An intro to BrightEdge's next-generation solution for impactful site audits
This webinar will be able to view on March 15th, 2017.
Technical errors and unplanned site changes can severely impact user experience and organic performance. A site audit is a critical step in analyzing your website’s health and identifying, prioritizing, and fixing content issues and markup errors.
Join Boaz Ronkin, VP of Product Marketing, and Erik Newton, VP of Marketing Demand Generation, as they discuss BrightEdge ContentIQ, our revamped site audit solution, and the different applications for site auditing, including:
Videos have grown dramatically in their popularity with audiences - in 2017, an estimated 74 percent of all online traffic will be for videos. YouTube itself is the second-largest search engine, behind only Google. YouTube SEO is essential to help you succeed in your marketing efforts on this video platform. 78% of people watch at least one video a week.
Promoting a video in an email subject heading increases open rates by 19% and click-through rates by 65%, videos help customers feel confident in their purchases and they even have the power to inspire more potential customers to visit a store online or in person. Marketers should develop video content and video SEO strategies to take advantage of the interest.
Understanding the role of YouTube SEO
People generally visit YouTube because they want to be entertained or learn something new from the videos they watch - this explains the incredible popularity of all those Super Bowl videos you see passed around your Facebook feed in the days and weeks after the game. Aside from all the animal videos which seem to dominate the platform, however, there is plenty of space for brands and video SEO techniques.
YouTube has an incredibly large audience - over a billion users or 1/7th of the world's population. This means videos on the site are an opportunity to introduce new people to a brand, increasing brand awareness, and building an audience of interested potential customers. Accomplishing that requires a good strategy for YouTube SEO.
YouTube videos can also be embedded right on other social media sites by using the embedded player code. This makes it easy for viewers to watch your videos right on their feeds without having to click off and go to the YouTube site.
By embedding the videos, you can increase engagement on your other social media pages. This helps you boost your interactions with customers throughout your digital presence to build your reputation.
What should be posted for YouTube SEO
It is important to note that not every video your brand produces should be posted on YouTube. The videos on this page should be designed for a broad audience. Remember that most people coming across your channel are not arriving from a branded website. They are watching a video for entertainment or to learn, not to make a purchase.
Your video should generally be able to stand alone: it should be completely understandable and add value for viewers who are not familiar with your brand or the speaker. The company should focus on providing high-value videos that users can appreciate on their own. Videos that help users to understand complicated topics related to your industry, breakdown news events so they are understandable or put forth new theories or ideas related to your field can be very popular.
Use other types of helpful videos with educational options, such as how to’s - videos that help viewers understand how to complete certain tasks or succeed within your industry. You can even create successful video channels based around engaging storytelling surrounding your brand using YouTube SEO. Think about the example put forth by the company Old Spice. These videos tell a story about the brand and how their product works for customers in a humorous and entertaining fashion.
All of these types of videos work for YouTube SEO because they provide value even for users who are just browsing on the video platform, regardless of whether they have a connection or knowledge of the brand.
The role of YouTube SEO in your marketing efforts
In addition to boosting brand recognition and awareness, YouTube SEO can also play a more direct role in your marketing efforts. To begin, brands can drive traffic towards their YouTube channels through paid YouTube advertising. There are three types of ads available through Google TrueView video advertising:
You can select to create an ad that is played at the beginning, middle or end of a partner YouTube video. This is known as an in-stream ad.
You can create ads that are displayed in the search results for particular queries. This is called an in-search ad.
You can create an ad that appears on the YouTube watch page. This is an in-display ad.
The video developed should not be too long and it should be engaging from the first few seconds. This is particularly true for the in-stream ads, which users are often given the choice to skip after just a few seconds. The video should be oriented to the platform as well.
Remember that people are not generally on YouTube to buy, they want to learn or be entertained. That same mantra applies to ads. Educational ads that are relevant to the keywords and the business as well as ads that incorporate the human connection through testimonials tend to be successful.
There are also other types of advertising available on YouTube. For example, you can create interactive videos through CTA overlays. The overlay can contain links back to your website, making it easy for interested parties to engage more directly with your brand. Adding rich snippets to your video can help with indexing and ranking.
Finally, YouTube SEO has the potential to impact your rankings in search if you do video SEO properly. Google owns YouTube and often displays videos in relevant search results. Although video SEO rich snippets have largely been eliminated from brand platforms, for relevant queries, they do appear with YouTube results.
