Create A Brand Channel

Establishing a YouTube presence is the critical first step. Setting up a brand channel and getting it whitelisted will open up a host of customization possibilities, from custom background designs to the ability to add gadgets, like a booking widget.

Brand channels also open up a host of metrics via YouTube Insight, so you can measure engagement and success as well as conduct deeper analysis.

Then, of course, it’s time to add some videos, and preferably well-organized ones. Grouping videos into thematic playlists helps with video discovery for viewers and opens up the possibility of appearing as a playlist in YouTube search results.

I won’t go in depth on the myriad best practices for optimizing video descriptions and titles, but you can read more about all these SEO tactics and more on Search Engine Land’s Video Search area. In short, set up the best YouTube channel possible, with compelling and search engine optimized content.

Now that you have a fantastic library of video content sitting around, start promoting it to your website visitors, email subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and anyone else possible. Start growing viewers and subscribers for your YouTube channel; they will come in handy later.

Promoted Videos

Similar to AdWords’ paid search targeting, in-house marketers can set up campaigns for search-keyword-triggered promoted video placements on YouTube to appear in YouTube search results.

In addition, TrueView is YouTube’s rebranded instream video ad product. The basic model is to target a promotional instream video to appear on other relevant videos. Viewers can skip the video, but advertisers pay only when a minimum viewing threshold is met. A companion banner accompanies the instream ad as a call-to-action point.

Paying for promoted video has some ROI challenges since the video itself is not really a direct revenue driver, but it’s no more challenging than scenarios like paying for Facebook ads to grow fans, or promoted accounts and Tweets to grow Twitter followers. YouTube subscribers and viewers will have value; the key is testing and discovering what that value is for your organization.

Remarketing

Earlier in the article, I wrote that your YouTube channel viewers and subscribers will come in handy later, and that time is now. Start remarketing to them. Via the AdWords Audiences tab, in-house search engine marketers can set up a remarketing campaign for users who visited their YouTube brand channel.

Visitors to a YouTube channel are highly qualified customers, and many, having stumbled across videos while browsing or searching YouTube, will have never visited a channel’s associated website. Encourage them to stop by with remarketing ads. Check out more information on YouTube remarketing on YouTube’s blog.

Beyond YouTube: Video Ads & TV

There are a host of possibilities for in-house marketers to promote great video ad assets. Besides YouTube, there are Google video ads, Hulu and other online video streaming sponsorships, and most banner ad platforms support video assets. Leverage great performing video across channels!

With the rising popularity of online accessible entertainment, it seems like no one is watching television anymore. But still, it’s important to remember how many people still have cable in the USA — 104 million subscribers, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, or about one third of the total U.S. population.

TV is still one of the biggest audiences out there for video, so taking some great video and making a low-budget TV ad to run via targeted Google television campaigns might be a great test for in-house marketers, and a great résumé addition.

While these ideas only encourage in-house marketers to look at establishing a basic YouTube video presence and paid promotional options, there’s even more in-house teams can consider with promoting video via social media channels, viral campaigns, integrating into websites and the overall SEO benefits of video for natural search!

Ever since Google integrated video into its universal search offering in 2007, websites featuring video have gained a significant SEO advantage. When a company integrates relevant videos that match the content of its website, search engines find and index the video within the site’s context. This improves your overall website and video search ranking as it relates to your business’ keywords, and also allows search results to be presented with matching videos, making them more appealing, thereby increasing search-based traffic.

Clearly, e-businesses have gotten the message and are serving up video. In the e-retail space, for example, 68 percent of the top 50 retailers were using videos in 2009, a surge from 18 percent in 2008 according to a recent eMarketer report. Now, almost 40 percent of users who search Google see video options in their results.

Additionally, search appears to be how most internet users are finding video today and will continue to do so in the future. Furthermore, video has passed the test when it comes to overall conversion. According to our customer feedback, approximately 80 percent of online users view an entire video, and 25 percent click to purchase products, which drives an overall revenue lift of 10 to 15 percent.

Still, it is not enough to simply embed videos within a website. To harvest the full potential of videos, they should be deployed across the website. For example, a retailer selling 50,000 products online needs to cover the entire online catalog with video on each product page. This way, those videos match keywords that are specific to each and every product, targeting consumers that are more likely to search for products using those keywords.

