How Important are Videos on Websites in 2009? Thursday, Jan 29 2009

A lot of talk has been going on about the comments that Bruce Clay made at the Top-Shelf Organic SEO session at PubCon 2008 stating that “ranking is dead”.  In this article, a video covers his comments – one of which is his emphasis on the importance that video will play in placement in 2009.

However, I currently agree with Steve Rubel in his article titled “Why Text Remains King of the Web“.  He points out that text is good for these 5 reasons:

“1.  Text is scannable – according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely”

This is very true because I recently had a client send me an email to look at a company she was recommended (http://fortunevideos.com).  On this website, there is no content and the video is 45 minutes long! Who has time to watch the whole thing?  I definitley didn’t and there was no way to scan the video, so basically 0% of their message was able to reach me.   “

“2. Three letters: SEO – For all that Google Universal Search has done to elevate video, search results are still largely made up of text and everyone wants better SEO”

Again, very true.  I couldn’t even find the website for www.fortunevideos.com because there is no text on the website so it doesn’t have any rankings for any keywords related to their product.  I tried searching “Make Money with Prepaid Legal Services” or “Prepaid Legal Services” and I couldn’t pull them up anywhere.

“3. The workplace – It’s much easier for cube-based workers to read text on the screen and get away with it vs. watching long videos. Watching videos (even work related videos) screams ’slacker’”

This is very true.  At my workplace, they block YouTube because they don’t want us watching videos online.  Also, text is silent, so your co-workers won’t hear the sound blasting from your speakers.

“4. Mobile Devices – Yes, of course you can put a video on an iPhone. But it’s work and requires planning. Text is easier to pull up in a nanosecond”

Anyone who has a new smart phone knows how easy it is to make them freeze. Pulling up regular websites would sometimes freeze my HTC touch phone (which I DON’T recommend), but pulling up video would definitely never work.

“5. Distribution – Nothing flies like text. It’s so easy to cut and paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via email, RSS or social networks”

Again, very true.  Although many people have high internet speeds, computers are still known to crash randomly and it’s much harder to download or transfer video files than it is text files.

In conclusion, it is still very important to integrate video in 2009, but make sure while you’re doing that, include lots of text around the video to summarize what the video is about.  Also, you might consider attaching a text file next to the video that summarizes the video word-for-word so that the concept can be shared by users who want to forward or syndicate the text.

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Should I Bid on Branded Keywords? Monday, Jan 19 2009

3 Reasons to Bid on Branded Keywords:

1.  A lot of other companies have had success with it: In Online Marketing Heros, Jeffrey Glueck from Travelocity stated “We found, and many other large e-commerce players have found, when they deconstructed the data, that 3/4 or more of their profit were coming from people typing in the company’s brand name into the search engine”.
2.  People might search branded keywords because they remember your product from another advertisement: In a TMP Directional Marketing report, it stated that approximately 70% of users will not remember a URL that they saw on television, but they might be likely to see an ad and remember the company name or product.
3.  Branded Keywords are searched frequently: According to a study conducted by Yahoo in 2007, 24% of searches that occur online are navigational in nature which means that users are looking for a specific site, or brand name.

Is it Useless to bid on Branded Keywords if I already appear in the Organic Results?

Although it’s important to make sure you show up in the sponsored section, a lot of people think it’s a waste of money if your site ranks well for branded keywords in the organic listings.  Young-Bean Song states in an article published by AdWeek in 2007 “The reality is those people are already intending to go to your Web site. What you’re really paying for is a glorified Yellow Pages listing.”

Although sponsored ads do not get clicked on as much as organic listings (as shown in the graphic below), Neilson NetRatings has found that users tend to spend 40% more time on the sponsored ads than they do on organic listings.

Where People Click on Google

Although Advertising Age didn’t have the same findings, their chart does indicate that visitors that click on Sponsored ads tend to have a lower bounce rate and therefore may be more interested in the content found on the website.

