Search Spammers Admit Defeat After Spam Algorithm But Vow To Return
Last Wednesday Google released the spam algorithm to target very spammy niches and “illegal” link building and spamming techniques. Did it work…
Google Knowledge Graph Carousel Sightings Becoming More Frequent Within A Wider Variety Of Searches
While the Google Knowledge Graph Carousel was launched nearly a year ago, more reports are confirming Carousel image displays appearing more often and for a wider variety of categories in SERPs. The Carousel display shows results in an image-focused fa…
High-Priced Talent Letting You Down? PPC Moneyball Revisited
As the summer weather haltingly makes its appearance in my neck of the woods, thoughts turn to on-base averages, fielding percentages and all of that Moneyball stuff. My theme for this column is the woeful underperformance of the team known as the Toro…
How to Report Organic Search Traffic Gains After Filtering ‘Bad’ Traffic
SEO reporting has little to do with ranking reports. Ensuring strong analytical measurements is key to gain trust with your clients/company executives, because that transparency shows what is truly working, rather than managing based on “feelings.”
Google Webmaster Tools Adds Google Tag Manager Verification Support
The Google Webmaster Central blog announced you can now use a new method to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. Now, you can use Google Tag Manager‘s container snippet code to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. To verify your unverified site with Google Tag Manager, go to…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Updated Google Knowledge Graph Carousel
The Google Knowledge Graph carousel, which launched about 10 months ago, is now showing up more and has a slightly updated style.
Reported by Gabs at Threadwatch and in WebmasterWorld, amongst other blogs and tweets…
Link Count Continues To Drop On Google Webmaster Tools
Last Wednesday we reported complaints in the forums of webmasters noticing their links are dropping within Google Webmaster Tools. In short, the links shown in Google Webmaster Tools today versus two weeks ago was a fraction of the number.
Well…
…
Google Glass Cruise Fitting For San Francisco Pick Ups
Chas Stewart posted in the Google+ Glass Explorers Community that his pick up invite in San Francisco triggered an unusual notification from Google. It seems that those picking up Google Glass for a fitting in San Francisco in the upcoming weeks will …
Black Hats Mock Google’s Matt Cutts With Payday Loan Hack
As you probably remember, Google launched a new spam algorithm to target spammy queries such as payday loans. It had a serious impact on spammers from what I see, which I will cover right after this story…
The Best Link Building For Local SEO — None!
Since Google rolled out the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, numerous sites have been impacted or penalized. Often, companies that incur penalties or experience a drop in rankings don’t have a clue as to what they’ve done wrong — especially small, local businesses. This leads…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Should You Be Afraid of Blackhat SEO?
(This is the article I originally wrote for the BrightonSEO newspaper – I thought it would be of interest to a wider audience than BrightonSEO attendees. That said, BrightonSEO is a highly advisable event. It will be run again on …
Google’s Mobile “Quick View” Trial Appears To Be Over
Google appears to have quietly put an end to a long-running trial that added a “quick view” option next to mobile (smartphone only) search results from select websites. The feature offered searchers a fast way to see a lightweight version of a web page without having to fully click…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
6 Mobile Marketing Tactics to Nurture Customer Relationships
Text reminders, polls and surveys, sweepstakes, push notifications, social integration, and loyalty and membership programs are six mobile tactics to help you stay connected with your customers to generate and maintain customer love
Advanced Authorship: The Deep Dive
Up Close Coverage From SMX Advanced 2013 I just attended the SMX Advanced session, “Authorship: The Deep Dive” this morning, moderated by Elisabeth Osmeloski, and featuring speakers: John Carcutt, Advance Digital, Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo, Mitul Gandhi, seoClarity, and Mark…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
#MozCon Speaker Interview: Aleyda Solis
Posted by Lindsay
Today I’m pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. We’re excited that she’s bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where she’ll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely don’t want to miss her talk, “International SEO and the Future of Your ROI,� if you’re interested in growing your online business.

Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon.
It’s going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI.
It will be beyond the “ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting” type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). It’s meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: “How do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I don’t even speak the language or know anything about the country?â€� Or, “How can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I don’t have enough resources?â€�
If this is an issue for your business, then it’s highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn’t planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets.