It is also important to keep the video catalog up-to-date, so products that are being added to the catalog (and possibly to your competitors’ catalogs, as well) will be displayed as video results on universal search result pages. This helps retailers that use video wisely stand out as opposed to their competitors who only use video when new products enter the market.

Another pillar in a website’s video strategy is exposing all integrated videos to search engines. While this may be seem obvious to many readers of Search Engine Land, it is amazing how many top websites—especially retailers who recognize the importance of videos and invest time and money in integrating them into their websites—fail to get videos indexed in search engines.

Three factors drive the ability to achieve a higher SEO ranking using video: video markup, video sitemaps and syndication. A company can accomplish in-page video markup within each page that contains video by using proper context for the video, such as having a descriptive title, proper choice of keywords, links to related material, search engine friendly video URLs and including text transcripts of the video. It is also important to have the video embedded as part of the page itself. The use of popups, tricky JavaScript or frames to present the video can take away some of the video SEO momentum. However, adding as much metadata about the video as possible, such as its dimension, duration etc. can also help score SEO points.

Video sitemaps are another important area for influencing SEO. These are the video counterparts of the standard sitemaps used by almost every site today. Those XML-based files are used by websites to actively publish video information from one central location to make it easier for search engines to discover and thereby increase potential exposure. A lot of the above recommendations regarding pages with video apply here as well: creating proper titles and descriptions, selecting appropriate keywords and providing metadata about each video should all be part of a company video SEO strategy. The more that is exposed, the easier it is for search engines to index the content.

Syndication was originally used by websites to promote their brands. However, a company can also significantly boost website traffic by distributing videos to websites such as YouTube and Facebook. Again, businesses, not just individuals, have tapped into YouTube as a traffic booster. Every minute, 15 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube. Some of that should be coming from your business. When you start, pay attention to your video formats, choice of keywords and mix of social and personal appeal in order to stand out from the growing crowd.

Time was, videos were nice to have on a website. Now, they are a must-have element of any serious, viable e-business.

HTML5 improves search engines’ understanding of the structure and content of a video and provides greater accessibility. HTML tags like the “section” tag, which enables marketers to explain the topic of page sections, and the “nav” tag, by which a mobile device browser can make a link, help search engines more accurately categorize content and links.

Similarly, simple browser coding makes HTML5 videos more searchable and indexable. At the Google I/O conference on May 19, Google announced it was joining with other web companies in launching webM, an open web media format project, and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec the company will contribute to the project under a royalty-free license.

According to webM, VP8 delivers high-quality video while efficiently adapting to the varying processing and bandwidth conditions found on today’s broad range of web-connected devices. VP8’s efficient bandwidth usage aims to deliver lower servicing costs for content publishers and high-quality video for end users. The codec’s relative simplicity makes it easy to integrate into existing environments and requires less manual tuning to produce high-quality results. These existing attributes and the rapid innovation expected through the open development process make VP8 well suited for the unique requirements of video on the web. With VP8 and other codecs that can be supported by an HTML5 player, marketers can assure their content will be viewable on virtually any platform, from iPads to Smartphone devices to web browsers.

So why should marketers embrace HTML5? A better question might be “why shouldn’t they?” given the many benefits offered by embracing the technology. Let’s consider a couple of advantages demonstrated during the Google I/O conference by Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell.

McDonell unveiled a magazine application in development that featured HTML5 video running within a frame of text. The visual capabilities alone are impressive, but the Sports Illustrated project also demonstrates how HTML5 enables more web-friendly graphics and greater interactivity. The video also illustrates how HTML5 video ads can provide a more dynamic user experience.

As McDonell says, “the advertising can be so good in this context that it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products and when you’ve made your decision, it can help you find the place to buy them,” as seen with the WonderFlex L300. Rich video runs seamlessly with text, which broadens the possibilities for the creativity of “print” ads, combined with the accountability of online media. The format of HTML5 provides instantaneous playback on all-access video and low power consumption, while drag-and-drop capabilities enable users to customize their experience. The search capabilities showcased within the Sports Illustrated video also give users more access to videos from multiple sources.