Advertising Age - Comparing Sponsored and Natural Search Results

Based on all the findings, The Best Results seems to come when Websites appear in the paid and organic section.  In March 2007, a study by Media Post Search Insider, indicated that a listing found both in the paid and organic listings on the same term resulted in an increase in clicks and post-click activity.  Enquiro Research did a similar study in 2007 and came up the results indicated in the graphic listed here.

Enquiro Research, 2007

Branded Keywords may not give you as many conversions as you’d think:

Although it is clear that bidding on branded keywords is probably a good idea, just how much attention should you put towards the brand-specific keywords?
In his book “Online Marketing Heros” Michael Miller states, “Don’t assume that every link you get from a search engine is attributable to the search engine itself; anyone typing in your brand name probably heard about you from a different medium, and the search engine shouldn’t receive full credit”.

According to an article that

Adam Goldberg

wrote in Search Engine Strategies (Volume 2, Issue 5), users are not actively searching a specific brand at the start of the buying cycle.  Instead, they first search for your product or service.  During these searches, they will establish which brands they prefer.  After that point, they will do searches for the specific brand they chose.  Adam Goldberg points out that too many advertisers today give a lot of credit to their “branded keywords” and assume that these keywords are the ones that are providing them the best ROI.  Adam’s suggestion is to break your keywords down into 3 categories: introducers, influencers, and closers.  Since branded keywords fall into the “closers” category, it’s important to make sure you have keywords that fit into the other 2 categories as well.

Offermatica also found that a campaign that has a mix of general search terms and branded search terms, tends to generate a 23% higher conversion volume and a 22% higher average revenue per visitor when compared to a campaign that does not include branded keywords.

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Who Should Manage Your Domain Name? Sunday, Dec 14 2008

My simple answer to this question is – YOU.  I have run into many clients who have had online companies purchase and maintain domain names for them.  Here are some of the problems that they seem to run into:

1.  The company won’t release their domain name to anyone else.  Basically meaning, if Bob Smith calls up his current company and says that he doesn’t want to renew www.bobsmith.com with them, but with another company (or even on his own), the company will keep renewing www.bobsmith.com just so that poor old Bob can’t have that domain name UNLESS he renews it with them. 

2.  The company will refuse to do some necessary changes to help with SEO.  I have had several clients who have asked their current domain name provider to change the meta description or title tags so that the title of their website is more relavent.  These companies will sometimes claim that they are simply “unable to do that”.  They basically say this because they do not want to do any extra work outside of the necessary purchase of the domain name itself.

3.  You pay a company to build a website and purchase a domain name for you and they “tell you” that after you pay for a certain period of time, you own the website.  This is partially true.  In order for you to own the website, you will have to transfer all the files from that particular company to the company who you are going to host the website through.  A lot of companies won’t be quick to let their clients leave them, therefore may come up with many reasons why they “simply are unable to transfer the files” within the same time frame as you would like.

4.  Purchasing a domain name on your own is usually much cheaper.  Let’s face it.  The online company has to be making a profit somewhere.  Domain names on GoDaddy go for $8-$10 a year in most cases.  I’ve heard of clients who pay $100 a year for theirs. 

5.  Your company may forget to renew the domain name, which may cost you in the end.  On the Keystone Blog, they recently posted a story about George Bush planning on opening a library.  Whoever was managing his domain, forgot to renew it, and it was bought up by someone who was watching for expired domains.  Companies will do this to make a huge profit, and they were clearly successful because they sold it back to the foundation for $35,000.  It’s a pretty big price to pay for merely forgetting to renew a domain name. 

My solution is to buy the domain name yourself, mangae it yourself, and make sure you don’t forget to renew it.  This way you are the only one in control.  I recommend buying your domain through a well-known, big company such as GoDaddy or Name.com.

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The SEO Pyramid Sunday, Dec 14 2008

www.SEOmoz.org recently released an article on their blog introducing their “SEO Pyramid”.  This is basically the structure that will produce the best results for Search Engine Optimization.  As shown in the illustration above, you need to have the basic steps at the bottom of the pyramid before you attempt the ones at the top.  It is a very helpful visual that will help beginners at SEO know where they should start and end their process.

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