A well-ranked video and well done YouTube SEO can help to increase exposure even in standard SERPs. A popular video that inspires many people to click over to the brand website can also indirectly help to raise the rankings of your site itself. The additional traffic, particularly from these engaged users who have already expressed an interest in your business, can help improve your site metrics for the search algorithm. YouTube SEO also allows you to include links in the comment section of videos, so taking advantage of this opportunity can make it even easier for interested viewers to click over to your site.
Making your YouTube channel a success
Creating a successful YouTube channel requires a strategy that will get the videos noticed, including YouTube SEO. Like any other aspect of online marketing, before you get started, you need to have an idea of where you want to go.
Know what you want your channel to rank for and the types of videos that are most likely to be appreciated by the intended audience. Keep in mind that YouTube success is not built upon one-hit-wonders. Video channels that attract large followings and convert to revenue for brands are the ones that continue to produce quality video after quality video.
Digital marketing as a whole has been shifting strongly towards the value of quality over quantity. With the intense competition that marketers face - an estimated 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute - poor quality videos not only do not attract the desired positive attention, but they can also hurt the brand perception as a whole.
Your goal should be to continuously produce quality, engaging videos and maintain video SEO. When someone finishes one video and clicks through to your channel page, they should be met with several options for more, equally helpful and valuable videos. This is a helpful YouTube SEO tip that will build channel followers. Creating these successful videos requires creativity and a keen understanding of what visitors want to see.
Get started with the length of the video. The ideal duration of a YouTube video is estimated to be 2 minutes and 54 seconds. This allows you enough time to engage and enlighten your visitors without stretching on so long that you lose their attention.
Make sure your videos start strong. You will have about 10 seconds to grab a viewer’s attention. You will then lose 33 percent of visitors by 30 seconds, 45 percent by 1 minute and 60 percent by 2 minutes. You want to maximize your time to maximize your impact with YouTube SEO.
Select the right thumbnail. The thumbnail, along with the title, is generally one of the deciding factors for viewers when choosing a video and part of YouTube SEO. To find the right frame, you want to focus on conveying the content and emotions in the video. Eye contact can be a powerful motivator, so selecting a thumbnail that includes the subject looking at the viewer can be a good choice.
Make sure your video is in the best format. Using the wrong format can result in the video not appearing as crisp and clear, and thus less engaging which can hurt video SEO. The best video format for YouTube SEO is generally MPEG-4 and you want to keep your resolution around 1280 x 720 (16:9 HD) and 640 x 480 (4:3 SD) when possible.
Optimize the video to rank well. Like any other type of online content, you want to create material around consumer interests. This means uncovering meaningful topics and keywords and creating videos that answer these needs. Use the keywords in the title and description of the video to implement video SEO tactics.
You also want to use tags on your videos to properly use YouTube SEO. These tags should include your keywords as well as the video categories, information about the content, and any significant insight about the creation of the video or the people in it. To execute video SEO for exposure, make sure to target your demand by building the following assets with searchable keywords, topics, and context:
The video Title
The video Description
A valid link to related information on your website
The video tags
Use playlists to get serialized recommendations between your videos
Drive up watch time, which is a YouTube SEO ranking factor
How to know if your efforts are successful
As you implement your video SEO strategy, you do need to make sure that you are monitoring your progress to see how well your efforts on YouTube are succeeding and what is having the biggest positive impact. There are a number of different ways you can gauge your YouTube SEO success.
Branded Traffic and Share of Voice
One of the primary goals for many for a YouTube SEO strategy is to increase brand awareness. Monitoring part of video SEO is looking at your branded traffic and your share of voice is a great way to see growth in this area.
Referral Traffic from YouTube SEO
Keep in mind that the number of users who click from a YouTube video through to a brand website or YouTube channel page will be very small compared to the total number of people who watch and enjoy your video. At the same time, monitoring video SEO growth in this area will be a good indicator if your videos are finding the right audience and if they appreciate what you have to say.
Leverage Robust YouTube SEO Analytics
Here is an index of the analytics offered for playlists and each video. One example is insights into watch time, which is an important measure of YouTube SEO engagement for ranking. Below are the daily watch time and views stats followed by audience demographic information.
Currently, the vast majority of video thumbnails showing up in Google SERPs are from YouTube SEO, so brands need to extend their video SEO efforts to YouTube and master YouTube SEO to capture more organic traffic. BrightEdge customers can see reports on the blended or universal video positions that they and their competitors control in the SERPs, which allows them critical tactical insight and visibility.
