Viral Ad Network

(1) Stay Clean or “Don’t game the system”

Back in the 90s, search engine results were normally full of spam results. People who can’t remember the internet before Google often forget quite what I mean – These days you might still get one or two spam results, but back in the 90s it wasn’t uncommon for me to scroll through several pages of search results before I got to one that wasn’t spam.

When YouTube first launched, it’s search results could be spammed in fairly much the same way – leading to loads of companies giving “black hat” (i.e. spammy) advice on how to gain views on YouTube.
In the years since YouTube was bought by Google, they have put a lot of effort into avoiding this kind of spam – and just like traditional SEO, if you game the system too much your video is likely to be penalised.
For web spammers (who can easily create thousands of spam web sites) this is a hinderance – but if you are a reputable company with an expensive production cost to your videos then pushing the boundaries too much can seriously cost your campaign.
What counts as “spam”?
This is a tough one – but generally the idea is that someone watching a video should be counted as valid if the user has chosen to watch it.  That makes all of the following questionable practices:

• Auto-playing videos You can auto-play videos, and there are valid reasons you might want to. The user hasn’t chosen to watch the video though – so don’t expect the views to count on youtube.
• Sending people to a video page without telling them.  If somebody gets clicks on a link without knowing they’re going to see your video then they haven’t chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if these views get flagged as questionable by their anti-spam team, and your viewcount gets “stuck”.  This effect can be seen with viewers coming from services like StumbleUpon – people regularly notice that up to half the viewers from services like this don’t convert to views on YouTube. This is a result of the viewers not being engaged with the content – they didn’t choose to go to that specific video, so why should they count as views unless they stick around to watch most of the video?
• Using misleading tags / descriptions. If somebody thinks your video is about something other than what it is, then they haven’t really chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if you get penalised for using misleading descriptions.

(2) Make a great video

It goes without saying – but the better your video, the more people will be interested in it.
No matter how YouTube and Google change their sites or search algorithms – they are always going to try to show the videos they think people will be most interested in. If your video is one of them, then you have a massive bonus over other videos.
This should automatically carry over to increased numbers of “likes”, comments, favorites and subscriptions – all of which are potentially telling signs of how good a video is when YouTube decide which videos to feature higher in their results.
(3) Enable Embedding

If you disable embedding on your video then you’re blocking our a large segment of potential traffic straight away.
embedding isn’t just used for bloggers want to post your video on their blog – it’s also used by large social sites when their users share your content using a technology called “oEmbed”.
For example, when somebody posts a link to a YouTube video on facebook or twitter – the video is embedded on facebook/twitter itself, so the user never has to visit YouTube to watch it.
Of course, if you disable embedding then the video can’t be shown – your video won’t be embedded on facebook or twitter, and the user needs one more click before they can watch your video.

(4) Pick a great Title

Pick a title that’s concise, descriptive and engaging.
(5) Pick a great screenshot

Pick a screenshot that will get people clicking.  Make sure its engaging.  Make sure it works with the title.
(6) Upload subtitles (closed captions)

Uploading closed captions does more than allow deaf viewers to appreciate your video (Although that alone should be enough reason to add them) – it also allows Search engines (and YouTube) to understand the video and find out what it’s really about.
The better they know what it’s about, the more confident they can be about if viewers are going to be interested in it – and that’s what will fuel good placements on YouTube.

(7) Encourage people to interact

There are special sections on YouTube for: * Most Viewed * Most discussed * Most Liked * Most subscribed * Top Favorited
The higher you get in each category, the more extra views you will get from the exposure. If you encourage your viewers to comment, like, favorite, or subscribe then you’ve got a better chance of climbing those lists.

(8) Kick-start your campaign the right way

If you are planning to kick-start your campaign with a bought media spend then quality is really important.
When YouTube sees a large number of users watching your video, they can use feedback from those users to work out how interesting other users will find your video.
Only YouTube really know what kind of feedback they use – but some examples that they may use are how many viewers stop watching your video a few seconds into it – how many people leave the youtube watch page as soon as they have arrived, the ratio of likes to dilikes, and how positive the comments are.
If that automated feedback is good then your video is likely to be shown to more users in search results and across the site.
To have a better chance of getting good feedback, try to place the video so that people watching it know what to expect – rather than trying to get every man and their dog to watch the video – which might reduce the quality of their feedback.

Of course our suggestion would be to kick off your campaign with paid for seeding from the Viral Ad Network

Tags: get views on YouTube, youtube optimisation, youtube seo, YOuTube set-up tips, YouTube strategy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 7:35 am and is filed under Advertisers, Viral Ad Theory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.