To effectively move toward implementing HTML5, marketers should determine whether their videos are ready for the platform and choose the appropriate codec. Google has built enough momentum for VP8 by simultaneously announcing support in most browsers and by most companies that the format can’t be ignored. Marketers should also be sure to design videos with enhanced content in mind. Using the appropriate tags ensure that videos get properly indexed and stay searchable. Tying in all relevant content to the video subject matter, like related articles or photos, will help make the video content more interactive and customizable, as seen in the Sports Illustrated video. Enabling social media capabilities will also allow users to share content, thereby further exposing the content to more users and additional screens. Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind some standard SEO video best practices like including optimized text, page titles and descriptions in any HTML5 video object.

Considering the growing prevalence of HTML5 and the accessibility it provides, it’s important for marketers to adapt to this evolving video format and take advantage of the new capabilities in order to keep up with competitors and stay visible with their audience. By serving consumers at every possible touchpoint through the adoption of HTML5, marketers can ensure that they stay accessible and engage consumers on every available screen.

MediaCloud seeks to solve this problem by automatically generating metadata for rich media files. The metadata generated by MediaCloud includes speech transcripts, time-stamped tags, categories/topics, named entities, geo-location and tagged thumbnails—all of which can be indexed by search engines and used to improve the findability of rich media content.

MediaCloud is an online software-as-a-service program. To use it, publishers upload audio, video or image files, which are processed in near real-time by EveryZing. The generated metadata can then be used as-is, or edited to enhance or improve accuracy via an online dashboard.

The service is priced on a per-minute basis at 50 cents a minute, with technical accuracies of 70-90%. Currently, the service is available only to “larger” publishers, with a self-serve system designed for small companies, bloggers and individuals planned for the third quarter of this year. Once this is available, it should be a boon to SEOs who are currently optimizing rich media files by hand, especially given how inexpensive the service is to use.

For more information, including details of EveryZing’s video SEO tools, see EveryZing’s home page.

Not only does Forrester share statistics and analysis on how to improve your odds with videos, but they also share tips on how to improve your video’s chance at being the top video in Google web search.

Let’s first discuss the odds. The blog post showed that a video has a “11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results.” If you compare that to web pages for the same keyword set, you only have a “500,000-to-1 chance” of getting on the first page. So for keywords that show video results in Google, you have a “50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index,” reports Forrester.

How can you improve those odds? Well, use some of the tips Forrester gives on how to achieve that top spot for your video.

• Insert keywords into your video filenames.
• Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)
• Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.
• Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

For more details, you will want to check out the blog post at the Forrester Blog.

With declarations about Video SEO like those in Where 2 Get It’s recent press release announcing it as “one of the fastest-growing Internet search trends,” it’s easy to see why more companies are now promoting and augmenting their own marketing solutions with this same term. However, I often find this wider use generates increased misunderstanding—and sometimes lack of appreciation—of what Video SEO really involves. As a professional in the Video SEO space, and before that in the SEO space for many years, I can attest that Video SEO is just not the same thing as SEO, and despite what some companies may be implying, simply inserting video inside an page or site that’s optimized for the search engines just doesn’t qualify as a “Video SEO” solution. A professional search optimizer who works with video will tell you that Video SEO has some very clear distinctions from traditional, text-based SEO. As someone who’s built web sites with video and optimized video for the search engines for a number of clients, here is how I’ve come to define the fundamentals Video SEO:

• Creation of unique video content
• A strategy of implementing related keywords and content inside and around the video
• Direct act of submission or indexing by the web search engines, or video sharing sites indexed by the
• web search engines, or even social media and networking sites accepting video and are indexed by the search engines

(Or, you offer a video program directly on your site allowing your clients or users to do this.)

Using some techniques, while separate from the actual video, are certainly good strategies for Video SEO:

• Individual, separate web pages dedicated to just the video content itself (these can also include a transcript of the video content)
• A video site map (links of all your pages
• A video section on your site (subdomain or folder) with inbound links to other video
• “Video” listed in your navigation scheme and site’s main link structure

Some things are not Video SEO but may have an indirect impact on search engine visibility include:

• Sharing features in the video (embed video, copy link, send to a friend, etc.)
• Ratings and comments

It is also important to understand the difference between a video solutions provider and a video SEO specialist.

The video solutions provider—hosting, content planning and production, publishing, exporting, distribution, submission, monetization, etc—is the catalyst. They can provide the tools or access to the solution; they do not implement the actual SEO work (video content appearing in search results) without external assistance.

