How do you get to the top of VIDEO search listings for specific keywords?
Well, if you Google the keyword “marketing” on Google Video right now, I come up #1 out of 1,406 listed videos.
A second video I posted recently called “Internet Marketing – The System Way” comes up as #10.
I better get a screen shot for posterity!
So how did this happen?
Here’s my technical answer: It beats me.
Some thoughts…
I notice that one thing has changed on Google Video recently…Google, like YouTube, now invites viewers to rate videos, with 5 stars being the highest rating a video can get.
But ratings alone don’t seem to be the determining factor.
For example, Seth Godin is #2 with 141 ratings in contrast to my #1 video which currently has only 10 ratings. We both have the same overall rating – four stars and change.
It is possible that someone at Google actually watches these things and makes a judgement call?
You can clink on the link below to see what the results look like.
And if anyone thinks one or both of my videos deserve a five star rating, I won’t complain if you rate them that way…
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=marketing
Enjoy!
P.S. Do you want to be notified when new articles like this one are posted to the blog?
It’s easy. Just go to this page and we’ll add your name to our bulletin list:
http://www.internetvideomarketingletter.com/
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
This is probably a whole lot more interesting to me than it is to you, but…
I’m glad grabbed the screen shot because my #1 status was fleeting. This morning I’m #2.
Oddly, I have three more ratings than I had yesterday. You’d think that’d help.
But I notice that my other video which was #10 yesterday is now #7.
Go figure.
All this reminds me of why I’ve pretty much ignored the search engine rankings game.
When all else fails, toss in a randomizer so people think it’s dynamic.
It’s going to be a lot easier for people to manipulate online videos until they convert audio to video and index it (which is what Blinkx is supposed to be doing).
I’m just guessing but, based on how Google ranks sites in their regular search engine, there is probably some algorhythym that looks at relevance, number of links, traffic, etc.
I’m not sure if you have these videos linked anywhere else from your site but, if you do and your site has a long-standing record of relevant traffic and high ranking in regular Google keyword searches, that may carry over to these videos.
The bottom line, though, is that I agree on the difficulty of controlling ranking. It’s wise to use good SEO practices so you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. But it’s difficult to control search engines on a consistent basis.
A bigger question might be how to make any video more easily ranked by search engines. My experience is to embed the video in a web page with lots of good content, following good SEO practices.
Most online video encoders offer some meta-data fields where you can insert your name, copyright, etc. Most also include a description box but I don’t believe search engine spiders read that in video files.
At any rate, enjoy your high ranking. It’s well deserved.
-a-
Very good points.
I point to “The First Internet Conference Video” from kenmccarthy.com which has been around for many years and has a Google Page Rank of 5.
I only put a blog on this domain recently. Before that, it was a pretty static archive page.
I point to “Internet Marketing – The System Way” from systemvideoblog.com which has a Google Page Rank of 2.
I don’t know of any other pages pointing to these videos. It’s possible.
I haven’t done a thing to “optimize” these videos for search engines, but I think the idea about embedding them in pages designed to be search engine friendly is definitely a good idea.
So far, I’ve taken the “lazy” approach – which is to create what I hope are intrinsically interesting and useful videos – and it seems to be working.