Jan 30
Jan 24
Posted by jhammack
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Videos Indexed in the SERP
Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you're hosting on Vimeo or Youtube?
Not only does it help them spider your website by giving the search engines clues as to where to look for video embeds, it may also earn your site a click through boost by giving you a picture in the SERP. Below I'll show you how I managed to index my Vimeo video embeds to include a thumbnail. Don't worry, the same steps should work for Youtube as well.
Benefits of a Video Sitemap
There are several reasons why you'll want to add a video sitemap.
- It makes it clear to Google what your content is.
- You have the opportunity to provide a range of details through schema.
- Additional presence on video.google.com search.
- RAD picture thumbnail, which is a pretty great call to action.
Video Embed Code
It's important to pay special attention during this part. Video embedding is largely done using iFrames these days and that poses a problem if you want the search engines to index your videos. For whatever reason Google doesn't currently spider iFrames. This is frustrating as iFrames are great for playback compatibility on mobile devices, iPads, and the like. There is a workaround, but first, let's discuss how a video sitemap works.
A video sitemap is simple guide for the search engine bot. Think of it as a map to treasure, it just makes it easier for the bot to find the treasure. If you use an iFrame, the bot can't find the video making the video sitemap useless. However, Google can find and spider standard object embeds, AKA the old fashioned way of doing things. With this in mind, I'm going to describe the safest way to get your videos indexed by using old embed code still available on Vimeo and Youtube. Here is a picture to help you find it:
Embed Code
If you found it correctly your embed code should look something like this. (vimeo example)
You don't have to cleanup your code like I did above, I only did it so we could easily see what's happening. Pay special attention to the embed src line, the URL inside looks like this..
vimeo: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35117351
youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/VMeXGE_a8Gg
This is the RAW video player link, it tells google/bing where to find the original video file. We'll need this information later when building the video sitemap.
Nested iFrame/Embed *OPTIONAL*
There is one thing worth mentioning. Some people have developed a technique to trick google and still use an iFrame. I haven't actually tried it myself as I'm happy playing it safe with the old method and showing up in the SERP.
Anyhow, the idea is that you use the new iFrame code and the old embed code at the same time with the noframes tag. This essentially nests the two videos, such that end users will see the new html5 iFrame version and google is served the old embedded version.
A couple drawbacks worth mentioning.. First, this is technically cloaking content as you're serving one thing to the user and giving google something else. Second, your page will take longer to load as the original embed starts to fire up before the iFrame gets control. Lastly, noframes wasn't designed to work like this, it's a hack. With that in mind here is what it'd look like:
Video Sitemap Requirements
Now that you have your embed code all sorted out, it's time to start working on the video sitemap. Google requires that your video sitemap MUST contain the following information and that it should MATCH what is on your webpage.
- Title – This should be the same as the title of the page your video appears.
- Description – Make this exactly match the meta description of your page.
- Play page URL – The canonical URL of the page your video appears.
- Thumbnail URL – By thumbnail they mean a high resolution image up to 1920×1080.
- Raw video location – This is the embed src link noted from above pointing at the clip.
- More Details: Google: Creating a Video Sitemap
Example Video Sitemap
The best way to learn how a video sitemap works is to see one. First start by creating a new file, name it something like: video-sitemap.xml
Then fill it in so that it looks like the example sitemap below, except replace the white text with your own information. For every video you have copy/paste the <url></url> block. In the example below there are two video URL blocks, the top block has descriptors for the fields, the bottom block is exactly what my video sitemap looks like. I prefer to keep mine in chronological order with the newest video on top. Once you're done you'll upload it to the root of your website ex. http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Tweak Robots.txt
This isn't absolutely necessary, but it doesn't hurt. Add your sitemap to your robots.txt file. Don't worry about being redundant, you can have a video sitemap describe the same page as a standard article sitemap. To add your sitemap to robots.txt place the following line at the top:
Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Update Google Webmaster
Once you're ready with your sitemap head over to Google Webmaster Tools and submit it under site configuration. Google will crawl it and report if there are any errors. If everything looks good the videos will be queued to be spidered and you should see them online after about a week.
Conclusion
This is actually the bare minimum to get you started. There is a lot of depth to the schema and you can include a range of details in your video sitemap including tags, categories, and author just to name a few. Hopefully with the above information you can get your embedded vimeo/youtube videos indexed with a picture. Feel free to contact me if you get stuck or check out my video sitemap at http://winefolly.com/video-sitemap.xml
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Jan 22
Eric Thomas, Author of The Secret to Success, delivered a keynote address at Affiliate Summit West 2012 on Tuesday, January 10, 2012.
