Using Videos and Vlogs as Internet Strategy to get Visitors

By: Ajay Prasad

Videos are an effective way to get a message across to our clients and yet they are still under used. With the explosion of web 2.0, videos can be supported by most sites and they can be hosted cheaply too.
A vlog is short for videoblog. It is a blog which uses video as the primary content as technically it is linked to within a videoblog post. A vlog is accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional meta data to provide a context for the video. Vlog like Blogs are updated regularly, generally includes personal reflections, comments and often take advantage of RSS for syndication to other web sites and aggregator software (rss readers).
Why Use Videos?

If audio has more impact over text, visual takes it all. Visuals have a cutting edge as far as conversions are concerned. It leads to more personalization hence greater customer involvement.
Some examples of business videos are:
• Showing a demo of a product
• A presentation of services
• A CEO giving a speech
• An explanation of a procedure
• Showing different uses of a product
• Fun videos
• Create interaction
• peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and acquisition
Earlier videos were used sparingly because of bandwidth considerations and the increases of loading time. Moreover content was needed for optimization. However with the introduction of Video Sitemap Protocol optimization of videos has been made possible.  Moreover now there are dedicated media servers to take care of vlogging and podcasting

Requirements:
• A Microphone compatible with your PC
• A Webcam that allows you to record video and save it on your computer hard drive.
OR
• A camcorder
• Video editing software

How does it work?
1. Get a microphone: To record a video, you need to have a microphone that is compatible with your computer.
2. Get a webcam.: You need to get a webcam that allows you to record video and save it on your computer’s hard drive.
3. Take time to Prepare your vlog content: Take some time to think about what you’re going to say or do during your vlog.
4. Record your vlog: Turn on your microphone, start your webcam and begin recording. Save the file when you’re done.
5. Upload your vlog file to YouTube or Google Video:
6. Get the embedding code of your uploaded vlog file. Alternately if your server supports these type of media, upload it to your website.
7. Copy the embedding code: Once you upload your vlog file to YouTube or Google Video, copy the embedding code and keep it handy.
8.  Create a new blog post: Give it a relevant title and add content to introduce your vlog.
9. Paste the embedding code for your vlog file into your new blog post. Using the embedding code you copied earlier for your uploaded vlog file, paste that information into the code of your new blog post.
10. Publish your new blog post. Select the publish button in your blogging application to send your new blog post with your vlog in it live online.
Deciding on a video host: Check the following
Check out the other videos on the site. Are they high quality and in good taste, or a little raunchy and inappropriate? Choose a site you feel comfortable about.
Check the File Size Limits: Web video hosting sites have varying limits in the size of the video files they allow you to upload. Generally you’ll have to compress your video before uploading so it meets the file size requirements of the video hosting site. If you have to compress it too much, your video may not look very good by the time it’s playing on the web.
Storage Space Offered:  Is there a limit to how many videos you can upload to your account, or how much storage space you can use?
Uploading Formats: What video formats does the site accept? Most web video hosting sites accept multiple video formats, such as Quicktime, Windows Media, MPEG etc. You can even find sites that allow you to upload directly from your camcorder or cell phone. If this is important to you, make sure that the web video hosting service you choose to use offers these features.
Viewing Formats: What format do the videos on the site play in? Flash is the standard for most web video hosting sites, because it is installed on most computers and plays quickly and easily. However, some sites offer other video formats, in case you want to share your video on a site that doesn’t use Flash, such as iTunes.

Compression Quality: Web video hosting sites will recompress your video before publishing it. Some sites do this better than others.
Video Downloads: Because of copyright issues, many web video hosting sites do not allow users to download copies of the videos on the site. There are some sites though, such as Google Video, that allow users to save copies of videos to their desktop or portable video player.
Editing Capabilities: Many web video hosting sites now offer editing features. JumpCut offers extensive online nonlinear editing, and other sites give you the ability to remix your video or add titles, narration or photos.
Audience: Different sites have different audiences. If your video focuses on a niche topic, choose a web video hosting service that serves that niche, else YouTube.
Video Sharing:  Most web video hosting services allow you to embed your videos in blogs, on personal web pages, and on sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
Video Player: Some sites will include advertisements next to the video player, or will place a watermark of their logo over part of your video. This may be fine, but it doesn’t look so professional if you’re sending the video to clients and it has a big “YouTube” logo on it.

