Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

As video has become more prevalent across the web, I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend in how it’s being used.  Simply videotaping something and slapping it up on your $25,000 site can be a terrible idea.  Yes, having video can make you look technologically savvy IF you do it well.  Putting a poorly made video on a nice site is like buying a new Lexus and putting your old white walls with 80,000 miles on it.  It will stick out like a sore thumb and take away from the larger message (”I’m loaded, check out my Lexus.” becomes “I bought a Lexus, but I don’t know what I’m doing with it.”).

So what I intend to do is create a short series of articles with pointers on how you can very easily make your videos look professional.  Now, before you start wondering why a search engine marketing guy is telling you how to make your web videos, please know that I have a bachelor’s degree in film and video production and spent four years producing video content for a handful of Fortune 500 companies.

So let’s get down to business.  Today’s topic?  Audio.  One of the things that repeatedly drives me insane about web video is the awful audio quality.  This, in most cases, is very easy to correct.  The answer?  Use a microphone.  Depending on how far away the camera is and the acoustics of the room, not having a microphone can make your subject sound like they’re talking in a cave.  For basic stationary talking head video shoots, a simple wired lavaliere mic can be obtained cheaply and give you marvelous results.  Wireless lavs can be a bit more expensive, and depending on the type of equipment you’re using, can be more susceptible to various forms of interference.

Here’s a video I found from a company that apparently does SEO and actually sells video production services:

Now, here’s one of our videos using a wired lav:

Which sounds better to you?

Of course, things get trickier when you have multiple people, or your subjects are moving.  In these instances, your best bet is to use a shotgun microphone.  Again, these can be obtained pretty cheaply, and you’ll need a fairly long cable as well.  Along with that you will need to either buy a boom or make your own.  A boom is basically a long stick that attaches to the microphone (you’ve seen them on TV shows and movie sets, the guy holding the long stick above the scene towards the actors).  What you can do with a shotgun is have a second person hold it above the shot and direct it at whoever is speaking at the time.

If you have a stationary scene with multiple subjects, you can always buy a small audio mixer and use several microphones, as well.  Connect your microphones to the mixer, and then run them into your camera.

Another important element here is to bring some headphones.  Whenever you’re shooting, make sure the camera man has headphones on to make sure the audio sounds good.  Consumer equipment doesn’t always have the greatest connections, and nothing’s worse than sitting down to edit your footage and realizing the audio is completely worthless.

Now, I’m assuming most people are working with amateur level equipment - basic camcorders and such, so you only have one microphone input to work with.  If you don’t yet have a camcorder, but are looking into doing web video, make absolutely CERTAIN that you have a microphone input.  A lot of the newer digital camcorders you can buy at big box stores don’t have them, and then you’re stuck with the subpar camera audio for your productions.  We use an old Sony mini-DV camera for our work and it does an excellent job given our needs.

So here’s your checklist for making great sounding videos:

• Make sure your camcorder has a mic input
• Get yourself a microphone, whatever suits your needs - we use this very inexpensive wired lav that we picked up at Golden Compass
• Make sure you have a pair of headphones so your camera operator can catch any errors or technical flaws with the audio while you’re shooting

So there you have it.  Step one in making better videos.  Stay tuned for future installments, where we’ll cover everything from lighting to camera techniques to editing.

Recently I had the chance to ask some questions of Liquid Web Director of Sales and Marketing Travis Stoliker.  Liquid Web has been very forward thinking when it comes to Internet marketing, which is why we felt Travis would make an ideal subject for our first interview.

Adam Henige:  First off, congratulations on the recent expansion. In your opinion, what have been the primary factors in Liquid Web’s success the past few years?

Travis Stoliker:  Thank you very much. Liquid Web’s success has largely been fueled by the growth of the overall Internet economy. As the Internet grows and more websites and people come online - the Internet as a whole grows exponentially. This growth requires more and more web hosting companies and data center facilities. At Liquid Web we have grown by providing cost effective, highly reliable web hosting products with unmatched Heroic Support available around the clock. Our customers depend on Liquid Web to keep their websites online at all times.

AH:  I know you use a variety of different social media applications in your marketing efforts, with Twitter being one of them. What do you see as the major value in using Twitter for your organization?

TS:  Being a web hosting company, our target market is a highly technical web savvy audience. As a marketer, it is my responsibility to understand, embrace and utilize the communication tools that my target market uses. Twitter and Facebook are obviously…Click here to read the full article.

