Web Video Tips

Here are a few web video tips you may find helpful as you consider if you are ready to expand your video postings on your website.

Google loves it when a site uses YouTube for videos, but customers hate putting web videos on YouTube due to the ad overlays.

I recently ran into an issue where we were putting a video on the home page of a website in a key position that is the very first thing any visitor will see. Once loaded to YouTube and embedded in the website my first reaction was URGH look at those ads mid-stream and at the end of the video that stay up obscuring my clients work.

There are two things that you can do to prevent ads on your videos. 1.) Turn off monetization in your YouTube account so ads do not appear on your videos. 2.) Use a free service like the Basic Vimeo account.

You can watch these videos for nice instructions on how to turn off ads in YouTube. It is a 2 step process. First turn off ads and then go into the info/settings of each video travel to the monetize section and turn off for each video.  This video shows you how to turn off the pre-video ad in your channel settings. This is a nice video that explains the second process.  What is important to know is that you are in control of the monetization of your own videos. But by default, it looks like if you don’t manually turn monetization off, Google will slap ads all over the start, middle and end of your video.

Alternatively you can use Vimeo. I like the interface and like that you can customize the player. The downside is that Google loves it’s owner properties. I see YouTube videos in the search results all the time, but would be hard pressed to say that I regularly see Vimeo videos in the search results.

The choice is yours which service you’ll use, but for now, I am actually using both.

Here’s one video my client and I are working on that is now ad-free!

Come back Wednesday 1/18 to learn how to turn off the suggested videos at the end when you embed a video.

Not Making Videos? Now’s the Time to Reconsider

It's easy to get started with videos.
It’s easy to get started with videos.

With organic results being pushed down below the fold, with the shrinking space on mobile screens leaving nearly no room after ads, how can you get your website to show for organic or unpaid searches?

It is simple, use videos posted on YouTube which Google will preferentially index and show over videos posted with Flash or other video applications embedded back on your website.

The key take away on this is that YouTube is a Google property. Google loves to promote and link to content in its own network as ads can be shown and therefore it pads its own pockets. Plus Google likes and understands that users want video and so shows them mixed in with the organic results very frequently. We are a visual world!

Your YouTube video that you do to explain, illustrate, or showcase a product may be the way that new customers will find your business and enter your website.

Videos you post to YouTube do not need to be works of art, but solve a problem, talk to a need, and do not even need to be long. Just grab your smartphone and start recording. You can receive value from 20 to 30 second videos or how to videos.

I like to post these types of videos to YouTube plus archive them via the embed code back on my own website, getting double duty of new fresh content and ways for clients to view – on my site or full screen over at YouTube.

I think that for businesses struggling to get organic placement in the new no-ad-sidebar Google world that video will play a strong part in getting future traffic.