Lawyer video downloads will be free
As with lawyer blogs, lawyers will become big producers of Internet video. Though some lawyers want to charge for downloads of educational legal videos, they'd be bucking how the Internet works.
Further support of content being free comes from Monday's New York Times reporting that 'Free Content Dominates Video Downloads'
More than four times as many households downloaded videos from file-sharing networks as they did from centralized services like iTunes in the third quarter of 2006.
Downloads from file-sharing networks are generally free, and have long occurred outside the control of copyright holders. The cost of for-pay downloads, about 90 percent of which go through iTunes, generally includes a licensing fee.
I'm not saying lawyers will forgo copyright protection of their videos, just that their videos will be available for free downloading.
Thanks to Kevin at LexBlog
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Online Video Concepts, LLC becomes Corporate Sponsor of the DuPage County Bar Association
Online Video Concepts, LLC becomes Corporate Sponsor of the DuPage County Bar Association www.dcba.org
14 Best Practices and Tips for Video Optimization SEO
Video optimization as part of your search engine optimization efforts can be a great way for you to expose your brand to users who may have otherwise not been familar with your brand, your product(s) or your service(s). With the launch of Universal Search from Google, you can expect to see more and more video results occupying the search engine results that are served up by Google.
Marketers and site owners are continuing to experiment with video as a means of intercepting their target markets. As a result, we are seeing more video driven content surface on the Web. Just how popular is video content on the Web? Well depending on the study or data you review, the results vary.
The thing is, as is the case with a lot of the content on the Web, a lot of the video out there is useless and lacking in informative content. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great "How To" video's out there, but there are a lot of video footage that is really just noise and an interuption to those of use looking for useful, relevant information. According to websiteoptimization.com, the growth of online video has been quite explosive.
Site Unique Visitors (1000s)
(June 2007) Year-over-year growth
1. YouTube 51,378 162%
2. Google Video 17,759 137%
3. AOL Video 15,687 114%
4. Yahoo! Video 15,473 405%
5. vids.myspace.com 15,281 69%
6. MSN Video 11,967 8%
With this type of growth, the need for online video optimization is a must. As a result, we have compiled a few best practices that you should consider when looking to optimize your online video.
Video Optimization Best Practices and Tips
Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information. Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too. Videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience. Save the viewer the trouble and don't just upload a video for the sake of uploading a video.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1: Give your video a Catchy Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site. One way to get users to view your video is to give it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand.
Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #2: Optimize your video for Important Key Phrases - You might want to optimize your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your video with these terms, consider naming the file name of the video with these terms in mind.
Provide Transcripts of your Videos - Good old HTML content is still a favorite with the search engines. If you want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank. Surround your videos with onpage copy that can be indexed by the search engines.
Keep Your Videos to five minutes or less - there is nothing worse than a boring video that goes on an on. If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tag each accordingly. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, it also keeps the user looking for more.
Make use of a Video Sitemap - For video that is native to your own website, make sure that users and search engine spiders can find your video content. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap on your site. Use important keywords in the anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #3: Tag Your Videos - tag your videos with key phrases that are reflective of the content.
Brand your Video with your Logo - Video is a great tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take advantage of this by incorporating your brand in your videos.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #4: Remember Inbound Linking Factors - Link to videos using important keywords in anchor text.
Offer the Option to Embed Your Video - allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #5: Add Descriptive Meta Data - optimize your video for relevant keywords and include a keyword rich description of your video content.
Allow Users to Rate your Video - videos that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to favorite and save. You can bet that the search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos.
Syndicate Your Video - Submit your video to RSS.
Video optimization is becoming more important as mainstream aspect to search engine optimization. The best way to optimize your video content is to think about the user and who you want to engage with your video. Be smart about it, don't just post a video for the sake of posting a video. Consider your audience, their language and their needs.
Marketers and site owners are continuing to experiment with video as a means of intercepting their target markets. As a result, we are seeing more video driven content surface on the Web. Just how popular is video content on the Web? Well depending on the study or data you review, the results vary.
The thing is, as is the case with a lot of the content on the Web, a lot of the video out there is useless and lacking in informative content. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great "How To" video's out there, but there are a lot of video footage that is really just noise and an interuption to those of use looking for useful, relevant information. According to websiteoptimization.com, the growth of online video has been quite explosive.
