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Except that it sucks for this use case because you can't do a restricted hangout-on-air, where it's not open to the public - so end up just doing a hangout with loads of people and then it gets very messy.

It's clever from a manipulative perspective - so I think the admiration is for the results, not the method.

I personally don't think it's a great strategy and I don't imagine it'll have longevity, or that it'll have good conversion rate, because the video is really truly terrible.

Hey Tommy,

So for Vimeo videos, you actually don't need to include the a  video:content_locelement in the sitemap</video:content_loc>, but rather reference a player location for the content with the video:player_locmark-up.</video:player_loc>

Google don't  actually need you to include both elements, as explained here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472

Vimeo's Flash or HTML5 iFrame player won't simply playback the uploaded content, but delivers a compressed version at a variable bitrate - so the original file is actually not the one you want the sitemap to reference. Moreover, Google cannot get through the Vimeo's cloud storage system and browse the original files anyway.

The player location can be picked out of the embed code you have used for the video - and should look something like:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/01013541

You will also probably want Google to be able to embed the video and auto-play it, so the player_loc markup should look like:

<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">http://player.vimeo.com/video/01013541</video:player_loc>

You can test you have the right URL, because you should be able to open the player URL when not logged into vimeo and still view the content (it will take up a whole browser window)

Also, for best chances of getting a blended result with your Vimeo vids - ensure (as you have done) that the video is marked as private and not available to view within the vimeo community pages. If you have a vimeo pro account (which you should do if it's commercial content) you will want to disable the community pass. You should also make sure that you have allowed the video to be embedded anywhere (or at least your domain and google.com), but removed the "embed" button from the player in the player settings- as the code created here will only help to build links to your Vimeo account, rather than your actual domain.

For general reference - The video file url will be somewhere on vimeos CDN, and will look something like http://s3.amazonaws.com/videos.vimeo.com/846/293/84629656.mov You can find it by logging into Vimeo, going to the video page and pulling the first part of the URL from the "download this video" link.

I hope that's useful! let me know if you have any other problems/questions.

Cheers,

Phil

Yes, you are able to pick individual videos, categories and channels (though obviously this takes a bit of work) and you can also segment by interest groups and remarket as you would with normal PPC.

So, the targeting can be really quite specific. You could nail it down to be: people over 18 watching videos on this channel, who live in the following countries.

Yes.

I think that'll be a significant part too - though I think there's probably a few other things purely on the YouTube side that are helping.

OK, lets take a step back a second.

Syed & BK search - sorry, but YouTube is absolutely the wrong approach here. If you're use Youtube for the content then the SERP results will link back to youtube and not to the target domain.

Tim - Brightcove is totally fine and you're doing everything right from what you describe. It could be a minor sitemap error or perhaps a general technical issue that's preventing the videos from being indexed.

Can you send me a link to the site in question and one of the video pages? If you don't want to reveal it publicly, then feel free to PM me or drop me an email.

Cheers,

Phil

For want of a more eloquent phrase, I think Google have somewhat "screwed this up" for business owners, in the attempt to make YouTube and Google+ better integrated.

Currently (as far as i am aware), I don't think there's any solution past what I assume you have implemented if you've connected the G+ page to your YouTube Channel as I've done here http://www.youtube.com/distilledseo

One assumes a better integration is in the pipeline for Business G+ and YouTube channels, but it may take a while to get there.

Hi Brett,

As far as i am aware, Google has not rolled out this functionality yet, as the instant preview is just a cached image snapshot from the page itself, it's not an actual HTML feed or iframe.

I can imagine the ability to preview vids (especially youtube videos) coming along within the next year or so, but for now you can't watch them without clicking through.

Which of the following are you specifically looking to understand:

• filming good content and the creative process
• editing & uploading
• SEO for YouTube

I can't think of any good seminars that specifically cover YouTube as opposed to just general film and video creation, but may be able to point you in the right direction for some of the above

Hi Dan,

In short - no, it won't be considered "duplicate content" if a video is visible on YouTube and is also embedded on a website using another platform - but it can cause other problems. The main one is cannibalisation of your specific goal... if you content is hosted on your site and on YouTube... you can find that YouTube will outrank your site for certain keywords if it gets much traction. Additionally, such an implementation isn't very good for YouTube optimisation, because in order to get a video ranking well on YouTube - you want to be able to drive as many views and embeds with it as possible. So, in short, it's just not very strategic and many cannibalise the effectiveness of everything you're trying to achieve.