YouTube is a powerful tool in the hands of experienced marketers and especially if they do YouTube SEO. The video platform has grown in popularity as people have come to realize the value of entertainment and learning opportunities through videos. Brands that learn how to capitalize this organic channel can further grow their traffic and results.
BrightEdge Talks Wave of Organic Innovation for ContentIQ & HyperLocal
SAN MATEO, CA – February 28, 2017 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise organic search and content performance, today launched ContentIQ and HyperLocal, innovations designed to drive marketers’ organic search revenue conversions. As search and content marketing disciplines converge it has become clear that marketers need to maximize the value of technology and the insights derived to deliver both compelling content and a great user experience.
Google’s desktop and mobile SERP results are constantly changing in line with changing consumer behavior. And according to new BrightEdge research 76% of Google search results show different results on mobile devices compared to desktop. This is because content which is believed to be optimized for high rankings on desktops may in fact rank differently or poorly on smartphones. Evolving organic search practices for both desktop and mobile, in line with Google change, is essential to modern day search marketing success.
“In a world where visibility and performance are keys to marketing success, BrightEdge ContentIQ and HyperLocal innovations help search marketers stay ahead of the changing search and content marketing landscape”, said Boaz Ronkin, VP of Product Marketing at BrightEdge. “This is especially important in a mobile-first world where mobile-friendly site structure and mobile specific content are essential for increasing traffic, conversions, and revenue”.
Introducing BrightEdge ContentIQ
As companies adapt to a mobile-first world, they must create web experiences that are responsive and driven by rich experiences. However, without understanding or adhering to SEO best practices, content creators can inadvertently cause technical errors, duplicate content, or orphan pages. These issues severely impact organic search performance resulting in decreased traffic, conversions, and revenue.
BrightEdge ContentIQ, a revolutionary site auditing solution, minimizes revenue loss attributable to poor user experience and organic performance caused by site errors. BrightEdge ContentIQ is the only solution that delivers a comprehensive website audit natively within an SEO platform.
“ContentIQ represents a tremendous leap forward in content auditing for BrightEdge customers. It enables you to monitor site performance in an intuitive interface, helping to identify and prioritize areas of opportunity. Capabilities like crawling JavaScript-rendered pages, trended reporting, and fully customizable crawl settings make it easier than ever to drive actionable improvements that yield the biggest impact for our site.” Matt Saunders, Director, SEO, Resolution Media
Built for the mobile web era, BrightEdge ContentIQ crawls and inspects progressive web applications, single page applications, JavaScript frameworks, schemas, and social tags.
ContentIQ helps identify, prioritize, fix, and monitor critical site errors – all within a single workflow
BrightEdge ContentIQ is fully integrated into the BrightEdge platform and integrates seamlessly with other key platform innovations StoryBuilder and Anomaly Detection
BrightEdge customers can adjust audits to match their organization’s unique digital standards with BrightEdge ContentIQ. Customers can choose to inspect just a few sections of their websites or crawl the domain for hundreds of millions of pages.
“ContentIQ empowers us to detect, prioritize, and monitor for new issues before they impact our revenue. As an integral part of the BrightEdge platform, it’s a best-in-class enterprise solution, giving us peace of mind while allowing us to focus on growth.” Jason Stevens, Director, SEO and Program Management, Food Network
Introducing BrightEdge HyperLocal Enhancements
Google has taken the next step in providing the most relevant results to consumers – contextualizing SERPs to small geographical locations. Now, the same search query performed in nearby cities could result in different SERP experiences across different devices. According to BrightEdge research mobile results in local SERPs can vary dramatically – mobile results in San Francisco vs. mobile results in NYC are 68% different.
Using an aggregated view to assess organic performance, marketers can get a skewed view of how their customers experience search locally. To prioritize SEO and content marketing investments effectively, they need a higher resolution picture of where and when customers see their brands in organic search results.
BrightEdge’s HyperLocal enhancements enables search marketers to identify topics and understand how content performs in more than 68K local search engines so marketers can track organic performance down to specific locations, pinpoint search demand and performance across the US and around the world.
By extending the volume and granularity of search insights, BrightEdge is the only search and content solution that allows customers to understand how topics and content perform for the specific locations that are most critical to their business success.
HyperLocal capabilities within the BrightEdge platform now allow customers to understand how topics and content perform for searches conducted in every corner of the globe.
