How to Use YouTube for SEO

As I have mentioned before, you can improve your SEO by uploading videos to YouTube and including a link to your website. WhiteSharkMedia.com gives a few tips below how to best take advantage of this opportunity:

Titles and Tagging

YouTube can’t view and understand videos (yet), so it relies heavily on video titles and tags to index the content. Titles work similarly to Meta titles on regular web pages. You want to write them for the viewers not the search engine while sprinkling in the important keywords that you want your video to rank for.

Tags are a bit tricker, they are similar to the old Meta keywords on regular pages.The goal is to make relevant tags, quality over quantity, as you want your viewing time to be high and irrelevant tags bring irrelevant views. YouTube has this to say about viewing time:

"Watch Time is an important metric to promote videos on YouTube. The algorithm for suggesting videos includes prioritizing videos that lead to a longer overall viewing session over those that receive more clicks.”

High Quality Descriptions

Descriptions are often overlooked by SEOs since links within the description are NoFollow and pass no value. This however is a terrible mistake; video descriptions are a great place to further explain your video, provide social media links about yourself to the viewer, mention other videos that might be of value to the viewers, etc. Fill in your description and never underestimate the power of text on a YouTube video.

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

Updated On-Page SEO Advice

Here is a good article about how On-Page SEO is changing (getting more sophisticated) from The Moz Blog:
http://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts?utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=top10

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

Finally, AdWords Can Track When You Get a Phone Call Lead

Google just announced "Website Call Conversion". It lets AdWords know when someone came to your website from one of your ads and then called you using the phone number on your website. This is very important... it means now you can really know if you are getting enough leads to justify what you pay for AdWords!

For more details on how this works, check out this Google page:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2014/08/introducing-website-call-conversions.html

If you get the majority of your leads from phone calls (rather than people submitting your Contact form from your website), you will want to take advantage of this immediately. It might show you are either wasting your money on AdWords or you are getting a good return on your money. Either way, you will finally know.

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

SEO Important Factors in 2014

Every year, SearchMetrics releases an SEO Ranking Factors Study. The key take away this year is that content may now be truly king.

Content

• There is a measurable correlation between the quality of content and rankings. This is demonstrated by, among others, the analysis of two new features based primarily on word co-occurrence analysis: Proof and Relevant Terms.
• The length of content continues to increase.
• A good internal linking structure is an important factor, and probably the most underrated SEO measure.

Onpage Technical SEO

• Onpage, the keyword remains an important part of the overall concept for SEO, often represented by a balanced presence in Title, Description, Body copy, H1, H2, etc. Needless to say, that keyword stuffing should still be avoided. However, there is a definite trend towards developing keywords to topics to generate holistic content.
• Site load speed is a very important performance factor.
• Good site architecture is the beginning and end of effective SEO.

Backlinks

• The quantity and especially the quality of backlinks remains important.
• The number of keyword backlinks continues to decrease, even if the correlation increases.

User Signals

• Both the click-through rate and the time-on-site are considerably higher in better ranking sites – this may appear obvious, but average values determined over many URLs can be used as a benchmark for your own optimization.
• The bounce rate is lower for top-ranking URLs.

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

Google My Business... a new name for an old service

Google has been focused on a service to help businesses who sell their service or product locally for a few years now. It was first called Google Local Listings, then Google Business, then Google Places, then it was folded into Google+ and got very confusing. And now they have changed its name again... now it's Google My Business.

When you search for a local business, you often see a map with pins in it on the search results page. This is what Google My Business is (sometimes people refer to it as Google Maps). If you want your business to be included on the map with its own pin, you must create a Google My Business account. It's free, but it has a few steps that can be confusing. For example, to verify you really are the owner of the business, they will mail you a postcard with a PIN that you must enter into your Google My Business account to get it turned on.

But make no mistake...
If you have a business that sells locally, you should create your Google My Business listing ASAP!

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

Double Benefits From Video on YouTube

How many things can you do that gets more visitors to your website, and then turns more visitors into customers? Not many… but putting a video about your business on YouTube does just that.

When you post a video on YouTube about your business, you include a link to your website. So you gain a backlink from YouTube which helps your SEO (keyword ranking). And when a visitor to your website clicks on your link to your video, they become more involved and typically are more likely to contact you (an established fact).

A video does not have to be expensive to create. You can do it yourself. Take a 20-30 second video with your phone of your customer’s new hairdo you gave them, or new piano you sold them, or new rollerblade you repaired, or new lawn you just landscaped, and then upload to YouTube. If you don’t have a YouTube account, go to their website and create one; it’s easy.

A total of about 10 minutes of your time can have a very positive impact on your business.

Do it… now!

by Joe Seidler

www.internetmarketingsanfran.com

Google+ Places and Yelp Reviews

It is important to have clients leave reviews of your service/product on Google+ Places and/or Yelp. The more reviews you have, the more exposure you get on the web. This is very important... yes, it's worth the effort. But as difficult as it may be to get clients to take the time to leave a review, there is another hurdle set up by Google and Yelp. And it's best to inform your clients about it beforehand.

Google and Yelp try to avoid having people leave bogus reviews. For example, they don’t want a friend or family member to leave a false review. In order to try and minimize these issues, they each have their own requirements to leave a review.

Google+ Places requires that you be logged into a Google account to leave a review. If you have a gmail account for example, you can log in (if you aren’t already) and then leave a review. If you do not have a Google account, they will ask you to create a Google+ account before you can leave your review. It’s free and will not cause any harm.

Yelp requires that you have a Yelp account (referred to as your profile) to leave a review. If you don’t already have one, it’s easy to create it. In order for your review to display on Yelp, you must have more than one Yelp review. If this is your first Yelp review, they think you may just be a friend of the vendor and not really a client. So it’s important to begin leaving reviews on Yelp so they will all be visible and useful (perhaps for a restaurant or doctor).

by Joe Seidler
www.internetmarketingsanfran.com