) will only serve as a digital business card.  Nobody will find it unless they know about it and where to look.  Your competition will quickly surpass such an outmoded approach.  You need to hire a Denver SEO consultant to help get your website seen by those searching for the products and/or services that your business offers.

A competent SEO company will offer a full-service approach to Internet marketing, in order to ensure that your SEO campaign is in fact successful.  You will need to start out by looking for a Denver SEO company on the Internet.  Here’s a good tip: if you search for SEO company, SEO consultant, SEO, Internet marketing, etc. the company you end up choosing should appear near the top of the SERPs.  The reason:  if a particular Denver Internet marketing company can’t get their own site near the top of the SERPs, they probably can’t do it for you, either.

Once you have chosen a particular SEO company, carefully examine the SEO consultant with whom you are to be partnered.  Do they act in a professional manner?  How much experience with Internet marketing do they have?  Can they provide examples and references to demonstrate that they have a track record of success?  Do they have as many questions for you as you do for them?  A good SEO consultant will begin by trying to understand your business and the goals you have for it.  This will aid them in one of the early steps in SEO, keyword research.

Do not settle for a mediocre SEO company.  Don’t shop by price alone.  Remember, you get what you pay for.  The success of your business depends on you choosing the best Internet marketing company possible.

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A few years back, web developers or SEO experts only needed to focus their efforts to “On-Site optimization”.  This means they needed to have appropriate Meta tags, create a sitemap, they needed their pictures to be labeled and correctly link their pages throughout the site.  Only 5-7 years ago, this would get them on the front end of the searches related with their website content. 

Today is a completely different story.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the search engine optimization (SEO) you do off your site is more important than the SEO you do onsite now days.  What I mean here is because of the sophistication of search engines today, there are many more factors that go into the SEO equation to achieve “Above the fold” placement organically.  I feel the more powerful factors have to do with “Off-Site optimization”  Don’t get me wrong, if you’re content is not relative to the searches you are going for, it will be much more difficult to obtain those results but it is possible.

So what is off-site optimization anyway?  Off site optimization is all of the work you can do to promote your website without actually doing anything to the site itself.   Things like building relevant backlinks, using social networking to increase traffic, and video submissions are just a few examples of off-site optimization.

Backlinks:  Think of search engines judging every website like it’s a popularity contest.  Every backlink to a website counts as a vote.  As a search is submitted to a search engine, they gather which sites have relevant content and of those they rank them accordingly to the votes they receive (number of backlinks).  Now anchor text adds even more madness to the equation.  If you have anchor text pointed at your domain with the keyword or phrase you are trying to be found in, that vote has more weight than a regular backlink.  At the end of the day, if you had a million backlinks with anchor text reading “BMW parts”, it’s a pretty good chance you would be in the top three results for that search term regardless of the page content. 

Tip: Join a Forum or a discussion board related to your services or product and start adding useful posts.  Link to your website in your post or signature.

Social Networking:  With all of the buzz with Twitter and other social networking sites, now is the time to take advantage of the traffic that can be developed.  Just creating an account and writing a few posts is not going to do the trick.  You need to be creative just like anything else in your campaign and create excitement about your service or project.  Offer discounts, link to blog posts which then link to your site or some bigger companies even use the social networking sites as a form of customer service.  Everyone has a technique or social networking, many are bad but there are a few that are good and working excellent. 

Tip: Create a LinkedIn page and add as many business professional in your area and send them all a message about your services and offer a discount.

Video Submissions: You might be wondering what creating, editing and submitting a video would have to do with search engine optimization but there are many benefits.  First of all, a video is a good way to connect with potential customers.  A client testimonial will give you credibility while a message from an employee or owner will create a sense of trust.

There are great video repositories out there, maybe you’ve heard of YouTube.com or Viddler.com?  More and more people are using these sites to host videos, create commercials for the business and increase the traffic to their web site.  Recently, YouTube.com just passed the 100 billion viewed videos in one month, pretty dang impressive.  Geek.com reports YouTube.com overcoming Yahoo© taking the number 2 search engine.  Don’t you think it’s time you start taking advantage of the traffic?  Make sure you have a YouTube.com video that points to your website.

Tip: When you create a video to YouTube, you have the ability to put in keywords.  Use this to your advantage and attrack more viewers looking for your services

Hopefully you now understand the importance of off site optimization and have picked up a few techniques to try yourself.  Remember, SEO is not something that happens overnight and certainly is very time consuming.

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