My notes from the Monday, 9:00 am, panel on “Video Search Optimization”

Jon Leicht, Intuit

- nobody is optimizing video files

* Start with a plan. Where are you submitting? What info do you need? Each SE is different in how you submit.
* Create a “meta toolkit” detailing set of instructions for each SE; size, keywords, compression, etc.
* Meta selection can use data from other campaigns, but needs to be more descriptive.
* File naming is critical.
* Page content impacts media search.

* add meta info during encoding; have to redo meta info if converting from one video format to another
* be conservative with meta info because there are limits to amount that will be used

Optimization
- bandwidth less of a concern than ever
- people click the hi-bandwidth version because the assumption is higher quality
- file format less of a concern

Submission
- each engine is unique

SingingFish
- submit site URL, video directory, and content category
- keep all media in one directory, i.e. — domain.com/videos

Google
- upload media
- add meta and content information
- has video “dashboard”; update information about videos, manage files, and reporting stats
- file format not important

YouTube
- start with good quality; YT re-compresses video into their own format
- flooded with content, so must OPTIMIZE

Blinkx
- visual analysis and speech recognition of all videos
- indexes podcasts, audio, video
- indexing only via RSS feed only

Yahoo/AltaVista
- standard site crawl/submit URL
- optimize links to the file with good anchor text (description of video)

FUTURE
- people not searching for quality yet
- lots of experimentation still on how to index, how to search, how to serve media, etc.
- ease of upload dilutes quality content — lots of junk

Eric Papczun, Performics

Share of video streams
20% Myspace
11% Yahoo sites
9% YT
4% TimeWarner
1% Google

Share of Traffic
33% YT
15% MySpace
(I missed a couple here)

54% of online users consume video
72% watched news video online

Video consumption moving from TV to video sites, and eventually to search. So, now’s the time to optimize.

Roadblocks:
* lack of simple taxonomy for producers to use
* search too dependent on text from video’s page
* ugly URLs
* Flash video players

Optimizing for News Sites
* train video editors to think like searchers — use keywords, etc.; searches for “michael richards” and “kramer” increased days after his episode; people often search for what they missed
* CNBC’s new site — good example of mixing video and text content
* CNN uses /video/ directory off root - easier to submit in bulk
* CBS News uses a “video site map” — same best practices a regular site map; repeat words like “video” and “news”
* if people can’t search and find your content, it doesn’t matter how good it is
* optimize your site for the term “video” in your industry
* take advantage of paid search — “michael richards” example; Reuters #1 AdWords result

Google Video
* links and anchor text are king; Top 10 rankings exactly match an allinanchor search for “Paris Hilton”

Gregory Markel, Infuse Creative

* video search influencing regular SERPs; video results appearing more often in SERPs
* watermark videos for free branding
* company slate at end of video can bring traffic to your site

Submission Types
- Crawled/URL Submit (SingingFish)
- File Upload — titles/descriptions very important; tags/keywords less so, but still important
- RSS/Media RSS (Yahoo)

Optimization Tips
- always include meta data
- encode multiple file types;
- titles & descriptions most heavily weighted
- optimize for keywords that are similar/relevant to currently hot terms
- watermark videos for branding
- include “send to a friend” prompt to encourage viral marketing
- leave lots of time for indexing
- tracking and reporting is a nightmare from engine to engine

Q&A Time

Eric: recency is important; non-fresh content gets pushed down; Google video rewards fresh content; anything outside of a year has trouble ranking, at least now

Gregory: makes sense that freshness of content is a factor, esp. for news; but we’re all guessing at this point; pay attention and study what does work for you

Eric: Yahoo Buzz is a good tool to use for keyword popularity, what’s hot

Gregory: (re: future) content providers are waiting to see which platform (phones, online, etc.) will win before they sink a lot of money

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