Welcome to another episode of the Opinionated SEO Opinions™ where the Gray Dot Company team explores video optimization from a technical SEO standpoint with Brenda Malone, Senior SEO Technical Strategist at NP Digital.
Thank you for all the great questions you submitted for this episode, here is the list of questions from multiple perspectives to video SEO:
Also find shout outs for Areej AbuAli for creating Women in Tech SEO and helping us share, learn and enjoy our work with other women in the industry.
Begum Kaya 0:07
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Opinionated SEO Opinions™, and this time we are together with a wonderful SEO, technical SEO, Brenda Malone.
Begum Kaya 0:15
She's not only [an] amazing SEO, but she's also one of the kindest people that I know as far as I can see from the Women in Tech SEO community mostly. I am meeting with her for the first time as well, just like probably, as most of you are, and I'm very excited as you can tell. So hello, Brenda, welcome!
Brenda Malone 0:35
Hi, ladies. Thanks for having me, and your words are really too kind. Thank you. I just love to help people. That's what I do.
Begüm Kaya 0:45
We can tell, we can tell.
Tory Gray 0:47
And appreciate it. We've long been admirers of yours in SEO. So yes, thank you so much for joining us.
Brenda Malone 0:53
It's either helping people or procrastinating on my real work.
Tory Gray 0:57
Why not both?
Sam Torres 1:02
Totally.
Tory Gray 1:03
None of us do that either. Uh uh. Nope. Uh uh.
Begum Kaya 1:08
And it's time to share this with the world. So would you give us a quick intro about yourself? I know that you have an amazing career. So...what does Brenda Malone do?
Brenda Malone 1:20
Oh, wow, I have a very long career. In fact, SEO is probably my 18th career. I officially retired from being in conventional marketing for 20 years...25 years. The old school marketing, the more calm, the speech writing, the graphics, the IT stint, the working and police department for 10 years step, which was not to be repeated. And when I decided to leave government I transitioned to SEO.
Brenda Malone 1:39
That was about six years ago, and I went to a small agency out of New York. And they were willing to help me learn everything that I needed to know about tech SEO. And I was the tech SEO exclusively for the agency for six years, until I transitioned to NP Digital as the senior tech strategist at NPD. And now I've met all of you guys, and I love the Women in Tech SEO community. And I'm so glad I met everybody because they've helped me grow, learn to speak more, share more, be a better person. So that's my story in a nutshell.
Brenda Malone 2:45
Wonderful, I think Women in Tech SEO community brings the best out of all of us. So again, a wonderful, thank you...
Brenda Malone 2:47
Thank you.
Begum Kaya 2:54
And kudos to you for giving us that safe space to be ourselves and just share openly.
Brenda Malone 3:00
100% I can't state that enough. Can't state it enough. I was nothing until I found you guys.
Sam Torres 3:06
Well, that's definitely not true. But - I agree with the sentiment that it has added and enriched our lives so much in that community. It's just...it's constantly giving. So...love to see how we can give back as well.
Brenda Malone 3:25
Exactly.
Begum Kaya 3:27
And I wouldn't underestimate the contributions of our wonderful hosts Tory Gray and Sam Torres, both in Opinionated SEO Opinions™ and [the] Women in Tech SEO community. Welcome to you two ladies.
Sam Torres 3:39
Thank you.
Begum Kaya 3:41
Are we ready to get this episode started? Because we have...
Sam Torres 3:44
Yeah, let's do it!
Begum Kaya 3:45
Yay! Let's talk about video......
Tory Gray 3:47
Yes, we're talking about video optimization from a technical SEO perspective. So lots of juicy tidbits to come.
- From Jess Joyce, SEO Consultant
Begum Kaya 3:55
Yes - so the first question comes from Jess Joyce, she is asking "how does one choose a video platform? Is one better than another? Is it okay to use more than one simultaneously?"
Brenda Malone 4:08
Well, that's an interesting question. Some people choose to self host videos, but you have to have the best, most perfect web hosting server that you can and maintain it. And it's just a lot of work. So most people will choose to either use free platforms such as YouTube, or 'for pay' platforms such as Wistia, Vidyard, Brightcove, and that's more so when you want to brand your videos and not have the YouTube advertising and related videos and you look more professional, so...better. I would choose a private hosted video platform over YouTube.