More about Eric Thomas:
YouTube sensation Eric Thomas has taken the attention of students, athletes, educators and corporate execs of all ages, interests, and backgrounds hostage with his energetic and heartfelt messages of hope, persistence, and moving beyond your circumstances.
The Detroit native’s understanding of the importance of education and the obstacles that hinder its pursuit remains unparalleled by colleagues in his field and enables him to connect with his audience on a more intimate level.
Eric grew up in an environment that worked to challenge his educational and social beliefs and was forced to learn to cope and manage the stressors of life without the guidance or counsel of his biological father.
Having followed the generational path of high school drop outs in his own family, Eric transitioned from being hopeless and homeless to being an iconic figure of the process of success and the determination it takes to obtain it.
He has committed his life to speaking across the country to enlighten others of the importance of education, the access it provides, and the way to the American dream.
More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/.
Video: Eric Thomas Keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2012
Tags: 2012, Affiliate, Eric, Keynote, Summit, Thomas, Video, West
Jan 20
Jon Spoelstra, Author of Marketing Outrageously Redux, delivered a keynote address at Affiliate Summit West 2012 on Monday, January 9, 2012.
More about Jon Spoelstra:
Jon Spoelstra’s reputation as one of the most innovative and successful sports marketers is well earned. He has demonstrated this at every stop in his career:
Mandalay Baseball Properties. As president and managing director of Mandalay Baseball Properties, LLC for eleven years, Jon created the most profitable minor league baseball teams ever. Mandalay owned/operated seven minor league teams. One of the teams, the Dayton Dragons, set a record that had never been achieved before—it sold out every ticket to every game during a season. The Dragons have now sold every ticket to every game for eleven straight seasons.
New Jersey Nets. As president and COO of the Nets for three years, Jon dramatically increased ticket and sponsorship sales. During his tenure, the team set its all-time attendance record. Sellouts at Meadowlands Arena increased from zero to 25. Local sponsorship sales went up from $ 400,000 to $ 7,000,000.
SRO Partners. Jon was founder and chairman of SRO Partners, a sports marketing consulting firm that works with teams in the NBA, NHL, MLB and teams in Japan and Spain.
Portland Trail Blazers. In the 11 years with the Blazers as Senior VP/General Manager, Jon helped make the front office a model for all team sports. During his time there, there was never a game that wasn’t sold out.
He has written five books. His newest book, Marketing Outrageously Redux, How To Increase Your Revenues By Staggering Amounts, was released in February, 2011. It is a sequel to Marketing Outrageously which became a Wall Street Journal best-seller. Ice to the Eskimos, a general marketing book based on his sports marketing strategies, was published by HarperCollins in June, 1997. The book is a lively blueprint on how to take any product that isn’t the best in its field and jump-start sales and profits. It became a top seller in Japan. Success Is Just One Wish Away—a motivational book on how anybody can develop a passion for their job and life—was published by DelStar Books in June, 1999. Jon’s fiction book, Red Chaser, was published in December, 2009.
Jon was the focus of what was perhaps the strangest trade in sports history. Portland was in need of a guard to fill a hole created by injury. The guard that the Blazers wanted was the starting point guard for Indiana Pacers. The compensation to the Pacers wasn’t a player, but one week of Spoelstra’s time. Jon played a key role in the restructuring of the Pacers front office during that time frame.
Jon was a judge at the Miss America contest in September, 2003.
More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/.
Video: Jon Spoelstra Keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2012
Tags: 2012, Affiliate, Keynote, Spoelstra, Summit, Video, West
Jan 20
This week, we cover the major news that Google is now penalizing sites for having too many ads on their pages – yea, a bit hypocritical. Google blacked out their logo for SOPA but Bing and Yahoo did not. Google even slowed down their spider, GoogleBot…
Jan 13
Jan 06
Dear Google
Your recent decision to invoke a manual penalty on the download page for Google Chrome will have lasting ramifications for the whole of online marketing, whether display advertising, affiliate marketing, and other performance marketing such as CPA models, making many such business models unworkable.
Policing every piece of content produced by marketing partners (affiliates etc) on the offchance that they inadvertantly linked directly to the traffic or buzz benifitiary without using a nofollow or otherwise blocking the direct link is commercially untenable.