The Video SEO specialist provides such assistance. They have the ability to actually implement any of these tools so the actual video content shows a direct improvement in a client’s search engine results—and more importantly, leading to higher conversions.

I had the opportunity to interview Manish Patel, CEO of Where 2 Get It, and ask him questions about his company’s example “Video SEO solutions” page Where 2 Get It featured in their press release—a single Office Depot storefront. Amish explained to me that Where 2 Get It incorporated its new video content feature as part of its Search Locator program, already touted as successful SEO local search solution for national, regional, even local brands. But does their new offering of video qualify as a Video SEO solution?

The answer: Yes, but only in their partnership program with Mixpo, which does provide video-specific landing page creation (separate from the Where 2 Get It page), submission to the search engines and video sharing sites, performance tracking, and multivariate testing. That being said, Where 2 Get It could have offered a much better example than the one featured in their press release. Some of the viewing on the video example don’t actually work (such as HD format), and a number of the standard video sharing and call-to-action features that Mixpo provides weren’t available, either.

Turns out that Manish agrees with my distinction. “The Office Depot example definitely falls more on the side of using video to supplement an existing SEO entity (the Office Depot local page). This example does not fully exploit or demonstrate Video SEO,” he said.

Glen Pingul, Marketing Director for Mixpo, confirmed that all of the features normally described in their video publishing platform are available to those participating in Where 2 Get It’s Search Locator program. So that would just mean that the press release example was not the best indicator of the features that could be offered to customers.

Its good to hear from the CEO of Where 2 Get It that they actually now do “get it”—meaning of course, the difference between Video SEO and SEO. While its an honest mistake, they should still replace their poor example with something that really showcases more of the actual Video SEO benefits they’re promoting, and hopefully other companies with similar Video SEO partnership will get better about doing that as well. Otherwise it will lead to the type of confusion that even CEOs will be at a loss to explain, and industry analysts like myself to do a double-take.

Grant Crowell is the Owner of Grantastic Designs and Senior Media Analyst for ReelSEO.com. His upcoming white paper, Video SEO: The Solution for the Newspaper Industry, is scheduled for publication in October 2008.

To summarize, Mixpo is a turnkey video marketing solution geared specifically for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses), which combines a self-service platform including hosting, an interactive video player, and online editing that allows clients to simply and quickly repurpose their video.

One of the notable SEO benefits: Multiple videos can be developed from a single original client video, allowing for an easier assembly of video content applied for both search optimization and video advertising.

“This is an exciting time for online video advertising. More advertising dollars and marketing budgets are moving towards video. Big brands and big advertisers jumped into video first. Now there are millions of small brands and advertisers that are just starting to get exposed to online video,” says Anupam.

He explains that SMBs are in an ideal position to take advantage of video marketing and video SEO. “Video is a powerful mechanism for communicating what your business is all about,” says Anupam. “Video drives more qualified leads and conversions, all in a way that is measurable and where we can show accountability. Measurability and accountability is what made search marketing successful, and that’s what SMBs and SMB advertisers need to be all about to succeed.”

Adding to the benefits of video are interactivity technologies for direct customer engagement. In the top-right hand corner of each Mixpo video is an icon, which allows the viewer to choose from a series of calls-to-action any time during video play.

“We’re already seeing a lot of interest from the SMB industry. Video is in the early stages where we’re going to see a lot of ramp in even just the next number of months to come,” says Anupam.

He explains that Mixpo has two constituents: The actual advertiser (client) who wants to be more effective in their online marketing, and the aggregator, who already has a relationship with these customers. Mixpo refers to “aggregators” as interactive agencies, directories, publishers, etc.

“What we hear from agencies – including firms involved in search marketing and SEO – is that they need more effective tools and capabilities to serve their clients in a better way, and show them how they can drive measurable results,” says Anupam. “What we hear from advertisers, is what they’ve been traditionally doing online hasn’t necessarily worked, or they can’t really measure the effectiveness of all of their marketing programs.”

Both of these constituents do understand search as a measurement tool, “and really love the ability where they can measure things on their own” says Anupam. “Everything Mixpo provides is backed by a very solid measurement platform,” which allows for optimization of both performance and visibility online.

As for Mixpo’s business model, it’s rather simple: cost-effective opportunities for SMB advertisers, and sharing advertising revenue with their aggregator partners, whatever their sharing model may be. “Their success is our success,” says Anupam.