Brenda Malone 5:05
But there's caveats, as in all things YouTube it depends. The word is out that Google can prefer videos hosted on YouTube, because they can better connect all of the systems with all of the other signals. So you may even want to do both. I would probably do Wistia, but still throw some of the videos on YouTube, just to keep the signals coming from YouTube connected to all of my other enterprises. But there's no 'right' one - it really all depends on your situation, and what the video is for.
Sam Torres 5:49
I agree, and also say a lot of those platforms that companies end up paying for - what we've seen is, yes, they're hosting them. They have this great host, but they're not using most of the features that you would actually be paying for. So definitely figure out, you know, if you're going to go for a paid platform, are you going to use the analytics? Are you going to use the...the CTAs? Are you doing polls, right? Like there's some really great interactive elements that you can get from some of those paid platforms. But don't pay for it unless you actually have a plan to use it.
Brenda Malone 6:27
That's a great observation. 100%.
Sam Torres 6:30
Yeah, because I think there's just so many times like, people just don't look at the video analytics at all. And it's like, there's so much good information here for you to action off of. Interestingly, we are actually testing with a client right now. They have videos hosted by Brightcove. And then they also have some of the same videos on YouTube. So we're testing using structured data and using that "SameAs", so that there's no like duplicate content issues. And Google hopefully understands that we know that it's the same thing. We just have different tool sets based on what the client needs.
Tory Gray 6:57
Yeah. So I'm curious about your perspective.
Brenda Malone 7:09
That's an interesting experiment. Yeah....
- Follow up from Jess Joyce, SEO Consultant
Tory Gray 7:15
How do you think about if anyone in your experience has had the same video on two different platforms? Do you consider that duplicate content? How do you negate that? What's your approach?
Brenda Malone 7:25
Well, what I would do is switch up the content a little bit, not the content, the marketing of the video. I'd alter the headlines, I'd probably alter the video snapshot, alter some of the descriptions. And...it would probably be okay to have it on both platforms. As long as it's not the identical video, you're going to be fine.
Brenda Malone 7:53
Because even Google says, if you even...even if you put your videos on YouTube, perfectly fine, to throw 'em on your website. So I think that the Google algorithms are pretty smart. They know that you are the true source of the videos, and that you just want to...spread it around. I don't think it's going to be too detrimental. Not like duplicate content on a website. I don't think it's the same level of penalty possibilities.
Tory Gray 8:26
Yeah.
Brenda Malone 8:26
That's a good point. I'd love to see the results of your tests, Sam.
Tory Gray 8:31
Yes.
Sam Torres 8:32
I will let you know, we're excited. Because yeah, it's a fun and interesting challenge, right? Plus, one of the things that we've discussed, when it comes to duplicate content...It's so much easier for Google to identify that when it's text, because, right? That's just the normal crawl. The amount of effort they have to take to understand videos, and obviously, they have the technology to do it...but whether or not they're actually taking the time...I'm not convinced that that's something they consider [as a] really valuable use of resources...
Brenda Malone 9:06
Exactly.
Sam Torres 9:06
So they're probably looking at......
Tory Gray 9:09
With all the rising costs in general, all the rising costs in general of all the rendering of like, JavaScript takes eight times longer to crawl. So if we think that Google is really spending the time to differentiate those things and just like seems like a lot of resources for not a lot of win. Why...why would they do that?
Correction: JS takes 9x longer!
Brenda Malone 9:29
As long as you're on their YouTube, they're probably just happy that you're exploiting their platform. So...
Sam Torres 9:37
Exactly.
Brenda Malone 9:37
Totally agree with you guys.
Begum Kaya 9:41
So since we want to take advantage of the videos on our pages, and we don't want Google to ignore them basically or just dwell on too much not to see any value. So what are some of the on page basics for video SEO?
Brenda Malone 9:59
Critical - is a thumbnail that grabs attention...that's probably equally as important as the content on the video. Because if you can't bring them to your video, they're not going to know the excellent content. So you've got to make it interesting enough that they actually click on your video. So you're going to need interesting thumbnails and make sure that whatever thumbnail headline that you use for your video, do it on mobile first, we're going to a mobile first generation.
Brenda Malone 10:40
And, anytime that you're fashioning your thumbnails in your headlines, I would suggest that you do it at the mobile size. Most people open their desktops, bring in Photoshop, and they do it at a full large screen level. Don't do that anymore. Take it down to a 600 x 480 document size. And see if you can make everything interesting from that size.