I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy.
Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation?
Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! :D (I’m kidding!)
I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.)
Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely don’t want to miss that.
What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why?
All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it.
Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential.
Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you’ve learned along the way?
Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country.
Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people.
You can have a better understanding of what I’m talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research.
What do you do at SEER Interactive?
My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, I’m helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, I’m also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients.
Tell us about the places you’ve lived.
I’m from Nicaragua, a small, tropical country with a lot of volcanoes, lakes, and beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts in Central America. Nicaragua’s natural landscape is breathtaking; here’s a photo of Momotombo Volcano (one of the 12 volcanoes on the Pacific coast of the country):

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/7355295166/
I grew up, studied, and worked there until I left to study in Salamanca, Spain in 2006. It’s a beautiful student town full of history, with students from all over the world (a lot of people go there to learn Spanish). It’s also home to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain (where I went to study), which was founded in 1218. Its front building looks like this:

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/3855579280/
I ended up staying in Salamanca after finishing my studies, and got my first SEO job at an online marketing company. I lived in Salamanca for a bit more than 4 years — until I came to Madrid, the city where I live now.
I came to Madrid after accepting an SEO manager position at a company here at the end of 2010. Madrid is an amazing place, since it has the great alternatives that big cities offer, and at the same time allows you to have a good quality of life. Here’s a view of Gran Via, one of the main streets in Madrid:

Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_/6887000482/
What is it about Madrid that keeps you there?
Madrid (followed by Barcelona) is where most of the bigger types of business activity happen in Spain, from trade shows and professional networking events to a wide range of cultural activities. There’s also good weather (there’s always sun, although it might be a bit cold during winter) and great culinary offerings (delicious tapas everywhere!), so I’m happy here at the moment. Although, of course, I’m quite open to experiencing new places to live in the future. I love to travel and experience new cultures.
Are you doing what you thought you’d be doing when you were growing up?
I had the somewhat common “dreamsâ€� among children of being an astronaut (I really just wanted to go to space, it wasn’t necessarily because I knew what an astronaut actually did). So that’s really a pending point in my life: going to space! I definitely need to start saving more for that.
What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you?
I’ve recently had two experiences that have been inspiring in different ways.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Israel to speak at KahenaCon and had the great opportunity to spend a Saturday walking around Jerusalem Old City. It was a truly inspiring experience, seeing places with such a rich historical and also religious background, like the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock. Even if I’m not religious myself, it was a somewhat magical experience.

Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Zucpg1N8yT/
Another (and totally different) inspiring moment happened a week ago when I had the chance to try Google Glass. I felt like I was already living in the future, interacting with that small, translucent movie theater-like interface in my glasses with just my voice. Truly amazing.

Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Z8tuxJt8yd/
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
To ask myself “What’s the worst that could happen?� when I’m making an important or scary decision. This question allows me to get my risk-averse considerations under control, and gives me a great opportunity to start assessing a new situation with more balanced criteria. By asking this, I’ve been able to go out of my comfort zone more frequently and live new experiences.
Thank you, Aleyda! It was great to learn a bit about your background and how international SEO matters for all types of businesses, not just the big multinationals.
If, like us, you just can’t get enough of Alyeda, you can find her as @aleyda on Twitter (where she juggles Spanish and English).
Still don’t have your #MozCon ticket yet? Reserve your spot now!

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Is Google Debranding Local?
Local, like many developments at Google, has always been many things; a brand (G+Local, Places), a product (Places Search, the +Local App) and an internal & external API service (local data in Now, Earth or 3rd party products). And as David Mihm has pointed out, Google’s branding of local has always been muddled and caused […]
Verify your site in Webmaster Tools using Google Tag Manager
Webmaster level: Intermediate
If you use Google Tag Manager to add and update your site tags, now you can quickly and easily verify ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools using the container snippet code.
Here’s how it’s done:
1. On the Webmaster Tools home page, click Manage site for the site you’d like to verify, then select Verify this site. If you haven’t added the site yet, you can click the Add a site button in the top right corner.