Tips

• Decide on the purpose of your video. If it’s to attract traffic to your website, host is there. Else you can go in for third part hosting. like http://www.youtube.com.
• Use keyword rich title for your videos.
• Add a video sitemap on your website. Sign into Google webmasters to create a Video Sitemap
• Get your video transcribed. Either use an automatic transcriber or use an affordable cheap transcription service vendor.
• Keep your video duration around 5 minutes, not more for bandwidth considerations and to keep it effective.
• Add a call to action.
• Test your vlog after publishing to ensure it’s working smoothly.
• Some popular Download-First video formats are AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4. Here are some popular Streaming Video formats: WMV (Windows Media Video), QT (QuickTime), and RealVideo (RM).
Video Editing Software
• iMovie: iMovie comes free with new Macs. iMovie offers many options for editing video and audio, and adding photos, music and narration to your movies.
• Movie Maker: Movie Maker is Window’s free video editing software, which comes installed on new PCs. Use the program to create and share high-quality
• Avid Free DV: Free DV is Avid’s free video editing software, and it works with both Macs and PCs. It’s a stripped down version of Avid’s professional software, and gives users limited video and audio editing capabilities.
• Jump Cut: An online entry, Jump Cut’s free video editing software allows you to cut video, and add audio, photos, effects and titles right on the web.
• Virtual Dub: Virtual Dub offers simple editing capabilities. You can’t get too creative with the software, but you can use it to make simple, clean edits in your video footage. Virtual Dub works with Windows only.
Places to Host Your Vlog

• Free Vlog
• Internet Archive

Some Video Sharing Sites
• YouTube: YouTube is the biggest and best known, and it offers many features if you want to share your video and get it seen by a large audience.
• Revver : Revver is a revenue sharing, as well as video sharing, web site. Ads embedded at the end of videos can earn producers real money.
• Google Video : Google purchased YouTube, but it still maintains its own video sharing and search tools.
• Blip.tv : Use Blip.tv to start your own online television program.
• Jump Cut : Yahoo!’s entry into the world of social video sharing, Jump Cut offers a sleek online video editing tool, as well as all the bells and whistles for uploading and sharing your videos.
• Yahoo! Video: Yahoo! Video has all the features available on other large video-sharing sites. It also gives you the ability to upload a transcript for your video, which makes it easier to find in web searches.
• My Space: If you have a My Space page, you have a forum for easily sharing your videos online.
• Video Egg: Upload your video, share it and, possibly, make money off of it.

About the Author

Ajay Prasad is President and CEO of Global Marketing Resources a company that specializes in website design, website maintenance and website marketing. GMRWebTeam.com is the website of the company that started 7 year ago as a website design Orange County based company. For affordable packages on website design, website maintenance and website marketing click on the link.

(ArticlesBase SC #935127)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Using Videos and Vlogs as Internet Strategy to get Visitors

Video Search Engine Optimization

By Dahttp://blog.samyakonline.net/wp-admin/post-new.phpvid Husnian

You have produced an excellent quality video promoting your product or service. It is an excellent video that will surely draw many people into what you are offering. Of course, the video can only do this if people actually watch the video. That means the video must be properly optimized for the search engines in the same way a website would be optimized. This way, you can maximize the potential for success that the video is intended to produce. In order to maximize the potential for this, here are a few helpful tips:

It is best to upload your videos onto platforms that are known for being proper venues for videos. Social networking sites and file sharing sites are perfect for this. After all, what would be a better venue for videos than sites such as MySpace and YouTube? Now, this is not to say that there is anything wrong with hosting a video on your own site or your own blog. However, if you want to truly reach an audience easily, it is best to work with these excellent sites.

When you do upload these videos on these types of sites, it is also important to write a solid text description to accompany the videos. Remember, the page that hosts the video will eventually be indexed by the search engine robots. If your text description is sparse, it will not be helpful in terms of its ability to attract a number of visitors. However, if the video also features a solid text description that is optimized with proper keywords, it will definitely attract the attention of visitors since its ranking in the search engines will be improved.