Brenda Malone 11:11
And you're going to have more success if you're clear to the point, it's an interesting thumbnail, something that will make them click. That's in order to get them to click on the video. But when they...after they've clicked, you're going to need an optimized video for subtitles, you're going to need timing marks because people are anxious and restless and they get bored easily. So it's going to be great to add chapter notations. So people know, they can go right to the part that they're interested in.
Brenda Malone 11:53
And just make everything so crystal clear. And in the descriptions, leave clear call to actions, leave your website, leave your contact information, wherever you want them to go after they viewed the video. Of course, you want them to share it, but you want them to be able to know how to take action and use what you've presented in the video.
Brenda Malone 12:22
And going forward as far as accessibility also, you really do need to have that video transcribed. If it's going to be a professional video where you want it shared and equally accessible to all audiences...highly, highly recommend it that you go the route and transcribe every single video that you use. And it's not that difficult anymore. So there's free services and paid services.
Brenda Malone 12:51
But those are the majority of the things that you want to do to optimize the video.
Begum Kaya 13:31
Yes definitely.
Brenda Malone 12:58
The most important thing though is make sure that it's relevant to what you want the viewer to learn. Don't just go out and you know, shoot your dinner meal and put that in video. Research what people want to know. Go find the "People Also Asked" or look at your keywords, look at your questions, look at Search Console to see what people are...are looking for, make your videos relevant to what searchers want. And you have a good chance of being very successful in your videos.
- From Anett Pohl, Senior SEO Manager at Aroundhome
Begum Kaya 13:36
I'm loving all the clues that you have been dropping since the beginning of you like identifying this process. The human is actually at the center of everything that we do. So it's very key, like I think it comes out more when it comes to video. So as you said, the timestamps, key moments, descriptions, and transcripts - all of these are important elements when it comes to on-page. And I wanted to actually follow up with - if embedding a video on the page is not enough, definitely, based on what you are saying, also, you have to do transcripts as well. But can you include more than one video and what other features are needed, in addition to what I have just listed?
Brenda Malone 14:23
I totally agree. In addition to putting your video and I'm going to concentrate on YouTube, because everybody uses YouTube...
Sam Torres 14:32
It's the easiest, yeah...the most prevalent, yeah.
Brenda Malone 14:36
Yep. So let's just say it's YouTube by default. Even though your video is on YouTube, and it may be gaining traction, the first thing you want to do is also embed it on your website to be sure, because you want to become the true source, the first source before that video gets shared widely. So Google can pick up the signals.
Brenda Malone 15:04
Really, you only want one video per page. And I know some people, they just love to slather videos all over. But in order to gain the most traction, put your video as close to the top, as close to relevant content on that page that you can and put excellent video schema on that video. But there will be instances where you do have more than a couple videos.
Brenda Malone 15:37
I've had lawyer clients, and they just want every video that they've ever done on a single page. In that instance, you would give the primary video the most room, put it as high in the content on the page as you can. However, lower on the page you can also add other videos, but do not necessarily give those the video schema. Give those list schema so that Google can see "okay, there's other videos here?" Well, we don't really care about them, but we know that they exist. But we're going to concentrate on that main video that you've moved up into page hierarchy, that you consider most important. You're the owner. And as it gets shared over the web, they're going to give you credit for producing and owning that content. So that was a lot, sorry. Haha.
Explore a strategic path to schema planning & implementation.
Sam Torres 16:42
Also, and I think it's interesting, you know, because we've just this...what...last few months got the video indexing report in GSC. So really exciting to see that. So I'd say that this is a topic that's coming up with clients a lot right now, is how, you know, because we're getting all these different messages in like the prominent video could not be found or it was the wrong format, or, you know, the thumbnail didn't work. Right?
Brenda Malone 17:08
Exactly.
Sam Torres 17:09
So love your...love your advice of you know, put it high in the page. Also, I feel like a lot of people are saying that, but what I want to highlight Brenda, is what you just talked about 'next to relevant content.' Like I think that is something that maybe people miss pretty often, right? If the video...you know, if you've got a long article, and you're telling the story, and the video doesn't match until you get three quarters of the way through the story....Maybe, you need to restructure your story.
Brenda Malone 17:38
Exactly. Exactly.