With BrightEdge’s HyperLocal enhancements customers can track topic and content performance for more than 32K US and 36K non-US city search engines. HyperLocal even supports the ability to track custom locations, like individual retail store addresses, to get an even more granular view of organic performance
BrightEdge’s HyperLocal enhancements follow the recent successful introduction of BrightEdge Intent Signal, which helps marketers prioritize topics that have greater organic opportunity to increase brand visibility above and below the fold
About BrightEdge
BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise organic search and content performance, empowers marketers to transform online content into business results such as traffic, conversions, and revenue. The BrightEdge S3 platform is powered by a sophisticated deep learning engine, and is the only company capable of web-wide, real-time measurement of content engagement across all digital channels, including search, social, and mobile. BrightEdge’s 1,500+ customers include global brands such as 3M, Microsoft, and Nike, as well as 57 of the Fortune 100. The company has eight offices worldwide and is headquartered in Foster City, California.
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Safeguard Your Website Against Errors with Comprehensive Site Auditing
An intro to BrightEdge's next-generation solution for impactful site audits
Safeguard Your Website Against Errors with Comprehensive Site Auditing
An intro to BrightEdge's next-generation solution for impactful site audits
Available on-demand now
Technical errors and unplanned site changes can severely impact user experience and organic performance. A site audit is a critical step in assessing your website’s health and identifying, prioritizing, and fixing content issues and markup errors.
Join Boaz Ronkin, VP of Product Marketing, and Erik Newton, VP of Marketing Demand Generation, as they discuss BrightEdge ContentIQ, our revamped site audit solution, and the different applications for site auditing, including:
"ContentIQ empowers us to detect, prioritize, and monitor for new issues before they impact our revenue. As an integral part of the BrightEdge platform, it's a best-in-class enterprise solution, giving us peace of mind while allowing us to focus on growth."
Technical errors and unplanned site changes can severely impact user experience and organic performance. A site audit is a critical step in assessing your website’s health and identifying, prioritizing, and fixing content issues and markup errors.
BrightEdge ContentIQ is an advanced site auditing solution, built for the mobile era. It minimizes revenue loss attributable to bad user experience and poor SERP visibility by enabling marketers to catch, prioritize, and fix website errors and issues before they impact site visitors.
Address audit issues faster with native platform integration
Ensure critical content stays SEO healthy
Quickly identify important website pages that contain errors to ensure your content remains search engine- and visitor-friendly. Browse total number of errors by defined page groups or the existing site structure, and apply filters by types of errors or by web folders, to pinpoint and address errors quickly.
Incorporate audit reports into StoryBuilder dashboards
Pull audit reports into your StoryBuilder dashboards to trend audits and visualize the impact of errors and error resolution on business results.
Get notified quickly with Anomaly Detection integration
Set up audit error thresholds to be notified quickly when new audit errors are reported.
Pinpoint site errors with best-in-class crawls and audits
Crawl and audit dynamic content and other elements used in today’s web experiences, including progressive web applications, single-page applications, schemas, and social tags.
Customize your site crawl
Adjust crawl according to your needs – from just a few pages to hundreds of millions of pages of your website. Customize crawl settings to comply with your organization’s digital standards, including content governance, web accessibility standards, and website architecture.
"ContentIQ represents a tremendous leap forward in content auditing for BrightEdge customers. It enables you to monitor site performance in an intuitive interface, helping to identify and prioritize areas of opportunity. Capabilities like crawling JavaScript-rendered pages, trended reporting, and fully customizable crawl settings make it easier than ever to drive actionable improvements that yield the biggest impact for our site."
Enhance user experience and organic performance with site audits
Site migration
Perform an audit before or after your new site goes live, to discover missing content or broken links that may have occurred in the process.
Web governance
Ensure that your site is compliant with organizational brand guidelines, content rules, and naming conventions.
Cross-team QA
Conduct ongoing site audits to ensure that newly created content is optimized for search and to monitor that web development requests have been completed.
Recovery from a penalty
Alongside ongoing SEO, get a baseline understanding of site health to identify the errors that may be obstructing performance.
Pricing
Customize crawl to extract pricing listed, to ensure consistent and accurate pricing levels and methodologies across your site.
International expansion
Perform QA on international pages – such as hreflang tags to ensure the right versions of the site are displayed for international audiences.
User experience
Identify links driving to 404 pages or 500 errors, to redirect site visitors to active pages and ensure a better user experience.
Social engagement
Ensure that sites are properly tagged according to Facebook Open Graph standards.
Providing customizable settings, best-in-class crawl technology, and integration within an SEO platform, ContentIQ gives you peace of mind as you identify, target, fix, and monitor the site violations that most threaten traffic, conversions, and revenue.