To do this, you must have “View, Edit, and Manage” account level permissions in Google Tag Manager.
2. On the Verification page, select Google Tag Manager as the verification method and follow the steps on your screen.
3. Click Verify.
And you’re done!
If you’ve got any questions about this verification method, drop by the Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Four mobile SEO mistakes you shouldn’t be making
Using the wrong configurations on non-responsive mobile sites
Yes, responsive design is quickly becoming the norm when serving up an optimised experience for mobile users, but that doesn’t mean it’s usage is yet universal.
The two other methods you’ll come across are:
- Separate mobile URLs
- Dynamic serving
Both of these ways of delivering mobile specific content require unique configurations that, despite how intelligent Google is becoming in knowing how to crawl and index your site correctly, are essential when optimising your site for mobile.
While I won’t be going too far into the specifics, I will be giving you an overview of what you should be doing, and link to resources that can explain in more depth.
Separate mobile URLs
This was the more common method of delivering a mobile optimised website before responsive design came along. You have a mobile site on a different sub-domain, such as m.bbc.co.uk, keeping all of your mobile content on different URLs.
The two most important points if you’re using this method are:
- Use the rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the mobile URL on the desktop version of the page, helping Google find your mobile content.
- Use the rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the desktop URL on the mobile version of the page, helping Google understand which version of the content is duplicated.
You will encounter other problems such as people linking to the mobile URL and not the regular version, which while not a huge issue in itself, is still annoying nonetheless.
Dynamic serving
Dynamic serving of content delivers a user experience not dissimilar to having separate mobile URL’s as above, only you are able to keep the URL’s the same. This is achieved by serving up different HTML to desktop devices than to mobile devices.
While this method is preferred over separate mobile URLs, it is more complicated to setup and configure. Because the mobile content is not immediately apparent, Google recommend that you hint to the different content by using the Vary HTTP header, so that Googlebot-Mobile knows to crawl the site as well.
If you need to use this method, I recommend that you check out Google’s own developer guidelines on the subject.
Thinking Googlebot-Mobile will treat your site like Googlebot
With responsive design, you have to worry much less about Googlebot-Mobile specific crawling issues, but that doesn’t mean you can forget about them altogether. As part of your routine technical health checks on your site, remember to look at the regular and mobile user agents separately, otherwise you might miss issues that didn’t originally surface.
You have two primary tools at your disposal:
- Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. I will focus on Google Webmaster Tools, as this will be the most commonly used, but remember that Bing’s own version has some fantastic features itself.
- A search engine spider and crawling tool such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Your other main option is Xenu’s Link Sleuth, but as far as I’m aware, you can’t specify different user agents using it. Do correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.
Google Webmaster Tools
When using Google Webmaster Tools to look for crawl errors, remember to select the mobile tab to look for mobile specific problems. You’ll most likely see a different set of results for web and for mobile.
You can also use the fetch as Google tool crawl specific URL’s (typically you would test the most important pages) and verify the HTML and HTTP status codes, although this will primarily be for debugging.
Also, while we’re in Google Webmaster Tools, when looking at the incredibly useful search queries report, remember to filter the results by mobile so you can see what you’re appearing for in mobile search results.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an excellent tool, and one that is an indispensable weapon in my arsenal. One of its many uses is to see and understand how Googlebot-Mobile, the user agent Google uses to crawl mobile sites, crawls the site you’re working.
From the Configuration menu, you can specify the user-agent Screaming Frog uses to crawl with.
Forgetting that mobile searchers are not identical to desktop searchers
One of the benefits of the previous ways of designing mobile optimised website, prior to responsive, was that developers/designers had to think about the desktop audience from the mobile audience separately.
This is because those audiences are not the same, and often, they can have quite different needs. This is not an excuse to deliver mobile users a dumbed-down or reduced experience though – one of my pet hates is when websites give me a version of the page with only a fraction of the content when viewing it with my mobile.
With responsive design you are delivering the same website to all users, meaning the same content and the same keyword optimisations. But, the sorts of searches people make on their mobiles tend to be different from the ones they make on their desktops, therefore you always need to be considering context on your website.