Another point to make is that I have never actually come across a series of videos that I think is appropriate for both platforms - so ask yourself whether a YouTube presence is actually going to be valuable with these videos and whether or not a better option would be to just re-edit the content to ensure you have slightly different videos for each platform - specifically targeted to the goal in question.

Additional, no - You can't get backlinks from YouTube videos. If the YouTube Api is used around a different player, this is not that different in practice, from just embedding the YouTube videos... it will still count as a link to YouTube/embedded version of that video.

If you use a collapsable div or CSS to hide the text, it should be absolutely fine. View the page with JS and CSS turned off. If you can then read all the text, then you've done it correctly.

So, for filming - i have heard good things about this course:

http://centralfilmschool.com/cinematography_intensive_short_course/

These guys also seem to do some nice short courses

http://www.londonfilmacademy.com

Have a look at this post for a n overview - http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/youtube/creating-awesome-videos-for-seo/

To learn editing - to be honest, i wouldn't bother going on a course. Just buy the software and plough through all the amazing tutorials on http://www.creativecow.net/ - you'll pick it up fast.

To learn YouTube SEO - firstly look at this post: http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/youtube/youtube-seo/

then this deck: http://www.slideshare.net/philnottingham/incorporating-video-into-your-link-building-strategy

There will probably be some YouTube content covered at this years LinkLove & Searchlove - http://www.distilled.net/events/

these meetups - http://www.socialmedialondon.co.uk/ will have people who know a lot about YT stuff.

I hope that's useful. Sorry i can't offer any specific YouTube content creation seminars - there seems to be a gap in the market there!

I'd say make that decision entirely based on goals and the content type - not the restrictions of the platform.

Not really - no, as long as the videos are technically on the same URL and your video sitemap references them only on the URL you want rich snippets for.

If you'd rather go for a lightbox than a inline embed, then that's fine - but do be careful of the implementation here, as you still need Google to be able to see the video file in the source HTML, so normally a CSS only lightbox or a basic JavaScript trigger is much better than anything that pulls in the video dynamically with JS (which can often prevent the video getting indexed).

Hi Vijay,

I'll probide you with a sitemap template. Are you using Vimeo Pro? Or just a standard vimeo license?

Thanks,

Phil

First thing to say is that this might be really tricky. I've previous come across several instances of Google basically not removing video snippets - even when videos are removed from the page and the content is completely refreshed.. it seems like, right now, once you've got a video indexed, it's hard to get that removed.

The other thing to suggest is that your authorship mark-up is pretty spammy and not appropriate. "Liberty Games" are not an author and shouldn't be getting that snippet - so I can imagine image recognition seeing that your thumbnail isn't a human face and therefore choosing to ignore this implementation and provide the video instead consistently.

In terms of removing the video result - you basically want to refresh and resubmit everything so Google recrawls and reindexes. Resubmit your Video sitemap, make some adjustments on the page (including removing the video) then resubmit that via GWMT. No guarantees though unfortunately, as I mentioned - this can be a tough one!

Lead player just integrates with the YouTube API - so it's no different to just embedding the YouTube version on your page.

If you want the video rich snippet, a much more surefire way is going to be self hosting your video - or using a third party provider like Wistia.

Also, you should put your video sitemap in your robots.txt file as well as submitting through GWMT.

Serge,

I'm afraid it does matter what platform you are using to host the videos - the platform will define a lot of elements of the sitemap and method of embedding is also incredibly important.

It used to be the case that iframe embeds often wouldn't get videos indexed, but provident you submit a sitemap correctly, it's now possible to do so (though not as surefire as flash or html5 embeds).

So, If you're dead set on using Vimeo (It's not the best option out there if you're trying to get videos ranking), then I'd recommend starting with an iframe embed, submitting your sitemap, then potentially using the flash "old" embed option if you fail to get the video indexed within a few months.

More details on how to do that here: http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/creating-video-sitemaps-for-each-video-hosting-platform/