Ecommerce SEO Case Study: A company in the home decorating industry

Last month in the U.S. (October 2011) 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content for an average of 21.1 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, representing an all-time high (courtesy of comscore.com).

Online video consumption continues to grow, and more and more people want to view content via video.  Fortunately it is easier and cheaper to create video content than ever. Now is the time to start incorporating some video onto your site!

Where do I start?

A simple introductory video, or a video of you explaining a simple concept can be filmed with a smartphone, webcam or a cheap digital video camera such as a flip camera. Most smartphones now have functionality which allow you to upload your video to youtube seamlessly, which is where you want your video to land.

Another way to include content from your articles and blog (and the kind of informational content that people are searching for) is to create a simple powerpoint with the main points from your article, then create a video of you discussing that presentation. Free desktop software from Jing can be used to film this presentation and upload the video to youtube. Jing has a 5 minute time limit, which is usually enough to cover the main concepts. If you have other software, it is still preferable to keep your video under 10 minutes for youtube.

If you have an inspirational message or more of a promotional video you can use a free service called animoto to create up to a 2 minute video with images and phrases. We use this service to create videos for local places listings, and it can also be used to create videos for your youtube channel.

Uploading to Youtube

Of course this post needs a video! This 4 minute 59 second video is a little rushed at the end due to the 5 minute Jing limit. It covers the basics of uploading a video and adding title, keywords, description and mapping. It also show you where to access the embed code. Once you copy this code, you will paste it into your website. If using wordpress, you will paste into the html view rather than the visual view, or use a wordpress plugin like vipers video to embed easily.

Google purchased youtube several years ago, and you can use your google login to create a youtube channel. This is where your uploaded videos will go (more information on creating and customizing your youtube channel is available here). Once your videos are uploaded it is important to use keyword rich titles and description (related to the video topic) so youtube users as well as the search engines can find your video.

Incorporating on your site(s)

After you have uploaded and optimized your video it is time to share it with the world! If you click on the embed code you will get some code you can paste directly into your site.  If the video is a companion to an article, you can paste in where it makes sense. If it is stand alone, you will want to create some text on the page taken from the video. This is helpful for the search engines.

Once it is on your site, you can share the link on your facebook page and twitter accountt if you are using those services.  There are also other video sharing sites such as Vimeo, Blip.tv and Viddler and  where you can upload your video and create more links back to your website and potentially reach a larger audience.

If you have questions about video creation or promotion, contact us today!

In today’s world it is impossible to keep up with the flood of news in any given industry. A free tool we use to filter the news and stay informed about current trends in our local seo work is Google Alerts.  With Google Alerts we can enter in keyword phrases of interest, and when those keywords appear in an article or blog post we receive an automated alert with a direct link to the newly published content on the web.

This fresh content can provide us not only with the latest information but also with great ideas for content for our own site. If it is new research, then we can quickly write an article that will be timely and attract visitors.  We can also write a response type article and link to the original article. This can serve to build credibility in the field.

Another way to use Google Alerts is to find new blog posts that are relevant to our sites and leave comments on them.  Let’s say you’re an attorney and you want to rank for the keyword “criminal defense lawyer”.  When google flags a new blog post with that phrase, you can be immediately notified, and then can be one of the first to leave a timely comment with a link back to your site.

Not only does this create a great backlink, which helps with SEO, it may also start a conversation with another professional in your line of work, and gives readers of that blog a chance to see an intelligent comment and perhaps visit your site as well.

How you can set up an alert

Setting up an alert is quite easy. To start, go to http://www.google.com/alerts

Here you will need to login to google and then enter some basic information. For your keyword phrase, be sure to include it in quotation marks so only exact phrase matches come back, for example “criminal defense lawyer”.

If you would like to leave comments on others articles, select “blogs” in the type field.

For the how often field you can decide if you want to receive alerts right away or on a daily or weekly basis. If you choose a popular phrase and select “as it happens” you may receive a lot of email! Usually once a day or even once a week is enough to keep current.

Some people prefer to receive updates in an rss feed instead of by email. You can set this up after you create an alert, by clicking on “manage your alerts”, selecting the edit button for each alert, and in the “deliver to” field selecting feed instead of your email address.

That’s it, you will now start receiving alerts in your email or rss feed reader. This is a great way to keep current in your field, build relationships with others, and improve your search rankings all at the same time!