In what context is your content most likely to be accessed?
Separate your keyword research
When you are conducting keyword research, look at values for searches from mobile devices separately from desktop devices to understand the differing search habits.
Armed with this knowledge, you can understand how to optimise the content on your site.
Consider mobile in your on-page optimisation
Your potential audience on mobile devices might be searching for different things to desktop users, so be sure to consider this in your on-page optimisation.
For example, if you know a particular page is important to mobile searches, e.g. the contact details of a local branch of your restaurant, make sure that page has a title and meta description that is short enough to make sense to a mobile user (they have less space available in their SERP’s).
Make sure to also consider your mobile specific keywords when writing your copy: don’t assume your desktop optimised copy is sufficient.
Not segmenting your mobile traffic
The last mistake you shouldn’t be making regards analytics. While I’ve left this to the end of my post, don’t leave your own analytics efforts to the end.
If you’re seriously considering going mobile, start by understanding your audience and their browsing habits using your analytics platform, most likely Google Analytics. Then, continue to segment your data to understand how different users are using your site.
Thankfully, Google Analytics makes this easy for you as the advanced segments are already there and ready to be used.
Take this beyond simply looking at traffic numbers however, try and understand usage habits. Areas to look at include:
- Organic, to see the search queries people are finding you for on different devices.
- Engagement metrics on content reports, e.g. Landing Pages, to see whether users are treating content different depending on the device. What may be a good experience on desktop might not be on mobile.
- Conversions/goals/events, to see whether people are taking the actions you want them to. If your conversion rate is significantly lower on mobile, have you checked that your call-to-actions are appropriately easy to spot and use?
If you have an ecommerce website and are looking for a mobile dashboard, check out this mobile commerce dashboard that’s great for tracking some top-level data.
What other mistakes would you add to this list?
Are there any other common problems you see with SEO for mobile devices? Let us know in the comments below.
Google Glass Parodies
An overview of parody videos on Google Glass. Have some fun!
Post from Bas van den Beld on State of Search
Google Glass Parodies
How to Leverage Investment in Video to Build More Links
Posted by PhilNottingham
Video can be an expensive and time-consuming investment. For small businesses especially, the cost of producing video will always have to be weighed against other marketing investments, and the sad truth is that video can be a tough sell — especially when the ROI from its significant expense is hard to predict or quantify.
I think part of the problem is that most marketers (including SEOs) don’t have a very good understanding of the value that video can provide for them; they see virality, branding, and perhaps increasing conversion rates as the extent of it. Video as a media type, however, has potential on which few people capitalise: the ability to secure fantastic, high quality links back to your site.
In this post, I want to outline nine ways in which video can be used to augment and enhance link-building activity, with the goal of giving you more ammunition to secure an investment in video as part of a wider inbound marketing strategy.
1. Using video as a media type within interactive content
The kind of content you need:
Video is a media type — a form of content delivery — rather than a “type of content� as such. As the old adage goes, “form follows function,� and this is exactly the approach you should be taking when working out the best way to present a creative idea.
Pages where video is part of the overall sum of a multimedia interactive can be extremely engaging, and as such generate a lot of links.
For example…
http://cloudsovercuba.com/ is a fantastic microsite that uses mixed media to tell the story of the Cuban Missle Crisis. While this was not likely created with links in mind, the page has managed to secure 1,920 links from 266 link root domains (according to OSE).
Two guides from Simply Business, The Small Business Guide to WordPress and the Small Business Guide to YouTube were created with link buidling in mind and include embedded videos within each interactive flow chart. These are currently at 179 and 22 linking root domains respectively
The technical implementation required:
If you’re building a multimedia webpage that can’t realistically be viewed through an iframe on another site, where you choose to host your video ultimately doesn’t matter.
Your main focus should be making the content lightweight, quick to load, and mobile friendly. Therefore, either using the HTML5 <video> tag to display video or embedding all videos through iframes is normally the best way to go, though many other JavaScript-focused implementations are also fine.
JavaScript libraries such as popcorn.js can help you do some really cool things with embedded video, such as changing the way pages look based on playback time.
