St Louis Web Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘videos’

Flickr has become one of the most popular image sharing sites and currently hosts more than 4 billion images. Flickr is such an easy way to store photos, share them with family and friends, and even enhance traffic to your website.

How does Flickr drive traffic to my site?

Just like any other form of social media, Flickr is a great tool that sends traffic exactly where you direct it. Placing images on Flickr can be just as beneficial as uploading videos to YouTube. However, just like your YouTube videos, blogs, and tags, uploading images to Flickr is only beneficial if you optimize your images.

How do you optimize images for Flickr?

• Give your image a descriptive title.
• After you upload your photos, be sure to add tags. Tags are the keywords that describe your image. Be sure to use tags that you think people are searching for.
• Give a quality description with searched keywords. Be sure to always begin the description with your sites URL. This is an easy way to remind viewers where to go next.
• Create thematic sets. Try to organize your photos in to the proper set so there are even more contextual clues provided to the search engine crawlers.

Seems simple right? That’s because it is. Flickr provides you with the space you need to upload your photos and provide the tools for optimization. Be sure to check your Google Analytics Account and see just how many visitors you start getting from Flickr.

YouTube… Many of us think of “Charlie Bit My Finger”, “Evolution of Dance”, and other hilarious homemade videos created simply for entertainment. But, in this ever changing world of social media, YouTube is now another source of marketing that can be used as a tool to advance your business.  However, just like any other form of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs), YouTube is only considered effective if it is used properly. Here are some practices that should be followed when creating and optimizing your YouTube videos.

• Videos should be short, sweet, and to the point. Unlike the traditional, specific to entertainment YouTube videos, ones that are created for your business should be direct and informative. Viewers will not want to spend more than a few minutes viewing what you have to offer and desire instant gratification, answers now! Also, longer videos lead to longer upload times, which no one wants to wait around for.
• Save your video as a search friendly name. Just like a URL, you don’t want to save video files as 58756-apx.mov. Save it as something that actually describes your video and use some meaningful keywords.
• Comment and allow comments. Similar to Google Ranking, the more interaction you have with other users the higher you will rank in YouTube optimization. This means watch other videos, comment, subscribe, and make channels and friends. The more you put yourself out there, the more reciprocation you will receive. Also, be sure to post your video on other blogs and sites. If your video is viewed from another site, it still counts as a view.
• Chose ALL text wisely. Your Title should include basic keywords that people are likely to search and should be in conversational format. (How to do… How to make a…Product tutorial). Your URL should be the first thing listed in your Description.  YouTube only displays the first few lines of your description and since the ultimate goal is to get visitors to your site you want to be sure that they see that URL.  Following your URL, you want to illustrate your video with keyword dense sentences. Use as many keywords that make sense, but do not overdo it, that is SPAMMING. Your Tags should contain all variations of likely searched words and phrases. Get rid of non-specific words (and, of, to) and stick to the keywords.

These were just a few tips to get you started. Until next time……..