Sam Torres 17:40
Maybe...maybe there's a different way to tell it. But I love...I love that action item of make sure it's next relevant content, because I think that's something that sometimes is missing. And for sure, I think we're...we're working with our customers to move them to having that mindset of a single page per video. Which I think it's really starting to be interesting how the video strategy is matching what...how, I guess I would say blog content strategy was revolutionized maybe.
Brenda Malone 18:11
Yup.
Sam Torres 18:12
While whenever Hummingbird came out, and we got semantic search. And so it was like focus more on topics instead of keywords, right? Think more about concepts instead of just iterations. It feels like we're kind of having the same Renaissance with videos.
Brenda Malone 18:28
Totally agree.
Sam Torres 18:29
So I just kind of want to see how it's going.
Brenda Malone 18:32
Plus people don't read anymore. We're in a society now where, you know, a paragraph of 500 words is too much. You know, they just want to skim. They are visual people anymore. The younger generation, they just want to watch a video. They want to watch Instagram, TikTok videos, and call it a day. So the more succinct available and prominent your videos are, the more success you will probably have as a marketer, a website owner, product, eCommerce person.
Sam Torres 19:11
Uh hmm.
Tory Gray 19:12
Yep.
Brenda Malone 19:13
100%.
Sam Torres 19:14
Yep.
From Linnea Bak, SEO at comspace
Begum Kaya 19:15
So since we are talking about focusing on the content of the video, is there a way to remove ads from embedded YouTube videos to keep people really focused on the video and not to get them distracted?
Brenda Malone 19:26
You can...but you have to...if you are a prolific video producer, you can turn it off totally on all the videos, right now Google does not allow you to select specific videos that you don't want the ads to show. You can just turn it off period and if you're not using it for marketing or affiliate or the ad buys I would highly recommend that you just stop all advertising on your video. If that's, you know...if you're not specifically producing videos for the revenue, and then that's a whole 'nother story, you actually would want the videos.
Brenda Malone 19:31
But as far as the most annoying thing about the YouTube video embedding is the related videos that show after your video runs on your page, the related videos. And it could be a competitor, you don't want a competitor. So when you're using the embed code from YouTube, there's settings where when you hit the share button and go to the settings, you can turn off "share/show related videos".
Brenda Malone 20:45
You just have to do some digging, and that code is totally alterable to stop all of that silliness. You just have to look at it, and if you don't know how there's a YouTube video to show you how to turn off that stuff, see what they've done. And yet just my first recommendation is to turn off showing related videos. The ads don't really bother me a lot because I can skip through them. But that related videos, it's not a good thing when your competitor comes up right after your video has been shown.
Sam Torres 21:28
Uh hmmm.
Brenda Malone 21:28
So that's probably my number one tip.
Tory Gray 19:28
Yeah. The cost of a free platform.
Sam Torres 21:32
Yeah.
Brenda Malone 21:33
Yeah, true.
Tory Gray 21:35
That's how you're paying. If you don't want to pay in that way, there are paid solutions for that.
Sam Torres 21:40
Yeah.
Brenda Malone 21:42
100%.
- From Steph Greaves, Digital Marketing Specialist at Element
Begum Kaya 21:44
Would you mind if I rewind a little backwards and get back to schema again, because as everybody knows, we cannot stop talking about schema. We wanted to ask you about the schema best practices for video pages.
Brenda Malone 21:59
The schema that I would use, would be VideoObject - and the requirements for a successful Video Object schema presentation, you'd have to have the video title, the description of the video, the upload date, you have to have a thumbnail, and have the URL of that thumbnail, the embedded URL that needs to go into your schema, and the duration of your video. And that's basically all of the video object schema that you need for that video that is embedded on your website.
Brenda Malone 22:46
Only do that if you have multiple videos on your page, reminder, again, only do that on one of the videos, the most prominent video. Don't put VideoObject schema, on a page full of videos. Google's going to just say "forget it, it's a mess, I don't know what their focus is, here's just a bunch of videos". So only use VideoObject once per page. And then if you have other videos on the page, use them as list Object Video schema, just so they know that there's other possibilities, there's more content other than the one VideoObject.
Sam Torres 23:30
Uh hmmm.