2. Using video as link bait
The kind of content you need:
Things that go viral socially don’t actually correlate all that well with things that get lots of high quality, equity-passing links. This is because there is a subtle difference between the kind of things you’re happy to share socially and the kind of things you’re happy to include on your own site through embeds/referring links. If someone embeds your video on their site — it has to be because they want their readers to stop looking at their own content and spend time watching yours instead.
If your explicit goal is to get people to embed and link to your video content, Dollar Shave Club or Old Spice should not be the standards you aspire to. Instead, you should be looking to create something that provides value for a specific target demographic and the content must be informative, entertaining and succinct.
In many instances, this ends up looking something like a video infographic. A great example of this done successfully of late is from CCN, who created an excellent piece on relative salaries which has accrued 43 linking root domains.
The technical implementation required:
When people embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or any other social video platforms, they don’t typically link to the domain of the creator in the process, but instead, the profile of the user on the YouTube/Vimeo domains. This is fantastic for the platforms themselves, but clearly sub-optimal for any business trying to do SEO and build links back to their site in order to improve rankings. While these social video platforms are a fantastic way to seed your content and get it in front of a wider audience, you don’t want the likes of YouTube taking your link equity.
Therefore, if you’re creating video link bait — you should (at least during your initial period of outreach) ensure the version of the video embedded on your site is seen as the de facto “canonical� by self-hosting or hosting with a paid third-party online video hosting provider.
I’ve been lucky enough to try out all of the providers below:

To save you the hassle of research, I’d estimate that in 90% of circumstances, Wistia is by far the best solution (unless you’re a large media house looking to serve advertising off your embedded videos, in which case you should look at Brightcove). Wistia has the best tool available for marketers and offers it at an extremely reasonable price. (Note: I’m not being paid or otherwise compensated by Wistia for saying that; I’m just saying it because right now it’s true. If any other online video platform starts outperforming Wistia in terms of their offering, I’ll be sure to let you know.)
After you’ve set up your hosting, you need to ensure that you embed your video in such a way that anyone who clicks an “embed this video� button is given an embed code which will feature a referring href attribution link to the appropriate page on your site where the video lives.
Unfortunately, no online video provider currently offers this as a standard feature (although I know this is in the pipeline for Wistia), so for now, this means you’ll need to manually customise the embed codes for videos you’re trying to use as link bait.
I have a built a tool which will automate this process for you. The “With textarea in textarea� option is what you should choose for the embed on your own site, while the “without double textarea� is the option you should choose when putting together an embed code to send to outreach prospects.
3. Build links off the back of your YouTube presence
The kind of content you need:
While marketers should think of YouTube primarily as a network for increasing brand awareness, if you have videos with a viral/social element that are also likely to generate a number of links, then YouTube can be a useful platform to generate leads for link building.
The technical implementation required:
Anyone who embeds a YouTube video of yours should be seen as a really solid link prospect, as they’ve essentially already linked to your content.
Oftentimes, a gracious and thankful outreach email to anyone who does embed your YouTube videos can be a great way to both build relationships and convert those YouTube embeds into links back to your own site rather than to youtube.com. One angle I particularly like to use when reaching out is suggesting that sites “swap the YouTube video embed for a high quality HD embed that doesn’t include ads,� and then providing them with an alternative, securely hosted video iframe embed which includes a followed attribution link underneath the video.
To work out who has previously embedded or linked to your YouTube videos, you can use a combination of YouTube Analytics and Open Site Explorer.
The video below runs through the process of finding out where your videos have been embedded:
From here, you should also put the following URL variations through Open Site Explorer to find out where your video has been linked to but not embedded (replace the ID string with your own):
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&feature=player_embedded
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&feature=related
Note — if your “link bait� videos have a social/viral element to them, you can put them on YouTube and follow the process above after your period of outreach with a securely hosted video (as detailed in the “using video as link bait� section).
If you have access to a significant budget for promotion and outreach, paying for viral seeding can be a useful way to generate further link prospects from your YouTube videos. I recommend using Unruly Media for such a service.