As for a sneak preview into his presentation, Anupam shared with me that people attending his session can expect to learn about Mixpo’s recent partnership activities and how they will benefit search marketers involved, or looking to get involved, in the local video space. He also mentioned that their own solution is a good complement to fellow video speaker TurnHere, which concentrates more on the creative agency side of video production compared to Mixpo’s focus on their self-service platform. Mixpo does offer their own creative agency services, but Anupam looks at TurnHere as a technology and marketing ally for the emerging local video space, and not really a competitor.

Grant Crowell is the CEO of Grantastic Designs, a web design and search solutions provider specializing in new media strategies for B2B and B2C companies.

Grant: So what was the motivation for your company to devise this report?

Eric: This study is definitely a first attempt by DoubleClick Performics at getting a better shot at understanding the needs—the demands and supply, if you will—as well as the tools available online for people to find news video. What we gathered , more than anything, is information that will help us take a deeper dive the next time around.

This study essentially covered some basic points: What video consumption is currently taking place online and how does it break down by demographic? What is the news search demand?

We didn’t just say video. We were simply looking at the demand in search for news. Then we kind of brought those two things together-video news and search. And then when people stumbled upon news video that was integrated within search results-be it Google, CNN, Yahoo, MSN, etc. -were they likely to click on it? Were they consuming it? And lastly, what were the tools that they favored to find this news video?

We decided to go pretty broad and shallow with our research, as opposed to focused and deep. But I think that sets us up in a pretty good situation-not just for DoubleClick Performics, but for others out there in the online space to dig deeper into these issues.

From your study, we have some summaries that are already well understood: Such as video is in high demand and has high engagement levels. What would really jump out in your findings that a marketing audience should really pay attention to?

What jumped out to me was that search engines are doing a pretty poor job of helping people find news, especially timely video news content. Our report showed that only one third of people were listed as “very satisfied” with the news-related results they got back. Those are pretty weak numbers. If Google had a one third success rate on searches, we’d all be looking for other search engines. I think there’s a gap right now between the demand and desire to find news video and search engines’ ability to bring back quality results.

And why do you think that is?

Part of that is the lack of good integrated video search results. We’re seeing YouTube as the primary publisher that is featured within Google, and even in Yahoo!. There’s not good diversity there; we don’t get more listings from quality news video providers like CNN, CBS, BBC, and everyone else. It just doesn’t provide enough quality offerings. I think to some degree, we’re seeing some people saying that they wouldn’t mind if they had more video news results in their universal searches. So I think it’s a combination with Google trying to find the right balance between text search results and video search results; and I think there just needs to be more diversification of the results from publishers.

So now that we understand how video is displayed within Google’s universal results, it seems that there’s no rhyme or reason as to when video results will appear for a news-related search, including whether or not a displayed video icon or embedded video will appear in a single result. Again, since your report would confirm that news content is highly regarded in search results and has high engagement levels with consumers, let me ask you: do you believe news video is being taken advantage of by online marketers, or not?

I don’t think news video is being marketed anywhere near the extent that it could be. True, online video can be difficult and unpredictable. Its not like in SEO where, if you do a set of best practices, and your site is considered “worthy” to be included because you followed those best practices, then the chances of being in the top of the listings-the top couple of pages-is quite high. The SEOs can help relevant clients get listed. But with video, it’s a lot trickier; it seems a lot more random at times. To some degree, we’re frustrated by that, but concurrently it’s also a really opportunistic time. We can say that its tough today, but we can still figure this out. So the more we can get a head start from everybody else, then when the engines do get to a point where they’re better at selecting these videos and listing them, we’re going to be in pretty good shape. So my advice to SEOs is this: take advantage of video and this special kind of imperfection.

The further one explores the video space; you realize how many marketing niches there can be. Your approach with your company’s report on news video and search was to “cast a large net and getting the shallow fish,” so to speak. You didn’t appear to further segment the information by well distinguished news segments. Some examples that come to mind are newspaper publishers or television stations, or doing geotargeting from the hyper-local to the regional news services. That being said, do you think that the information in your report can be used as a starting point across the board for all different types of news video, or do you think it will require further analysis?