Okay, one of the most ridiculous things regularly heard as a practicioner of search engine marketing is, “What does it cost to be listed first in Google?” or “How many days will it take to be ranked first in search engines?”

There’s no clear answer to any of these questions…what words do you want to be ranked for?  How competitive is your industry?  Obviously, if you want to be ranked number one for the term “shoes”, and you have a new site with three pages of content where you sell two different models of shoes your chances of outranking Nike, Adidas and every established online clothing retailer is next to none.

However, the lack of education persists, and since my friend Andrea pointed out that our site needs testimonials (we’re still working on the best way to do this…we will add them at some point, I promise).  She said she would gladly “make some up”, which led me to this marvelously entertaining idea.

If we get some really good ones, perhaps we’ll make a spoof commercial out of it…but we’ll see.

So let’s see what you’ve got!

“Netvantage Marketing got my Facebook page ranked number one on every search engine (even in Japan!) for the terms “Morgan Freeman”, “American Idol” and “falafel” in just 43 seconds!”

Leave your faux testimonials in the comments below.  Entertain me, people!

Keyword density…yeah, it’s THAT important

I wasn’t sure how to take PJ Fusco’s recent article on Clickz on keyword density.  I have greatly enjoyed watching SEOs downplay the significance of keyword density the last couple years, always assuming I was a part of the silent conspiracy against the newbies to the world of search.  So either one of two things happened here:

1. PJ blew it for us.
2. A lot of SEOs really don’t think keyword density is that important.

I’m starting to think that number two is closer to the truth.  PJ has been around longer and is better tied into the industry than I, so I will trust her judgment.  However, I’m still amazed how many industry types talk around this issue, citing increased understanding of semantics by the search engines and such.  No doubt that engines are getting smarter about understanding synonyms and crediting them appropriately, but that still doesn’t take away from the importance of old school keyword density.

I had been planning on putting such an article together for some time, but since the cat’s out of the bag, I won’t go into the level of detail I had originally planned.  Instead, I will simply offer up one very simple example of a client project I have been working on in the past week.

The situation: A 20+ year old, established company with a website that went live in 2004 realized they were nowhere to be found for targeted search terms.  Regionally, the company was rather successful, and had naturally built up a fair amount of back links compared to competitors.  Important to note here, however, is that the anchor text to these backlinks were not of any strategic value - typically the company name or the company president.  Unfortunately, the company name was fairly generic as well.  The one key phrase they were interested in didn’t show any extremely well positioned competitors from an SEO standpoint,  but did show 15,600,000 results…and they weren’t one of them.

My actions: Of course the first thing I looked at were on site factors.  Code looked okay, meta data needed some tweaking, and the content was clearly substandard.  It was effective from a business standpoint, but it clearly wasn’t written with keywords in mind.  I measured the keyword density for the number one ranked Google result and then matched it for the page I was optimizing for.  I then slightly upped the density of the individual keyword density to narrowly beat the number one result.  Keyword prominence was relatively equal.  I also added the phrase to the page title, description and keywords.  That’s it.

The results: I literally did nothing before running a keyword report with rank checker a week later.  I went from not being listed according to the tool to a ranking of 22.  I’m assuming I was somewhere 200+ but never took the time to actually make sure…needless to say, the site was originally buried.  Over the next week I checked that keyword every day and watched it rise all the way to the sixth result.  As an additional bonus, two other longer tail variations had also earned first page rankings.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten results like this, either.  So for those who continue to brush off the importance of keyword density, please continue to do so, it’s making my job a whole lot easier.

For you SEO DIYers out there, here are some handy tools I’ve found for keyword density:

http://www.ranks.nl - a fantastic tool for measuring and comparing keyword density between sites.

SEO quake - a lovely toolbar that any SEO should consider, with a variety of great tools, and a convenient keyword density tool to use while surfing.

e3KWD - extremely handy tool, as it lets you check density of .txt files, so if you’re writing for a new site or a new unpublished page.

Thought I’d try something new and interesting and throw a poll on my site just to see if anyone’s paying attention.  Anyhow, with all of the advancements made available by Google Analytics, I was wondering what people thought about the possible obsolescence of the long standing web analytics players.  Can Google push them out of the market?

Please share your thoughts…

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My next poll?  Do people like taking polls?  Keep your eyes peeled for that one!