1. Popular YouTube videos appear at the top of Google search results pages (SERPS) alongside standard website listings so it’s quite easy to understand that if you have a popular video in YouTube, titled with your relevant keywords, then it could get you an extra spot in Google search results alongside your main website. The downside is that this traffic will go straight to YouTube so you have the job of ensuring that the video viewer knows your website address and decides to go and visit it for more information. In a way this isn’t an SEO benefit to your site, more a way of grabbing an extra position and keeping a competitor off of the search results.

2. If you create several videos and your own keyword branded YouTube channel to house them all, then you can benefit from the placement of a back-link to your main website on your channel page (a little like the Twitter profile back-link benefit discussed in Part 1). However, creating YouTube videos just for the benefit of an extra back link to help your search engine optimisation probably isn’t a good use of your time and money unless you know you can create a fantastically popular video channel that everybody will link to – and boost the channel’s Google PageRank score.

3. Google likes YouTube embedded videos in content – don’t ask me why this is, but Google seems to give web pages that hold embedded video content a higher position in the results. Bizarrely this means that you don’t need to create the video but simply embed useful videos that you find relevant to your audience into your website. Of the three reasons for using YouTube with SEO in mind, this is probably the most effective and requires the least amount of effort. Of course the ideal is to combine all three ideas and embed your own YouTube videos into your web pages.

Optimising your videos within YouTube itself is something quite different but does impact on ‘1’ above – since only a popular video makes its way into the Google results. Therefore you need to consider the following factors when uploading a new video:

1. Make your video informative, interesting and snappy ( 5 minutes or less).
2. Give it an optimised title (using your target search terms and website name) e.g. How to save money on car rentals – car-rentals.co.uk.
3. Optimise your video description. Include keyword based informative content in the description (more info) of your video and link to your website from it – ideally do this in the first line – to appear in the main YouTube descriptor.
4. Ensure that your keyword tags are relevant and contain most of the search terms you used in your title and description. As with SEO try and avoid keyword stuffing.
5. On your main website aim to create hyperlinks to your YouTube video URL containing keyword-rich anchor text.
6. Watermark the video with your URL and use an interesting freeze frame shot.
7. Create and customize your own YouTube channel using search terms to create a keyword friendly URL. Consider the creation of multiple channels for multiple niches.
8. YouTube’s internal site search factors in other rules including the video’s rating, total views, how many times the video has been favourite. The age of the video is also a factor because new videos tend to appear more highly to keep YouTube looking fresh.
9. Ask all your friends to vote and view your video, share it on your Facebook profile page to help with video ranking.
10. Post your videos towards the end of the week, weekends are YouTube’s busiest days (for a B2C audience anyway).

That about covers search engine optimisation and YouTube, both the indirect benefits to your main SEO strategy and also the methods of optimising your videos within YouTube’s own search results. I’d really like to be selling the virtues of this hyped up video technology but personally I’ve only really found it useful for showing clips of the Oompa Loompas and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to my 2 year old daughter…

‘Web 2.0’ is defined in Wikipedia as ‘the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users’. It is by that definition that I say it should be entered into wisely by a B2B publisher – dipping a toe in the water of user commenting to see what might happen is probably the best idea before embarking on an expensive website development project.

In my opinion there are some core factors which when evaluated can tell us whether Web 2.0 functions will be successful on a website… or just sit there redundant making the website look even more devoid of life than if did prior to the supplementary ‘comment here’ calls to action. I call my theory the ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ and it is based on my experiences with different publishing clients, what I see on web platforms and what I have discussed with my peers at numerous conferences during the past year.

There are six factors which when entered into ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ will tell you whether there is a poor or good chance of Web 2.0 functionality take up on a site, these are:

a) Traditional Community Spirit (Score 1-5)
b) Passion for Day Job (Score 1-5)
c) Daily Reader Isolation (Score 1-5)
d) Reader Ego / Vanity (Score 1-5)
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access Per Reader? (Score 1-5)
f) Competitive / Secretive Vertical (Score 1-10)

These scores are entered into the following success equation: e((a+b+c+d)-f)

‘Traditional Community Spirit’ (a) usually a historic ‘community’ vibe and can be influenced by external factors such as government legislation, economic and environmental factors which increase bonding where a body of people can use social tools to unite against a perceived attack on their businesses or trade.

‘Passion for Day Job’ (b) is there from the outset, white collar workers are more like to be passionate about their jobs than blue collar (but both equally passionate about ’social’ topics – hobbies & sport etc.).

Daily Reader Isolation (c) varies – often a mix within an industry sector where independents (home workers and SMEs) seek a common group, whereas corporate environments offer ideas sharing internally.

Reader Ego / Vanity (d) is probably an offshoot of (b) – more passionate areas see more individuals seeking to raise their own profiles

Hours of Daily Internet Access Per Reader? (e) – the longer somebody is sat in front of the Internet the greater the chance they may spare a moment for a comment on an article given other factors (a,b,c,d,f)

Competitive / Secretive Vertical (f) - a strong influencer of Web 2.0 participation because it can override all other factors. Money is the vital ingredient in business and nobody wants to give away a secret or get fired for sharing company information. Equally nobody really wants to help a competitor to reach a decision which might make them a more difficult rival. In this sense it is in B2B that Web 2.0 is the most unlikely to flourish unless among salespeople, SMEs and job seekers using networking tools to their advantage.

After scoring the various factors of ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ for a business sector and calculating using the formula e((a+b+c+d)-f) the resulting score will tell you whether it is worth considering a web project. Anything over 25 is probably worth trialing, over 50 and you’re most likely onto a winner.

Here are three example calculations:

Road Sweepers
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 1
b) Passion for Subject? 1
c) Daily Isolation? 5
d) Ego / Vanity? 1
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 1
f) Competitive & Secretive? 1

1((1+1+5+1)-1) = 7: Web 2.0 FAILURE

Farmers
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 5
b) Passion for Subject? 5
c) Daily Isolation? 5
d) Ego / Vanity? 1
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 2
f) Competitive & Secretive? 1

2((5+5+5+1)-1) = 30: Web 2.0 SUCCESS

Students & Academics
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 5
b) Passion for Subject? 5
c) Daily Isolation? 2
d) Ego / Vanity? 5
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 5
f) Competitive & Secretive? 3

5((5+5+2+5)-3) = 70: Web 2.0 BIG SUCCESS

Daily newspapers have a mix of all people and will publish a variety of topics from business to social, some will generate interest and some will not. According to a speaker from The Guardian I saw last week (Tom Turcan) they get 100,000 comments a month posted online. At face value this sounds like a lot but I’d guess that probably half came from unique visitors – taking us down to 50,000 commenting individuals, from a pool of 18 million unique visitors (0.27%). This is about the same as average click through rates on a single banner advert, and given that most sites have multiple banners per page this makes Web 2.0 commenting far less of a runaway success at present than all the hype suggests.

PESKETT’S POSTING PREDICTOR

“Anything over 25 is probably worth trialing, over 50 and you’re most likely onto a winner.”