Site Unique Visitors (1000s)
(June 2007) Year-over-year growth
1. YouTube 51,378 162%
2. Google Video 17,759 137%
3. AOL Video 15,687 114%
4. Yahoo! Video 15,473 405%
5. vids.myspace.com 15,281 69%
6. MSN Video 11,967 8%
With this type of growth, the need for online video optimization is a must. As a result, we have compiled a few best practices that you should consider when looking to optimize your online video.
Video Optimization Best Practices and Tips
Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information. Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too. Videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience. Save the viewer the trouble and don't just upload a video for the sake of uploading a video.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1: Give your video a Catchy Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site. One way to get users to view your video is to give it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand.
Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #2: Optimize your video for Important Key Phrases - You might want to optimize your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your video with these terms, consider naming the file name of the video with these terms in mind.
Provide Transcripts of your Videos - Good old HTML content is still a favorite with the search engines. If you want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank. Surround your videos with onpage copy that can be indexed by the search engines.
Keep Your Videos to five minutes or less - there is nothing worse than a boring video that goes on an on. If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tag each accordingly. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, it also keeps the user looking for more.
Make use of a Video Sitemap - For video that is native to your own website, make sure that users and search engine spiders can find your video content. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap on your site. Use important keywords in the anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #3: Tag Your Videos - tag your videos with key phrases that are reflective of the content.
Brand your Video with your Logo - Video is a great tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take advantage of this by incorporating your brand in your videos.
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #4: Remember Inbound Linking Factors - Link to videos using important keywords in anchor text.
Offer the Option to Embed Your Video - allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing
SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #5: Add Descriptive Meta Data - optimize your video for relevant keywords and include a keyword rich description of your video content.
Allow Users to Rate your Video - videos that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to favorite and save. You can bet that the search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos.
Syndicate Your Video - Submit your video to RSS.
Video optimization is becoming more important as mainstream aspect to search engine optimization. The best way to optimize your video content is to think about the user and who you want to engage with your video. Be smart about it, don't just post a video for the sake of posting a video. Consider your audience, their language and their needs.
How to Optimize Videos on your Website.
by Eric Enge
This article will outline tips for optimizing your video files to get traffic to your web site. Video search optimization is in its infancy, but it's growing rapidly. As more and more users get broadband access, video's usage level will grow even further. In addition, more and more web sites are simply shoving video in your face. For example on NFL.com, video content dominates the site.
The first thing to realize is that video optimization is still in the stone ages, for one simple reason. Generally speaking, the video search engines can't look inside the video to tell what the content is. For that reason, they rely on other on page factors, the metadata within the video file itself, and inbound links and anchor text to determine what the video is about.
Note that there are exceptions to the statement that video search search engines can't look inside the video. They can do some basic things like flesh detection to identify adult content, face detection, detecting on screen text, etc. However, you can't count on this to help you with your optimization efforts.
There are 3 different scenarios for video optimization. It's worthwhile to do all three. Here are some steps relating to each scenario (note that steps common to all 3 scenarios are covered further below):
1. Video search engines that crawl your site: This is the scenario where you host the video on your own site. An example of a video search engine that will crawl your site to find videos is Truveo. While this type of search engine represents a small percentage of your total market opportunity, they are still worth pursuing. They provide a variety of optimization opportunities, including:
• The video file itself. This will usually accomodate a title, a description/summary, and some keywords / tags. Note that this is only useful for those video search sites, such as Truveo, that look at this data, which is currently a small percentage of the video universe. On the other hand, entering this data does not take very long.
• The web page on your site where the user can access, or read about, the video. This is normal HTML we are talking about, so you can customize the content to your heart's content. Title, keywords, meta description, and on page text, etc. Pay particular attention to the on page text as you can write a nice, keyword-rich and compelling description of the video.
• Keep your video files in one directory. This makes it easier for the crawler to find them all.
• Stay away from flash video players. Flash is still not search engine friendly.
• Make use of a Video Sitemap. This will make it easier for the crawlers to find your videos.
2. Video Sites that accept RSS or MRSS feeds: This is the scenario where you submit an RSS or MRSS feed to a third party site. Examples of sites that accept such feeds are: Yahoo Video and Blinkx. The basic approach to optimizing for this type of site is to enter a title, description, keywords, thumbnails, a category, and a full transcript. A full transcript is a really good way to provide good fodder for a video search site to chew on.
