(Guest Post from Ben Rozema at Bestrank.com)

Video SEO

To tap into your maximum search ranking potential it is important to not only focus on optimizing your textual content, but to also optimize other forms of media such as any images, podcasts, or videos.  By not optimizing such media, you are losing out on the opportunity to connect with your target audience and gain potential visitors.  With that said, here are some tips to bear in mind as you optimize images, podcasts, video, and other media.

Optimizing Images

Image searching is one of the fastest growing searching practices today with some of the larger search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, even adding image search results within text search result rankings.  When optimizing your images, consider the following:

• Use relevant and image specific keywords within your image file name.  For instance, BlackDog.jpg is better than 234.jpg.
• Use very descriptive and relevant words for your captions.  For example, “Black Labrador Retriever playing in the grass.”
• Try uploading your image to refresh its ranking popularity.  Just as with text, you want to constantly add and update; therefore, by uploading your image again after a long period of time, search engine spiders will more likely reevaluate your ranking.
• Larger image sizes have better ranking priority than smaller image sizes.

 Optimizing Podcasts

Now that iPods and other MP3 players are so popular and we have smart phones that can download MP3s, the podcast is one the best new ways to get your information out to the world.  And by optimizing your podcast, you improve your chances of actually getting a perspective viewer or listener to download.  Here are some things to consider for the best podcast optimization results:

• Use every field to add descriptive content such as description, comments, title, and details.
• Use content specific tags.
• Add a transcription or summary of the information you give in your podcast.  This will be helpful for both your viewer and for search engine spiders to page rank.
• Provide clearly visible information for your podcast’s subscription.

Optimizing Video

Let’s face it.  When we are looking for information on the internet, a lot of times we are looking for quick and easy which oftentimes means we would rather not read.  Also, we are turning to the internet for entertainment.  Video is able to give us all this at the click of a button.  However, in order to get those clicks, you will want to consider these easy video search optimization tips:

• Use specific keyword generated title names such as “demonstration-how-to-use-iPhone-maps.mov” instead of something generic like “345-lb.mov”
• Use relevant and optimized content on the video’s loading page.  A good way to do this is to either add a summary or transcription of the video content.
• Make sure you place your video in the proper category.
• Include RSS feeds.
• Create a video site map and submit it to Google.

Just as when you optimize content for your site, when you optimize your images, podcasts, videos, and other media, keep in mind that you are not only wanting to attract search engine spiders for a better ranking, but you are also wanting to attract your target audience.  With that said, just as you need to make sure you have high quality and relevant content, you also want to make sure you have high quality and relevant images, podcasts, and videos.

 

Other Posts by Ben Rozema:

Best Firefox Social Media Extensions

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After playing with ehow for a couple of weeks, I have found there is ZERO quality control while Google just loves the content, it’s a complete joke.   As an SEO, we love to find strong trusted domains which we use to rank content and get links from, but there is a trade off.  We don’t want the internet to become one large cesspool.

My ‘How to link build’ was written in under 10 minutes and is ranking on page 1 for the phrase, this kind of domain trust just encourages spammers (like me ) to produce crap.

Looking at Google’s predictive search results on ‘how to’ is entertaining in itself.  But I started looking for ehow pages and they do very well, usually on the first 3 pages.   They may not all be page one, but these results are here without any promotion, purely from ehow’s domain trust and authority.

So where are the ehow pages then?

#19 in Google.co.uk

#25 in Google.co.uk

To get these types of ehows on page 1 of the search engine results pages (SERPs), you just need some internal links, add a couple of cheap external links and you’re there.

Some more…

Though these ehows may be of reasonable quality, there are thousands of them that are complete shite.  But it’s a clever content farm strategy used my ehow to flood the SERPs and make money through ads…

The name “Content Farm” kind of describes it perfectly. What a strange concept, isn’t it? Or maybe not. Spammers and BlackHat SEOs have been auto generating low quality content for long tail search engine rankings for a while now. The content farm technique arguably takes this a few steps further by creating better quality (note – still questionable quality), user friendly content for the exact same reason                 Source: Rishil on Content Farms

But why does Google trust the ehow domain so much? Because they get their cut of the profits to the detriment of their own index?  Along with polluting Google’s index with nonsense, ehow is getting more criticism about their evil doings on how badly they treat their authors.   The only people really making money here are ehow and Google.