If you do host your video on your own website of blog, be sure that the website/blog has been properly optimized for the search engines in every conceivable manner possible. That means you will need to engage in link building, keyword optimization, site index optimization, etc. Remember, if the video is hosted on a site that is not properly optimized in the search engines, then the video will not be seen by very many people. That means it cannot generate a decent amount of customers which is the primary purpose of the video.

It also is important to utilize a decent RSS feed as well. Actually, you could submit the URL where the video is hosted on to a variety of RSS feeds. These feeds can often reach the eyes of a surprising number of people. And, of course, if these people see something of interest in your RSS feed description they will follow it to the host location of the video. This, in turn, boosts the potential of the video to deliver the intended results.

Submit the URL where your video is hosted to as many search engines as possible. Yes, the major search engines are the most important, but those other “smaller” engines can be a great source of traffic as well. Often, there are free services that will submit your URL to dozens of search engines for free. Why not take advantage of such an offer since it can only help you in the long run?

David Husnian
The Shameless (but Ethical) Marketer
David, the creator of the “3 Pillar of (Guaranteed) Success”, is a successful marketer who provides a unique perspective on marketing and Web traffic topics. You can get more great information, free products and a free online Web traffic course. To get all that and more just click this link to go to http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Husnian

http://EzineArticles.com/?Video-Search-Engine-Optimization&id=3279227

Video Search Engine Optimization and Affiliate Marketing

By: Harry Connor Jr

Video production and Video S.E.O. can be daunting tasks for those who publish affiliate products and services online. Those who endeavor to tackle it and become efficient at the skills required will always be looking for short cuts to effective affiliate publishing.

Video is a hot topic at the moment, and personally, I don’t see it cooling off any time soon. There are literally millions of videos online and probably hundreds of millions of people who view them in any given year. That is one big market, and it is only going to get bigger!

Video is so effective because it is a multidimensional media, combining pictures – both moving and still, with all kinds of special effects, sound – both music and voice over, and print – which can also be manipulated to become more alive; all features and the creative combination of them can be very intriguing for the viewer. Video is always living and active, and video is well and truly here to stay as a marketing media.

All of that is great news for the viewer, but what about the producer? How do they produce numerous videos without having to spend hours upon hours, or even days, to get a video out, and then how do they optimize the video for the search engines?

We all know that if we sow sparingly we will reap sparingly. The more videos you produce the more likely you are to have them viewed online, and the greater the chance you will have of generating traffic to your web site. More traffic indicates the likelihood of more conversions to sales of your affiliate products – which in turn means commissions in your bank account.

As a former Television Commercial Producer I have produced hundreds of commercials in the 90’s, and quite a few promotional videos of various lengths. One of the problems all producers have is shrinking the informative content down to the time frame allowed by the budget. This is a skill and an art. When you are producing videos to sell your affiliate’s products and services you have no budget, so in effect, you are producing for free! This leaves you with an overriding concern to become efficient very quickly.

Most videos produced that sell affiliate products online are usually as simple as sitting in front of a web cam, or using screen capture software to show the viewer point and click options contained in the product, some of the videos are up to ten minutes long, and may lose the viewer’s attention because of the length. This kind of production is fine, and lots of people are doing it. But, how do you produce quantity without losing quality, and still stand out in the crowd?

When a person searches for a particular topic on a video site like You Tube or Yahoo Video, they type in the keyword or phrase of which they are interested into the search box. This will bring up numerous videos in that category. One of the first things you notice is a thumbnail shot or a small single ‘frame capture’ of each video that is returned by the search engines. Another thing you may or may not have noticed is the general overall resemblance of the returns. They all look very much alike, and very few stand out. To be noticed in a crowd you must stand out, or you will get lost in the blur of ambiguity. To be indistinct is to be almost invisible. Take a second look when you get time and you will see what I mean.

A way I have discovered to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ to produce numerous videos quickly, and to stand out in the crowd when they are uploaded, is to use the K.I.S.S. Principle, and keep it simple. In fact, I produced 12 videos over one weekend and they do stand out due to how they were produced. When you can produce, render, upload, and add tags and titles for each video, at one video every hour uploaded to 2-3 video sites, you are hopping!