I think the information in this report is both a starting point and an opportunity for further analysis. We’re not trying to accomplish everything in one survey. I think what DoubleClick Performics set out to accomplish was to gather some high-level data. It’s surprising the large degree of video consumption that’s taking place. Even though video engagement tends to skew towards the younger demographic and female demographic, our survey has shown it to really permeate across all age groups. I was surprised to see high-consumption of news video by older groups. We made some kind of high-level points in the report; but to your own point, a deeper dive in some of these other areas would very much be welcomed.

Now let’s shift the focus from the consumers to the news publisher. Traditional publishers who have been hit hard with decreased circulation, subscribers, and ad revenue are employing new online content resources, especially with producing news video in-house. My question is, do you have any inclination on how well these traditional news publishers are doing with marketing their video news content online, including with video SEO? From what I’ve seen, most news publishers seem to stick with keeping their own content on their own internal network. They appear rather hesitant to participating in an outside distribution model and don’t appear to be too keen about optimizing their video content for the search engines. They might have a YouTube channel for such distribution, but that’s about it—no SEO around their video and no real social networking plan. They appear to also have issues with putting their video content on popular video sites, where they can’t control what content appears next to their own video. On top of my first question, would it be a fair assessment to say that the news publishers, who could be considered in a prime position to benefit from the Video SEO opportunity you mention, are not pursuing it for reasons including that they would have to relinquish some control over how that video is featured?

That’s obviously a business decision for the news publishers, and there are a lot of good reasons why they would want to keep complete control over their content. However, I think there’s another side to that argument. By getting that video out there and getting more visibility on that content, they’re going to pull a lot more people into their sites, get them more engaged, and acquire more registered users. There are a lot of things traditional news publishers could gain from letting their video content be displayed outside of their internal network. But at the end of the day, it’s up to experienced marketing folks like you to work with clients to help them look at both sides of the issue and make a good business decision one way or the other.

I will say that when I advise clients, I encourage them to at least get out there and put their toe in the water. You don’t have to put every single piece of video content out on YouTube; you don’t even have to build a YouTube channel. But what you can at least do is experiment with certain news stories, showcase some video and get some good metrics around it, see what data comes back, and go from there.

Grant Crowell is the CEO of Grantastic Designs, a web design and search solutions provider specializing in new media strategies for B2B and B2C companies.

Recently I interviewed Michael Folkers, Group Product Manager for Adobe Acrobat, to discuss more of Acrobat 9′s video features and the new advantages for SEOs with the latest software release:

Video SEO benefit – simpler production

Most SEO specialists are not highly skilled in video post-production, including taking uncompressed video files (typically from a client or 3rd party media producer) and encoding them to the Web or popular social media platform specs. With Acrobat 9, video files can now be inserted directly into the PDF and viewed by anyone who has the free Acrobat Reader 9 plug-in installed on their system. What that means for SEOs is they no longer have to understand special video conversion requirements and encoding to multiple file formats. With Acrobat 9, even Microsoft Powerpoint files and Word files with video can be turned into animated, optimizable PDFs.

“The design guidelines for how we approached this were to make the barrier for entry very, very low,” said Folkers. “By that, I mean the ‘average knowledge worker’ should be able to assemble a PDF with video very easily. The average knowledge worker should be able to drag-and-drop a video clip, trim it, and assign other quality settings to it very, very easily for distribution downstream. We have plugging this authoring capability inside common workflows today. So, I think the ability to propagate and distribute this content was made a lot easier with this release of Acrobat.”

SEO benefit – social media optimization

Acrobat 9 also allows for embedded video to include comment tags from multiple viewers. While Acrobat’s product managers confided with me that they weren’t aware if Acrobat’s comment tags had ever shown themselves indexable by the search engines, comment tags are a valuable social media asset (just check out the new comment annotations with YouTube). Providing for comment tags can increase the potential for backlinks, which translates to the better SEO of the PDF file.

SEO benefit – a strong compliment to your existing video SEO strategy

Granted, Acrobat 9′s software features are not meant to eliminate any of the current strategies that video search optimizers are currently doing. However, they can provide a highly complementary means of having indexable PDF text content around all of your video files, and may even be used as an acceptable duplicate of your existing content without incurring any search engine spam penalties.

I further pressed Folkers on what new advantages their Acrobat 9 could offer search optimizers who were looking to include video in their SEO campaign.