For the average internet user I believe ehow pollutes the index with crap, but it does highlight the SEO tactic of using strong domains to hijack SERP positions through ‘piggybacking’.

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After just doing some SEO consulting and setting up analytics for site search on 2 websites, I thought I would do quick guide as Google’s own document is very unclear.

-From your anaytics websites profiles, click ‘edit’ on the website you want to add site search analytics.
-Then click ‘edit’ again in the top right hand side
-Select ‘do track’ radio button

To set the query parameters, do a quick search on your site search box and see what the query string urk is:

http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/?s=seo

Here you can see the parameter is s, just add this into the box.

Do a test run and do some site searches, then wait 24hrs for the results to show.

Now what?

The data will give you information on what users are looking for in terms of content or products for ecommerce wesbites, this information is like gold dust.   It will also give you data on whether your users needs are being met by your website and allow you to discover new content ideas and long tail keyword phrases to target.  For ecommerce, you need to know what these top internal search terms are…these will be your biggest sellers.  Sites are also using Internal serach in some clever ways:

And some have gone beyond using SSA simply as a diagnostic tool. For example, the Financial Times monitors its site’s recent search activity for spikes in queries for personal and company names. They check to see if these suddenly popular queries correlate with their recent editorial coverage; if not, a spike might indicate a breaking story, and the paper’s editors are informed. So, in effect, the Financial Times is using SSA as a predictive tool

As people are using vertical search more, the imporatance of understang these analytics is vital.

To set up your interal search engine, see this Google video below:

Further Reading:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/10/kick-butt-with-internal-site-search-analytics.html

http://econsultancy.com/blog/2805-q-a-lou-rosenfeld-on-site-search-analytics

http://yoast.com/wordpress-search/

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This is a guest post from Ben Rozema of Best Rank, a San Diego SEO Company.  Go and check out their blog.

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Any social media user, no matter what their level, can use add-ons and plug-ins to save time and create more opportunity. Some of the following listings work for specific sites, while others have more general and universal applications. Check them out. They just might be useful and increase your social media access.

StumbleUpon Add-ons

StumbleUpon is great for finding websites that match your interests, whether you seek dog-training advice or want to share interests with the Flat Earth society. You simply click the Stumble button to see the best websites for what you are already looking at. With over 500 topics to choose from, your recommendations get better and better the more you use it.

Digg Firefox Add-ons

This lets you see if what you are looking at has already been added to Digg. If it hasn’t, and you want to share it, no problem. Add it to Digg with one click. It’s that easy. Be the first to share a story on Digg.

Shareaholic for Firefox Extension

Enjoy sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Digg, Gmail and Twitter? Then you’ll love Shareaholic. The extension lets you quickly share, bookmark and email web pages through most social networking and bookmarking sites. It’s the ultimate add on for the link sharing junkie. If you like it, why keep it to yourself? Share it with the world and keep the fire going. The extension was good enough to win the Extend Firefox contest.

Social Media for Firefox Extension

The ultimate time saver for building powerful social media accounts, this site is the best kept secret of the world’s top Diggers, Stumblers, Navigators. The secret is to be the first to submit stories that are already popular on other sites. This lets you browse sites like Reddit to find good stories that have already been submitted, and then be the first to submit them to Digg. It’s a great tool for turning the truth into a virus.

Glue for Firefox Exention

Formerly Blueorganizer, Glue lets you connect with friends around things you visit, improving the social nature of the web. Browse popular sites on books, music, wine, restaurants and other popular features on the web and the Glue bar appears on the current page to show you friends who looked at the same site. Friends can share their thoughts, creating every website into gossip central.

Yahoo! Buzz buttons

Click on the stories that give you the most buzz, and the most popular may appear on Yahoo’s home page. You can impact what millions see around the world, just by sharing the buzz.

ul.timate.info Add-Ons

This Mozilla Firefox add on helps simplify how people interact with social media sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace and FaceBook. It makes sharing the world as easy as a click of the button.