4. Advertise your content library and permission assets

Everyone hates YouTube ads. The meme above got 1597 upvotes on Reddit and hit the front page, which is more or less proof of objective fact in internet terms.
However, I think this opinion is so widely held not because YouTube ads necessarily suck, but because online video advertising is still a young industry that has yet to mature. The majority of larger companies place their TV adverts on YouTube and pay for seeding, rather than bothering to create content specifically for the platform and target a specific audience accordingly.
One way in which YouTube ads could be more effective is by advertising a free content library or permission asset — like an email list — rather than a specific product or service that costs money.
This way, you can improve visibility of the content in which you’ve already invested and hopefully build additional second-order links to it through this increased awareness.
The kind of content you need:
YouTube ads can be as long as you like, but users will always have the option of clicking away 5, 15, or 30 seconds into the playback (dependent on the specific ad placement). Therefore, you essentially need to grab the attention and interest of the audience within the first 5 seconds, and then effectively communicate the core message to entice clicks by the 15 and 30 second marks. Put simply, your videos will need to sell the virtues of your content quickly, efficiently, and in an entertaining way.
The technical implementation required:
Export your content with the appropriate settings and upload to YouTube. From there, you’ll need to tie your AdWords to your YouTube account and then begin defining the target audience to which you want to advertise.
5. Use video to improve and augment page types
There is some evidence to suggest that by simply using video to improve the quality of your commercially focused pages, you are likely to generate more natural links across the board.
Check out the screenshots from the Majestic Historic Index below for appliances online and Zappos — sites that have both invested heavily in product video to improve their page types:


The kind of content you need:
To a greater or lesser extent, what we’re talking about here is product videos – i.e. videos created to provide information on a specific product or service.
Product videos are most effective when they take an audience member from a place of initial interest further down the path toward conversion by engaging on a personal level with the likely questions and concerns of the interested party. These videos should be mostly informational rather than promotional, more “shopping channel� than “TV ad.�
The technical implementation required:
If you’re creating videos to improve and augment specific pages on your site — e.g. videos for specific products — then these videos should always be either self-hosted or securely hosted using a third-party provider (e.g. Wistia) as mentioned previously.
This is because these videos will likely only make sense within the context of the pages for which they’re created, and therefore won’t provide much value for an audience finding your content through YouTube search or recommendations. Additionally, by hosting such content on YouTube, you can risk your site being outranked by the instance of the video on youtube.com for branded queries relating to the specific product or service covered in the video. For more information on this problem, check out my post on building a video SEO strategy.
For this kind of content, you should also be trying to get video rich snippets in order to drive more clicks from the search results pages. This can be achieved either through implementing schema.org mark-up, or by submitting a video XML sitemap. See here for more information on implementation.
6. Support your blogging strategy
The kind of content you need:
Video for blogs should be primarily informational with reasonably soft branding. “Talking head� videos are perfect for this and if you have the resources, supplementing the footage with screencasts and/or animated graphics is often a nice way to break up the flow and provide interest.
In order to make it scalable and require minimal editing, I’d normally recommend trying to do these videos in one take with minimal scripting prior to recording the content. Watch the video from Wistia feat. MC Fishkin which explains exactly how Moz manages its creative process to scale the creation of Whiteboard Friday videos with minimal effort.
The technical implementation required:
The hosting for your blogging videos should be determined by the answers to a couple of questions.
1. Which is more important to you – greatest possible exposure to your content or individuals only viewing the content in the context of your own site?
The two are fundamentally dichotomous. If you want maximum exposure, your content should be hosted on YouTube, where it will rank well in the search results (normally those for youtube.com, not for your site) and also be visible throughout the YouTube platform. If you want users to only add comments on your site, within your community framework as opposed to YouTube’s; or are keen to re-target visitors with PPC, then self hosting will be the more appropriate option for you.
2. Is there any search volume on YouTube for the topics you are covering?
This can be worked out using the YouTube Keyword Tool. Be advised that data from the YouTube keyword tool is fairly inaccurate, but the relative indicators of search volume should give you a pretty good feel for whether there is any demand for the content you will be creating.