Brenda Malone 23:33
Also...you also want to add...it's gonna be good to have a key moments in the videos that you embed. So do the same thing that you do on YouTube. Try to do the chapters, the key moment, timings, and provide those in the schema. And that increases your opportunities for being shown on rich schema. If someone asks a question, and if your video at point four minutes and 17 seconds answers that question, and Google knows that you've earmarked this section to answer this question, you're gonna get shown on the rich results. Which is probably a big deal, is cool when you get selected to be up top.
Tory Gray 24:26
Yep.
Sam Torres 24:27
Yeah. And that...that is something we definitely do with the videos for Opinionated SEO Opinions™. And so we'll definitely be doing that with this one. So we'll be doing chapters of the different questions, so...
Brenda Malone 24:40
Oh how cool.
Sam Torres 24:40
"Can I have more than one video per page?" Hopefully we'll get that snippet. Probably not but we're gonna hope anyway...
Brenda Malone 24:48
Hahahaha.
Sam Torres 24:47
Yeah, because...it's yeah...key moments, I think is something really powerful but underutilized right now by many SEO companies, right? I feel like influencers are really getting good at understanding that's what they need to do with their...their videos. Businesses are lagging a little bit behind, and then...yeah, on the other sides of that how...I'd love to know how often have you included a transcript in your structured data about the video.
Brenda Malone 25:19
Very important, very important, and people are afraid when you say the word "I need a transcript for a video", they just go helter-skelter. It's not that hard. There's plenty of services that do transcribe your videos, and they're relatively inexpensive. You can get a video transcribed and 5,10 bucks, it's really not a big deal anymore. But there's also free methods.
Brenda Malone 25:50
For those who have Android or iPhones, there is an app that transcribes...it's a from "voice to text" transcription - a totally free app. So I've utilized that in the past where I'll record the video, and play the video while my phone is listening, and it's transcribing, as the video is playing. Totally free. So there's really no excuse not to have a transcript for your videos, and it's the right thing to do for accessibility. You can't assume that everyone can hear or has...does not have problems, in that area. It's just the right thing to do, and it's free, and it's cheap. You have to put that in the list of must do for videos.
See the free Google Docs Voice Typing App.
Tory Gray 26:44
Yeah. Shout out to Otter, which is what we use - Otter.ai. They have a premium version, and we've moved to the paid version, because it just does an excellent job.
Brenda Malone 26:57
Nice.
Tory Gray 26:57
We can just upload the video directly, and so we don't have to do that holding the video up to the speaker thing anymore. Which was a barrier for a bit, but there's a way to get the job done.
Sam Torres 27:07
Definitely done that in the past. Yeah...
Brenda Malone 27:09
Hahaha, I like Otter, I'll have to go look at Otter, I had not heard about Otter. Thank you.
Tory Gray 27:15
Yeah, and it's, what, it's like $100 a year or something for...
Brenda Malone 27:18
Oh that's trivial...
Sam Torres 27:19
Yeah, like very cheap. Especially when you consider like how much video production usually costs.
Tory Gray 27:26
Yeah.
Sam Torres 27:27
Right, like...
Brenda Malone 27:28
Right.
Sam Torres 27:29
It's not that much more. Yeah.
Brenda Malone 27:34
Now, I was curious to know that when I was at the other agency, my first agency, we would always send the script out to the video producers to let them know, because our videos are cheap. They were just moving stock photos, fading them in and out, while [an] announcer was reading the script. So what I would do whenever I was charged with putting the video on the client website - I'd always ask for the script.
Brenda Malone 28:02
Because usually they read the script verbatim. And that was a built-in transcription. So if that's how you also work, if you're responsible for giving the video producers the script, just take that, fashion it into your transcript, and put it on YouTube. Which is highly appreciated. Put it on your site. Making transcripts is a piece of cake anymore, so there's no excuse not to do it.
Sam Torres 28:33
Agreed.
Begum Kaya 28:35
100%. Go ahead Tory, were you going to say something?
Tory Gray 28:41
No, but I might as well now!
Brenda Malone 28:43
Hahaha.
Tory Gray 28:44
I think not only can you automate that and make that much quicker, I do recommend if - I mean, reviewing it too - which is AI or [manual] lift. So it depends on the volume of video, but there's just little things any AI can't catch. So you want to go through your.. and make sure it's the right words. And further, I would take the time, if you're going to embed that on a page, to actually structure that to make it scannable and readable in the same way that you're doing key moments for your videos - use headers, use jump links, insert hyperlinks, insert context.