“To the degree that you’re making this more approachable to the person that’s interested in search marketing, the answer I believe is, to the degree that the PDF is being discovered, once people reach it, it’s going to be a whole lot more impactful than almost any other communications media that they can come up with,” he said. “The reason for that is that not only does it include video, but it also includes all of the other elements into a cohesive, branded method for delivering information that’s really quite engaging. Finding video in YouTube or other Web 2.0 environments – I can’t believe it could be any more compelling than what you could accomplish with a PDF that you deliver.”

Before you buy yourself a copy, be aware that the Acrobat Pro Extended version is the one with the full range of video features. The “Pro” version is the highest level for the Mac, and has less video platform capabilities. The “Standard” version has no video features.

One overall limitation: the video experience with Acrobat 9 is not backwards-compatible. This means that those people still using earlier versions of Acrobat Reader will just see an image in place of the video.

My recommendation: get a 30-day trial copy of either the Pro Extended (Windows) or Pro (Mac) program and test it out. Don’t use in it place of any other video SEO or video marketing activities, but do test out its indexability in the search engines and linkability in the social media space. That said, Acrobat 9 qualifies as a good complement to your video SEO strategy, which you can really start launching by the end of summer 2008.

Grant Crowell is the CEO of Grantastic Designs, a web design and search solutions provider specializing in new media strategies for B2B and B2C companies.

In looking at a bevy of recent writings, some very interesting research was noted by my friend and SEO guru Mark Robertson, who reported that research from the folks at FindLaw showed that video marketing, which in this case meant adding an online video to a law firm’s web site, can help increase, to a somewhat dramatic extent, conversions from prospective clients.

The research reported that consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8. Studies like this are great. They show the promise of how video can help small and medium sized businesses and point to the importance of placing video strategically throughout the “buying funnel” with the right messaging at the right time—and in the legal case above, accelerate people down the buying funnel. Let’s explore some possible explanations, of which there are many.

Online video can = better landing pages and conversions vis-à-vis users who arrive from the major search engines and elsewhere. Working with a range of clients on search engine marketing tactics incorporating video ads into their landing pages, we’ve seen conversions (we define as people who are viewing the video and clicking on a direct response action such as email inquiry, clicking for more information, or clicking to provide contact information a.k.a. lead generation) as high as 50%!

On a crowded search results page, online video can make the choice seem more clear, limiting the need or desire by users to “shop around” though search results and elsewhere. It’s too early to tell conclusively, but one would surmise that at a time when the use of video is still comparatively limited, the companies who do use it have a chance to “stand out” from others, whether in search results or elsewhere. Over time, however, as more and more SMBs leverage video in their search marketing, that will change. Longer-term, what will help businesses engage prospects is having the right video presented at the right time. Having the ability to measure the effectiveness of video advertising is something more businesses are aggressively focusing on now – having moved way past the notion that just publishing video is good enough to stand out.

The wow factor: Related to the above, people are attracted to something new. As I’ve written in the past few months, the Wow Factor only goes so far, especially as more companies adopt online video: Quality and relevant content will ultimately win, boosted by effective technologies and presentation formats, like video. For SMBs, I cannot underscore enough the importance of what I mean by effective technologies. To be effective, it has to be utilized. Looking back at our own experience in launching a video platform earlier this year, we spent a ton of time striving to make the process as “Apple-like” as possible – i.e., as elegant and simple as possible for business use. This means taking the word technology out of the businesses’ mindset and letting them focus on creating informative video ads that they can adjust and optimize that helps them in search discovery—and more importantly, giving viewers a reason to engage.

If it’s done right, video can make sites more relevant and useful to consumers: This helps in the SEO world, of course, but it’s just plain good business, too. To really work over time, online video and video SEO require freshness, tweaking, and just plain updating, just like Web sites and blogs do. This is to not only be discovered through search engines, but to be more fully read or viewed by users.

It’s been said before, but bears reiterating: Online video can level the playing field for the small business people of the world, by providing an affordable and interesting way to showcase points of differentiation from bigger competitors. From an SEO standpoint, it’s the ability to easily adjust and update that will drive true value both for search optimization, user engagement, and ultimately faster conversions.

This may seem like a lot to extrapolate from one study of the legal category, but it’s important to remember that most lawyers operate as small businesses. Just like any other small business, they need to stand out from the pack in crowded marketplaces, ultimately for the benefit of driving closer to their goal: more business.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.