If there is search volume, that’s fantastic and your videos will likely get some good traction on the YouTube platform should you wish to host there. If there’s no search volume, then having your videos on YouTube likely won’t provide much additional value for you. If the latter is true, you’ll always be better off self-hosting your videos (or using a secure third-party solution as explained previously), since this way you can drive all traffic to your own site rather than to youtube.com.
You generally shouldn’t think about doing both. If you decide to self-host your content and also put it on YouTube, this strategy just gives individuals the option of viewing and linking to content on YouTube rather than your own site, while failing to undertake the primary activity that will help boost your YouTube rankings — namely, embedding your YouTube videos and driving views through those embeds. Rather than giving you best of both worlds, it can actually give you the worst of both worlds.
7. Create video content for other sites
Video content can get you top-tier guest posts and linking opportunities. If you’re able to show a proven history of creating valuable and interesting video content for your own site and others, pitching for guest-post opportunities on top sites becomes so much easier than the standard cold approach.
The kind of content you need:
In many ways, the kind of content you’d use to guest post will have a very similar form factor to the kind of video you’d normally include on your own blog — mostly “talking head” focused.
Interviews of your customers/authorities in your industry often work really well here, because the videos can also act as ego bait. If you can make an individual look really professional on camera in a way they would be unable to do themselves, it can be really easy to get some great links from them for doing so.
If you have the resources or skills, you can also create product videos for commercial partners or build ads for content created by others (someone did this for Distilled, for free, and you can bet I gave them a few links).
The technical implementation required:
Ultimately, as long as you get a link, the way in which a video is embedded on someone else’s site shouldn’t matter to you.
However, if the target in question is not particularly amenable to linking out to you, one of the best ways to encourage them is to only provide the webmaster with an embed code for the content, rather than the raw video file. This means securely hosting the content with a platform like Wistia, enabling domain restrictions and then including a text link back to your site at the end of the embed code (as covered above in Idea 2, using video as link bait).
In the vast majority of instances, webmasters won’t bother to tweak the embed code and remove the link, whereas if they take the embed code themselves from the instance of the video on a social platform (YouTube/ Vimeo etc.), the embed code will not include an attribution link back to your site with it as standard.
8. Build a content series for social video platforms
Blip.tv and dailymotion.com will give you really high authority (DA93 and DA97), followed profile links if you can a get content series accepted onto the platform and with the relevant user status.
The kind of content you need:
For both of these sites, you will need regularly publish content covering a specific theme that is completely non-branded or commercial in nature. You’ll also need to create different videos for each platform. There is a stringent editorial process to get accepted to either site, and unless your content is relevant to their target audiences, you won’t be granted the Dailymotion motionmaker status (which includes a followed link) or a blip.tv channel profile.
Creating a content series specifically for a single link is obviously a huge investment in time and money, but remember that the benefit here will be brand awareness and hopefully referring traffic, too. If you’re in a particularly “trickyâ€� niche to which it’s difficult to build links, but you have a lot of expert knowledge within your company, this might be a useful technique for you to leverage.
The technical implementation required:
None. You just need to ensure your content is exported in 16:9 at a decent frame size (I normally recommend 1280×720 HD) and uploaded to the respective platform.
9. Boost PR efforts with video news releases
The kind of content you need:
The purpose of a video news release is to support a press release with ancillary information that gives further context around the story in question.
Video news releases are a particularly useful asset for any PR campaign, since they allow your story to make it to the top of a journalist’s pile. Reporters don’t always have the time to write up articles for every interesting pitch, but with a video release you’re essentially doing half the work for them. All editors need to do with a VNR is put together a supporting paragraph, embed the video and then click publish.
The technical implementation required:
Video news releases should always be hosted on YouTube, since the majority of sites are comfortable with embedding YouTube videos on their site and know how to get an embed code from a video on youtube.com
The best practice is just to include a link to the YouTube instance of the video within your initial outreach email. If your contact gets back to you in a positive way regarding the story, you can ask for a “credit link� for the video pointing back to your site.
That’s my nine!
I hope you found this post useful! Do you have any other good ways to build links with video? If so, please do hit me up in the comments! I’d love to hear about any new ideas.
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