3. Video Upload Sites: These are video search engines that require or allow you to upload the video to them. Examples include: YouTube, AOL Video, and Yahoo Video. There are opportunities to optimize these videos as well. Use the following steps:
• For these sites, you will need to enter in the metadata again when you get there. This will include a title, keywords, and a description.
• Link back to related content and videos on your site. Make sure you are getting qualified traffic in return for your providing video.
Other Video Optimization Tips
1. Create compelling content. This is the most important tip in this entire article. If the content is not compelling, then the users will not flock to it. There is no room for gamesmanship here. To go viral, people need to love it.
2. Develop videos that reinforces the message of your brand. It's great to have a video go viral, but will it actually help you if it does?
3. Make sure you include the word video on a regular basis throughout any metadata, as many user searches include the word and it will increase your chances of showing up on those queries. Of course, don't go hog wild with it. Note that YouTube has a title tag display limit of 62 characters, so don't go beyond that.
4. Pick a preferred format, such as .mov, .avi, or .wmv. There is no real win in offering the file in multiple formats from a video SEO perspective, but it will be useful to users who want to pick a preferred format. So, just make one of the versions visible to the search engines, and offer them all to users.
5. Keep the length reasonable (5 minutes or less). If the video is too long, you will run the risk of boring the user. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but if you exceed 5 minutes be very certain that most viewers will be able to remain engaged.
6. Give your video a keyword rich, but catchy title. The title is the biggest factor in convincing a user to view the video.
7. Make good use of the thumbnails to help users decide which video to watch. Users like to watch a quick snapshot so they can decide if they want to invest their time in the full video. Unfortunately, the way you generate thumbnails differs from site to site. But it's an important enough factor in getting people to view your video that it's worth going through the process for each site you upload to.
8. Allow Users to rate your video. Search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos. This is also a crucial part of "going viral", as potential viewers are very attracted to highly ranked videos.
9. Commercial content should include a «watermark» to indicate origin. This will help if your video goes viral, and is copied to multiple sites, because it will still carry your branding message and/or site information.
10. Use keywords in the filename and URL. Video search engines place a fair amount of weight on these in the world of video. Avoid using stop words in the filename, such as "the", "and", etc.
11. Use appropriate keywords in the link text for the file. Keyword rich anchor text carries a lot of weight.
Publicizing Your Video
Here are some basic tips that will assist in the promotion of your video:
1. Put your video everywhere. Exposure is king.
2. This includes publicizing your multimedia files with appropriate RSS or MRSS feeds.
3. Use social bookmarking tools that will help in the visibility of the videos. This works regardless of promotional medium. Social bookmarking sites can help your video go viral.
4. Offer the option to embed your video in other people's sites. This really encourages people to spread your video around.
5. End the video with a send to a friend option. Give them some incentive to help you spread the word.
This article will outline tips for optimizing your video files to get traffic to your web site. Video search optimization is in its infancy, but it's growing rapidly. As more and more users get broadband access, video's usage level will grow even further. In addition, more and more web sites are simply shoving video in your face. For example on NFL.com, video content dominates the site.
The first thing to realize is that video optimization is still in the stone ages, for one simple reason. Generally speaking, the video search engines can't look inside the video to tell what the content is. For that reason, they rely on other on page factors, the metadata within the video file itself, and inbound links and anchor text to determine what the video is about.
Note that there are exceptions to the statement that video search search engines can't look inside the video. They can do some basic things like flesh detection to identify adult content, face detection, detecting on screen text, etc. However, you can't count on this to help you with your optimization efforts.
There are 3 different scenarios for video optimization. It's worthwhile to do all three. Here are some steps relating to each scenario (note that steps common to all 3 scenarios are covered further below):
1. Video search engines that crawl your site: This is the scenario where you host the video on your own site. An example of a video search engine that will crawl your site to find videos is Truveo. While this type of search engine represents a small percentage of your total market opportunity, they are still worth pursuing. They provide a variety of optimization opportunities, including:
• The video file itself. This will usually accomodate a title, a description/summary, and some keywords / tags. Note that this is only useful for those video search sites, such as Truveo, that look at this data, which is currently a small percentage of the video universe. On the other hand, entering this data does not take very long.