Tory Gray 29:14
When people are discussing Otter, maybe we should include a link to them...like help people who are consuming your content. Like if you're gonna bother to do it, maximize the return out of it and really help people with all levels of accessibility, or who just want it at different levels so they can do different things, you know, in different situations. Sometimes you want to watch and sit at your desk and sometimes you want to listen and walk. You know accessibility helps everyone.
Brenda Malone 29:42
Exactly.
Sam Torres 29:43
Yes it does.
Brenda Malone 29:44
How embarrassing has it been if you guys are in an environment where you want to be quiet, and you hit a link and all of a sudden this YouTube video starts blaring.
Tory Gray 29:56
Yeah...
Brenda Malone 29:56
Don't be that person. Don't do the autoplay in the video.
Sam Torres 29:59
That's why I'm so glad they took away the...I think they did so, you know, don't, I'm not gonna die on this hill, but I think they took away the autoplay abilities.
Brenda Malone 30:09
It's so wrong,
Sam Torres 30:11
Thank God!
Brenda Malone 30:14
Just say no. Don't do that.
Tory Gray 30:17
Okay, that's actually [mumbles], cuz I was checking out...I think it's Hive...is like the maybe new replacement of Twitter, right? Like there's Mastodon, there's blah blah blah, so I signed up for Hive last night because it's the the new one, so I'm gonna see it. And there's an option in my profile to autoplay your music.
Brenda Malone 30:31
Oh, no.
Tory Gray 30:32
And I'm like...what, is this MySpace? What...what is happening right now?
Brenda Malone 30:44
Hahahaha.
Sam Torres 30:34
Like...that's a throwback. Also not the first time we've talked about MySpace on this video series, and I just...I very much remember being like "Begum, do you remember anything from MySpace?" No, she does not.
Brenda Malone 30:44
Hahahahaha.
Sam Torres 30:54
Yeah...God! [mumbles]
Begum Kaya 30:55
MySpace keeps popping up.
Sam Torres 30:58
Wow. Well, hey, MySpace is why I learned CSS.
Begum Kaya 31:03
Hmmmmmm.
Brenda Malone 31:03
That's right!
Sam Torres 31:03
So, I gotta give them some credit for you know, ruining my life.
Tory Gray 31:10
Did you also learn to rank your friends in order of importance on your profile page?
Brenda Malone 31:15
Oh, I did not.
Tory Gray 31:15
No?
Brenda Malone 31:16
I didn't know that.
Tory Gray 31:19
Well that was a...deal...
Brenda Malone 31:20
I want MySpace back. I want to see that.
Sam Torres 31:24
What's really interesting [is that] MySpace actually has pretty high engagement and is a large platform internationally now.
Tory Gray 31:31
Damn.
Brenda Malone 31:33
It's still around?
Sam Torres 31:35
Yeah!
Brenda Malone 31:37
No...no...
Tory Gray 31:37
[Mumbles] oh no...
Sam Torres 31:41
Yeah, I tried to delete mine a really long time ago, and I no longer have access to that email address because it was a Hotmail email address.
Brenda Malone 31:49
Awww God.
Sam Torres 31:50
These are all very good products. Yeah, but Begum just so you know, basically, you'd have your friends like you would on Facebook, but you could actually choose what order they showed in.
Brenda Malone 32:02
I did not know that.
Sam Torres 32:03
So your Top 8? Whew!
Tory Gray 32:07
Drama!
Sam Torres 32:07
That got spicy. Like...
Brenda Malone 32:09
Wow.
Tory Gray 32:10
Yeah. I mean, sometimes friends would be removed. You'd be with a boyfriend, you'd be without a boyfriend. He would away, and that's how people would know, and there was no like 'no longer in a relationship' status Facebook style. This was...yeah, an ordeal...
Sam Torres 32:19
No, it was...yeah. It was a lot of drama. So much drama.
Brenda Malone 32:30
A lot.
Begum Kaya 32:33
Thankfully, Twitter doesn't make us miss from the drama, so...
Tory Gray 32:36
I was about to say, there's drama on every platform.
Brenda Malone 32:40
[Mumbles]...on a different platform on a different planet.
Sam Torres 32:44
Yeah, let's also be real. When I was on MySpace, I was a...I was a teenage girl in middle school and high school. So there was drama no matter what, because, you know...
Brenda Malone 32:53
Wow.
