Months ago I bumped into a website claiming to have discovered the real secret to get top rankings through video posting. It is definetely proved that videos my help rankings but in the end the same principle we apply into standard optimization must be applied to videos.
I’ve been working on a client website for a while which is a video portal It fetures video from youtube and other big video portal (dailymotion, veeme). This shortlist applies to this case, when running a website which features content from a bigger portal. Anyway, even if you’re not featuring content for you tube, posting a video related to your original page and applying to it any standard seo practice, with an obvious link ti yiur homepage, will result in a positive effect for your rankings.
It’s basically being focused on providing page with descriptive title focusing on the long tails (e.g long titles extremely specific but still featuring the two main keywords we want to optimize the website for).
Pretty much all the classic onpage optimization factors apply for youtube but it can be better resumed like:
- Use your primary keyword on the video title
- Write one or 2 line description with your keywords in them
- Place a link to your website
Rest will be depending on your video quality.
Youtube video ranks higher based on views and onpage factors listed above.
So more views you get, better you rank.
It’s not that much different from promoting a standard page. In the end, external optimization of content will help higher rankings for your original page.
February 20, 2009
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SEO
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seo code mistakes at semwired.com
While working on different SEO projects, I noticed several common development mistakes which can seriously affected rankings on the SERPS. I’ll go through a quick list of coding mistakes, general code structure and scripts.
1. Title tag not the first one inside the head tag
Considering how the title tag is important in SEO I wonder why loads of developers still make this mistakes. The right order of tags should be <head> and right after that <title>. Recently I bumped into a website on developed on .net and IIS in which the very first tag in the <head> section was a <script> linked to a external Javascript. In this case search engine might overlook the title tak and focus on the java link which will end up for being 100% useless since does not have any meaning to them. Needless to say fixing the <head> tag will be one of the top priorities for this site seo strategy.
Moreover the majority of the SEO tools available (IBP and WebCEO) usually point this out in their optimization page scan: there’s no way to miss this one really.
2. Stop words
To be honest, I’m not advocating the complete purge of stop words. Just like any other average user I’m not really into weird nonsensical machine tipe of titles but sometimes avoiding them may reveal an helpful trick especially when it comes to gain more space to include keywords or relevant words into titles. Less stop words means more keyword sometimes.
3. Keyword at the end of tag title or not present
Title and other tags have to be generally optimized thinking of the keyword we want a peg to be ranked for. What’s the point of working on a title tag without a relevant keyword to be stick on it?
4. Full-length embedded Javascript
I know sometimes javascript has to be there but why not putting a link to an external file instead of copy the whole thing? It’s kind of obvious that search engine cannot process java, otherwise we would not need to download a java virtual machine… Moreover Javascripts increase page size and do not increase keyword values since it’s code and has not semantic value.
5. Images with weird / random names and random ALT tags
People usually underrates ALT tags and image filenames in Google. Since my main focus on SEO is using even the tiniest piece of code to embed references and relevant keywordsg (not excessing though), ALT tags provide a priceless chance to embed some more words. So why not filling it up with your favourite keyword? Well, too many underestimate the power of alt tags… Same applies to images filenames which help drive traffic from Google Images and Windows Live. Since I’m talking about development mistakes, I’m not expecting coders to be SEO-minded and fill ALT tags with relevant keywords. However it would be nice to have tags filled up.
February 16, 2009
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SEO
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SEO assessment priorities semwired.com
While working on a client’s project I often start to think if there’s any better way to prioritize SEO changes on a website.
Some client’s pretend to have the changes they need applied as soon as posible, while I’ve always thought that a gradual and rational approach.
I usually emphasize on code changes at first and I later get focused on content and keyword properties (density and prominence).
However different projects might require different approches and also those specific issues the website might have (duplicated content? different language version on the same webserver?) can come into play affecting the priorities we had already set up.
This is how I shortlisted SEO priorities on a project:
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