There are plenty of others. Admittedly, this list only grazes the surface, simply because there are so many out there. The Internet gets more interconnected the more people use it and share what they’ve discovered. It can be a great launching mechanism for independent movies, books or even a presidential career. Thanks to social media links, the world will never be the same.

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Great plugins, thanks Ben. I’d like to add a few notables of my own.  If anyone else has some favs, please post in comments.

URL Shortner -  This lets you use over 100 different shorteners.

Echofan for Twitter - Loads of extra Twitter funcionality for Twitterholics

Linkedin toolbar- For the Linkedin crowed.

If you need even more, try Mashable’s monster list.

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As an SEO Consultant, I always like to play with my titles and snippets displayed in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).  You can always have some fun..

But what can you do with your Linkin Profile? A standard profile listing will appear like this:

But you can change it.  In the editable field, your name is the meta title.  This can be changed to a maximum of 40 characters, they will also add ‘LinkedIn’ to the end on the title.  Now lets not forget that your meta title is an important place for keywords and that LinkedIn is on a well trusted domain. 

Here’s how my profile was displayed in Google after some tweaking:

You can also see how Google pulls data from the ‘Professional Headline’ section which is editable, giving you extra control on what is displayed.  This extra line of data also helps rank for long tail phrases:

So if you want to make some changes, just dive into your profile and do some editing.

The only problem with going overboard, like above,  is that the whole title becomes your name and is continually displayed in your status updates, this could annoy a lot of your connections.  I am changing my profile now to make it look less spammy, but will still have ‘SEO Doctor’ in the title, as I am competing with some software on the name.

Linkedin have recently changed the url of profiles to start with UK (for uk profiles), so make sure you have updated all your profile links.  They have not 301′d the old urls which doesn’t do them any favours.

Other articles/blog posts on optimizing your Linkedin Profile:

Win Clients my optimizing your Linkedin Keywords

10 Linkedin Tips to Optimize your Profile

Why you should Optimize your Linkedin Profile

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Today Google updated it’s toolbar Pagerank  – not to be confused with the real Pagerank that Google keeps private.

Looking at my sites and my client’s sites, the update appears totally random.  It’s very difficult to get any meaning from this data as there is a delay factor. This site went from PR3 to PR5 with no major links built since the last update a few weeks ago (October), but this change could be related to a totally different period.  It’s not worth spending any time deliberating.

People talked of penalties being issued mid-December and this appears to be a straight update.  It will take a couple of weeks for webmasters to discuss the updates fully.  Others believe that this update has seen more link filtering.  Google will always improve its ability to filter links each update, so I believe this to be true.

Whatever your Pagerank change, this will not affect your ranking positions.  I still believe that toolbar Pagerank will be stopped  in 2010, which is why as an SEO consultant I use other metrics to measure page strength – ones that are more accurate and make sense.

85AE367UC53N

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The new SEO Doctor website is nearly complete…

After a lot of stress the website was totally converted from static pages to be powered by Wordpress and the Thesis theme, with help from the fantastic ThinkDave.

I am not a designer, but I have learnt that good planning is essential for web design and development. Making it up as you go along causes more problems. Though I designed the original pages myself with html/CSS, converting the pages to Wordpress required help.

The initial plan was to integrate Wordpress into the blog page only and keep the old pages static. But after much thought I decided the whole site should run on Wordpress.  I’m glad to say goodbye to Dreamweaver and have become a Wordpress obsessive.

One problem setting up Wordpress was choosing the best theme and trying to find the most optimised code. But after much searching and reading up, Thesis came up tops. It is used to run great sites like Copyblogger, Wolf-howl and I believe even Matt Cutt’s own blog runs on Thesis.

My other major headache was choosing the most optimised url permalink structure.

Seo-doctor.co.uk/new-blog-launch

Or

Seo-doctor.co.uk/new-blog-launch/

Or

Seo-doctor.co.uk/new-blog-launch.html

After much deliberation, I went with .html, being finally persuaded by SEOmofo’s blog post. 

It also meant I could keep my static urls without having to carry out 301 redirects in .htaccess.  Though 301s only lose approx. 5-10% of your link equity, you are still trying to rank a new page in Google’s eyes – old pages have more value.

Any feedback is appreciated.

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