First I keep them short, no more than 30-31 seconds each. This helps with speed of production, rendering, and uploading. You can produce more, and more is always better than less when it comes to video search.

Secondly, I make a template for these short videos on my editing software. I use five sequences of 6 seconds each and alter them according to the product. Again, speed.

Thirdly, I make all the backgrounds black with colorful text that doesn’t dominate the space. You have heard of ‘white space’ in print, well black space for video works the same. This helps with the ‘standing out in the crowd’ aspect, as most videos usually display white backgrounds on the thumbnails, and this means they all look the same to the casual eye and they tend to blend in with the white backgrounds of the web pages.

Fourthly, I top and tail the video with the same frame to outwit You Tube’s frame capture algorithms. With the top and tail being the same sequence this means I only need four sequence changes in each new video. This insures, for the most part, that the frame of my choice is displayed on the search returns. If You Tube changes this formula, I change mine. I had to redo one video that I had added pictures to 5 times until I beat it! Luckily it did not take long to move sequences and transitions.

Fifthly, I use the affiliate’s squeeze page for the script, capturing their choice of words for each 6-second sequence. You will be amazed at how quickly you can find key phrases to use as text in the video. Your affiliates have already done the brain-work and you are promoting their product, so they will be very happy you made a video for them. After all you are going to ultimately direct your viewer to their squeeze page for the full and unaltered long version of your short introductory video of their product.

And finally, I don’t use a voice over, generating only a music background, this adds to the clean feel and sound of the videos. When the videos are complete they all have a similar look and feel about them. One may think that when they are all together they may be boring to watch, but the contrary is true. Lots of short colorful videos with ‘easy on the eye’ text, and ‘easy on the ear’ music, rather than numerous voice-overs, are more likely to be watched than a few longer videos with long explanations, that may lose the attention of the viewer.

One of the ways I have discovered at how You Tube and other video sites work is that they cluster all the videos that are produced by the same person together through a ‘more videos like this’ sorting algorithm. This means that if one is found, all of them will be, and the one that perhaps you promoted or that may have received more views and reviews, will drag all the others up with it on the search page returns. This means that your videos tend to dominate the category.

Another great bonus is that if you post them all up on a web page with a black background only the colorful text of each video stands out giving the page a uniform and uncluttered look.

These are just a few tips that might help you to produce more videos, and how to use the video search engines to promote them. And guess what? Video S.E.O. can be done for free! Get producing and promoting. It will pay off in the long run.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

About the Author

Harry Connor Jr is a marketing guy in Print and TV Commercial Production in general business and real estate, who loves the internet. For more information on what Harry is up to go here http://www.biz-zoom.com/

(ArticlesBase SC #1095080)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Video Search Engine Optimization and Affiliate Marketing

Video Search Engine Optimization – Going A Step Ahead

By: Ashish Goyal

Video Search Engine Optimization is a new technology that has gained popularity in the recent years. Although it’s a comparatively new theme, the fame of this concept has reached zenith. The video advertisement remains in the mind of the viewer for a longer duration then the news articles. The videos are considered to be more reliable source of information than the written ones and these days it doesn’t take long to download the videos.

Now video can help you in the optimization of your website. For video SEO marketing some simple steps needs to be followed. First, create and submit transcript for crawlers and users and add these transcript to video file that you have uploaded. Second, create a keyword rich title for the transcript. Third, Include synopsis to the transcript that will determine the subject matter. Last, publish your transcript.

Try to incorporate the word “video” in the title, description and keywords as many times as possible. This will help the Search Engine bots to figure out what the video is all about and accordingly it will get the weightage. Optimize the url of the video page by mod_rewrite function. Create a separate sitemap for your videos, so that the crawlers can locate the files effortlessly and speedily.

If you want video search engine optimization, then contact among several VSEO company. But be sure that you get a list of services provided by these companies. Also, look for their past work and some references if possible. This will help you in analyzing what you can expect from them.

Search Pro Systems is one of the popular vseo companies that provide video SEO marketing. The specialized Video Search Engine Optimization team of the company will analyze your website thoroughly and will design a plan of website optimization that will take your website to the top.

About the Author

SEO Consultant

(ArticlesBase SC #1354428)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Video Search Engine Optimization – Going A Step Ahead