In the following video I have outlined what has led to this unreasonable decision being made, and elaborated a little on some of the commercial implications not just for competitors in the online advertising space, but even for Google services such as Google Publisher Network, Google Affiliate Network & Doubleclick.
Here is a 720p 1280×720 mp4 of the above video (looking forward to supporting this in a player real soon now)
Sincerely
Andy Beard
Here is a specific example
This is an Amazon widget
//
// ]]>
Wow it is promoting a really cool Google phone!
Here is another iframe creative
Here is a text only link
T-Mobile G2 with Google Android Phone (T-Mobile)
So far I haven’t broken Google’s new interpretation of the webmaster guidelines
I love Amazon
Oops… sorry Amazon that wasn’t an affiliate link, but an editorial link… Google will now feel that they have to remove the Amazon home page from the search engine results and Amazon won’t sell 20M Kindle Fires this year… Just 19.8M – or maybe 21M if they replace the Amazon home page with the Kindle Fire product page. (yes I realise they are very similar)
Whilst pureists might argue that this wasn’t a video CPA advert but an affiliate link, a huge amount of the sites that Google filtered this year as poor quality thin affiliates were using Amazon and other affiliate networks for monetization. The purpose quite often for the content was to drive traffic to the ads in small quantities.
At scale the revenue from 1000s of websites earning just a few dollars a month above the hosting and domain costs add up.
Another comparrison is Google’s own Adsense program and the vast numbers of poor quality sites that have arisen because of it. The good often (in search visibility) outweigh the junk MFA (made for adsense) sites, but it really is a chicken & egg situation. The webmasters target specific topics and even optimize content not just for SEO, but to pull up the highest paying and possibly even specific advertising creatives for products, maybe even video content, and they get paid for clicks on that content.
If I write a blog about Android phones and included an Adsense advert at the bottom of each post, allowed video and display ads, the situation wouldn’t be vastly different to some junk content followed by a video embed of a Google commercial I was being paid for on a CPA basis.
People in the past made complete websites dedicated to the promotion of Google pack, their Adsense program etc, and even offered incentives such as training in online marketing, or included the Adsense registration links as part of the course material… of course without disclosure as that wasn’t allowed.
Google… Please Reinstate Chrome
Here are the links referenced in the video
Matt’s post on Google+
Aaron’s’s post Sponsored By Google that started this huge mess.
Danny’s post on all the thin content
Unruly Media is clearly CPA (grats on $ 25M funding guys)
Wikipedia on CPA (will Wikipedia be the only independent content site soon?)
Wikipedia on Online Marketing advertising models
Andrew Girdwood proving Google has used this form of CPA before
Danny with Google’s statement throwing their agency and Unruly under a bus
Google’s staement and effect (from Danny) – Statement saying this was a violation of their guidelines, possibly from someone who hasn’t read them recently.
My post on Google pack and word of mouth marketing
Google’s policy statement for their Google pack CPA campaign No mention of not giving editorial links etc
The CPA video embed (the iframe contents) – I am not going to drag an individual blogger who may have given a quite nice editorial link to Google Chrome through the coals
The Unruly Media terms of service which have now been enhanced – the nofollow statement is a new bullet point – it shouldn’t be needed as payment is not for the content of the blog post, or links, but based on CPA actions with the video.
Webmaster help forums on Affiliate links Google repeatedly avoids answering questions regarding the use of nofollow with affiliate links and other forms of display advertising.
How to report paid links and selling links that pass pagerank
Disclosure: I work for an online video & affiliate marketing startup called uQast but I am posting this on my personal blog and the words and opions expressed here are my own and my volition and not of my employer (does that remind anyone of Matt’s disclaimer?) – I have been involved in affiliate marketing for 7 years and the issues discussed here have been a topic of this blog since I started publishing it in 2005.
Small update: just added a download link for the MP4 version in HD 720p
Tags: Affiliate Marketing, CPA, Google, nofollow, paid links
Dec 24
Dec 05
Dec 04
The YouTube Team has introduced a new homepage – which we saw a sneak preview of a couple weeks ago – unveiled a new Channel design, and gave the video-sharing site a fresh coat of digital paint.
With more than 3 bill…
Tags: channels, Discovery, Major, Redesign, Sharing, Social, Video, YouTube, Zooms
