Getting my YouTube videos to appear and rank in SERPs

[directwheels]

I started producing a bunch of low budget videos and used TubeMogul to upload them. Without paying, I am able to upload to YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, and Yahoo Video in one easy step. Each video targets a niche product and I am hoping that the video can show up in Google SERPs. I am doing the basic "keywords in title" and tagging to help it rank.

A couple of observations:
- Videos show up easier when there is little competition
- Metacafe and Dailymotion hosted videos tend to rank better. I haven't been able to get any YouTube videos to rank. This is probably because Google is looking at my YouTube account history and other factors such as comments and user ratings.
- I tested local terms with a service (ex. small town Iowa + plumbing) by uploading a lot of videos, failed miserably as none of them come up in the SERPs.

Anyone has any tips on getting videos to rank on SERPs?

[Robert Charlton]

A video appearing in the regular serps without the word "video" included in the query would be a Universal Search result.

Videos are one type of Universal result. The Universal categories are often called "verticals", and the most important such verticals are currently listed in the left column of the regular Google serps page. They include: Maps, Images, News, Books, Videos, Shopping, Blogs, Updates, and Discussions.

For Google to return results from a Universal category in the organic serps, Google first needs to establish that this is the kind of result that searchers might want to see. Ways Google might do this would be to check its historical data to see if the topic is frequently searched in the vertical itself... or to see whether it's frequently searched with modifying words that might indicate a vertical... or to see how searchers refine their queries.

Google currently assumes that someone searching for just "plumbing", to use your example, is probably searching for a local service, so it displays Map results up near the top. For this query, there's also apparently enough history indicating that searchers might be looking for images that Google returns images down at the bottom of the page.

Google has been most aggressive in adding Universal results to queries that might relate to Local searches... as place names are frequently dropped from a local queries. Images are big as well, and any pop star search is likely to bring up Image results... possibly News and Video results too. Until Google senses enough demand for plumbing videos, though, it's not likely that they'll appear in the regular serps.

At that point, to make your videos get chosen for Universal, you would need to have established good rankings on the various available video sites. YouTube seems to get the best treatment by Google, but I suspect that as audiences and metrics evolve, videos from other sites will start appearing more.

When you start adding local modifiers to your video titles, I think it's far less likely that they'll appear in Universal, but more likely that they'll rank, say, within YouTube for the specific local search.

Since producing good videos can be expensive, it may not make sense to use them to promote a local site. In any event, you definitely want to include your site's url supered over your video.

Another option, but this won't give you a Universal listing, would be to embed the video in your local site and use a descriptive title and content on your page that includes your keywords, placename, and video.

[Robert Charlton]

PS to above...

Note that a [keyword placename video] search is very unlikely for many keyword/place combinations.

[directwheels]

Hi Robert Charlton,

Thanks for input above, really appreciated it.

For videos around product names, I am now seeing my videos show up in the SERPs as universal results. These aren't very competitive terms though.

All of my videos are showing up in the 11-15th spot (second page) and I am still trying to see if they get me any traffic. The videos have links in the descriptions, which are sometimes clickable depending on the site it's hosted on, and they also have watermarks of the URL in the videos.

As I mentioned in the first post, only videos from Dailymotion or Metacafe are showing in SERPs, Youtube videos are not.

I was able to come up in the 20th place for a "Small Town Iowa Plumber" search with a video result. However, it seems that video sites are against those self promotion videos and most of them took my videos down, which is why they don't have a chance to rank. On the other hand, videos about products seem to be okay and all the video sites are leaving them up.

Hope this info is useful for others.

[Robert Charlton]

directwheels - thanks for that feedback. I'd be curious whether a second-page video does get you much traffic.

I'd think that a general "how to" video would be more likely to generate overall interest and traffic than a localized promotional piece, but it's less specifically targeted to your site. Well written "how to" text articles of general interest can be a good way for local sites to establish trust and authority for their core key phrases, even if the articles aren't localized.

It's not clear, though, how well the same tactic might work in video. Given the current state of video optimizing, most traffic will go to the video hub sites and the ranking effects are likely to be more viral (as opposed to organic). That's why it's important to have sufficient url info on your video.

Here's a thread from 2008 that discusses video sitemaps (intended to help Google find videos embedded on your own site), with some side discussion and links to topics covering other aspects of video optimization. My guess is, that hosting a video on your own site is still a long shot type approach for getting into Universal results....

Google Video Sitemaps - Anyone have experience with these?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3590214.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Google's approach to Universal results in general has been to err towards too-frequent inclusion to see if the listings get response, and then to trim these down if there's insufficient searcher click-through.

Regarding video submission services, when I last checked I found that they submitted the same title, meta data, descriptions, etc to all video and social sites. This might be a disadvantage if Google is looking for uniqueness in video listings. Uniqueness is something Google does value, eg, in text-based directories. It's hard to say whether Google looks for the same kind of uniqueness in text associated with videos.

On your own site, btw, you should post a text transcript of any embedded video on an optimized page along with the video. For organic search, the text transcript would help differentiate your own embedded version from the video as it appears on video sites, and it would of course provide food for spiders.

Edited to fix formatting

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:14 pm (utc) on Jun 24, 2010]

[tedster]

Lots of good input there, Robert,

I've heard that when you host a video yourself and also upload it to video sharing sites, it's a good idea NOT to duplicate the title. Give your own page the best, most keyword targeted version and then use a modified version for YouTube or any other video share site.

Essentially, this approach gives you two shots at the SERPs rather than just two properties that compete with each other. Your own page is more likely to generate high PR - at least until the video goes crazy viral ;) If it does, then you're getting into "Will It Blend" territory and we should always have that kind of problem.