• The web page on your site where the user can access, or read about, the video. This is normal HTML we are talking about, so you can customize the content to your heart's content. Title, keywords, meta description, and on page text, etc. Pay particular attention to the on page text as you can write a nice, keyword-rich and compelling description of the video.
• Keep your video files in one directory. This makes it easier for the crawler to find them all.
• Stay away from flash video players. Flash is still not search engine friendly.
• Make use of a Video Sitemap. This will make it easier for the crawlers to find your videos.
2. Video Sites that accept RSS or MRSS feeds: This is the scenario where you submit an RSS or MRSS feed to a third party site. Examples of sites that accept such feeds are: Yahoo Video and Blinkx. The basic approach to optimizing for this type of site is to enter a title, description, keywords, thumbnails, a category, and a full transcript. A full transcript is a really good way to provide good fodder for a video search site to chew on.
3. Video Upload Sites: These are video search engines that require or allow you to upload the video to them. Examples include: YouTube, AOL Video, and Yahoo Video. There are opportunities to optimize these videos as well. Use the following steps:
• For these sites, you will need to enter in the metadata again when you get there. This will include a title, keywords, and a description.
• Link back to related content and videos on your site. Make sure you are getting qualified traffic in return for your providing video.
Other Video Optimization Tips
1. Create compelling content. This is the most important tip in this entire article. If the content is not compelling, then the users will not flock to it. There is no room for gamesmanship here. To go viral, people need to love it.
2. Develop videos that reinforces the message of your brand. It's great to have a video go viral, but will it actually help you if it does?
3. Make sure you include the word video on a regular basis throughout any metadata, as many user searches include the word and it will increase your chances of showing up on those queries. Of course, don't go hog wild with it. Note that YouTube has a title tag display limit of 62 characters, so don't go beyond that.
4. Pick a preferred format, such as .mov, .avi, or .wmv. There is no real win in offering the file in multiple formats from a video SEO perspective, but it will be useful to users who want to pick a preferred format. So, just make one of the versions visible to the search engines, and offer them all to users.
5. Keep the length reasonable (5 minutes or less). If the video is too long, you will run the risk of boring the user. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but if you exceed 5 minutes be very certain that most viewers will be able to remain engaged.
6. Give your video a keyword rich, but catchy title. The title is the biggest factor in convincing a user to view the video.
7. Make good use of the thumbnails to help users decide which video to watch. Users like to watch a quick snapshot so they can decide if they want to invest their time in the full video. Unfortunately, the way you generate thumbnails differs from site to site. But it's an important enough factor in getting people to view your video that it's worth going through the process for each site you upload to.
8. Allow Users to rate your video. Search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos. This is also a crucial part of "going viral", as potential viewers are very attracted to highly ranked videos.
9. Commercial content should include a «watermark» to indicate origin. This will help if your video goes viral, and is copied to multiple sites, because it will still carry your branding message and/or site information.
10. Use keywords in the filename and URL. Video search engines place a fair amount of weight on these in the world of video. Avoid using stop words in the filename, such as "the", "and", etc.
11. Use appropriate keywords in the link text for the file. Keyword rich anchor text carries a lot of weight.
Publicizing Your Video
Here are some basic tips that will assist in the promotion of your video:
1. Put your video everywhere. Exposure is king.
2. This includes publicizing your multimedia files with appropriate RSS or MRSS feeds.
3. Use social bookmarking tools that will help in the visibility of the videos. This works regardless of promotional medium. Social bookmarking sites can help your video go viral.
4. Offer the option to embed your video in other people's sites. This really encourages people to spread your video around.
5. End the video with a send to a friend option. Give them some incentive to help you spread the word.
Why you should have video on your website.
According to comScore, nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March 2008, viewing a total of 11.5 billion online videos during the month. However, the average YouTube video receives only 100 views a year. This makes optimizing video for YouTube one of the biggest opportunities in the fast-changing and complex world of search. This session will look at how video search engine optimization (VSEO) has become the most important new use of search engine optimization today.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
New Videos released
Online Video Concepts has recently released 2 new videos.
Visit our website to view them. www.onlinevideoconcepts.com
Visit our website to view them. www.onlinevideoconcepts.com
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