Sam Torres 32:54
There's just so many changes! "What's happening?!" Hahahaha
Begum Kaya 32:56
Nothing...yeah. I don't know how to wrap this up. But...
Begum Kaya 33:05
Hahahahaha.
- From Natalie Kunz, SEO Performance Manager at Better Collective
Tory Gray 33:05
There's one more question I wanted to bring up so...I know you said putting the video as high on the page as possible. But I'd love to hear your perspective on page speed site performance versus video and like, how do you balance those? How do you optimize that? What are your recommendations for how to make that workable in a speedy, speedy, online world?
Brenda Malone 33:33
Oh, that's all the rage. That's what I do eight hours a day is look at performance. So there are some clever, clever developers, people, smart people who have come up with so many different tactics to make that video not as performance bashing as it could be. My favorite tactic is to put...embed the video, no problem, even if it's high in the page, even if it is above the fold - and it really should be above the fold. Put the embed code there. You can even lazy load it, even above the fold.
Brenda Malone 34:15
However, put a GIF or an image of the play button above the video so that as the page loads, the video is not interrupting the performance because it's set to load at a lower priority. But make that image of the play button cover the dev for the video.
Brenda Malone 34:40
So when the person presses that, it links to the video which is then downloaded and can start playing. And you do not take up perform...a really big performance hit. The same as if you just put a naked video on the page, and you had to wait for it to load, and come back from a service to another server call. So that could add 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds, and you don't want that.
Brenda Malone 34:54
So be smart about it. If your video is above the fold, put a picture over it, link that picture to the playing of the video. But that video itself, set it to lazy loading. And that's probably the only instance where I would lazy load anything above the fold.
Brenda Malone 34:54
But if your video is below the fold, whatever, you still want to just lazy load it. And you really don't have to worry about the transparent play button. But I've seen it done very well that way. That...that's a new trick that people started doing a couple years ago. And I'm here for it. I love it.
Tory Gray 34:54
Yeah.
Sam Torres 35:51
I actually love that, because it's a really nice way that...especially if you're using YouTube videos...
Brenda Malone 35:57
Yep.
Sam Torres 35:57
You can make it look like a more branded or customized experience.
Brenda Malone 36:02
100%.
Sam Torres 36:02
So, yeah, it's really interesting, you can make that really work so much better in your own design by having that image overlay. Love that.
Brenda Malone 36:11
Yeah, and most of the modern page builders, most people are on WordPress. They do allow for you to do that. So it's not going to require a rocket science developer to do that trick.
Begum Kaya 36:22
So it's going to help the dimension so you would cut back on the cumulative layout shifts as well. So dev wouldn't be needed.
Brenda Malone 36:30
100%. Yeah, that's a very good point. Thank you.
- From Sevi Selecki, Technical SEO Manager at IG Group
Begum Kaya 36:34
Yeah, of course. And that answers Natalie Kunz's question about whether "is lazy loading a video okay?" And apparently it is. Wonderful. One more question, though. This it's a little bit apart from the others, but do you have a recommendation on how to get a live badge into SERPs with live video events? This comes from Sevi Selecki.
Brenda Malone 36:58
Those are fun. Those are fun. What you want to do is you have to do a lot of advanced planning, you have to get the live...I forgot what it's called...this current schema on it broadcast schema.
Begum Kaya 37:13
BroadcastEvent schema. Yep.
Brenda Malone 37:14
Yeah, put that on it, fill it out properly. Do it correctly. And, you have to employ the Google indexing API. So that and time, it so that Google knows about the page, they know about the event, either in advance or even after the event has happened. But their recommendation is as soon as you know about the video, get it all set up. I'm sorry, the broadcast event, get it set up, submitted via the Google API.
Brenda Malone 37:50
And that's a whole 'nother story how you hook up the API...it's not that difficult anymore. Just so...and time it so that Google knows about the video. And if all of your broadcast schema is correct, you'll get that live video banner. And I think that's cool. And you can put it on events that have passed, and events that are to come, which is really a cool feature. And most people don't use it. Because you have to put a little bit of forethought into it.
Tory Gray 38:24
Yep.
Sam Torres 38:29
That's very cool.
- From From Birthe E. Stuijts, Interim SEO for Agencies and XXL-Projects
Begum Kaya 38:25
Wonderful question, thank you so much, Sevi. Another outlier, but very important question. It's coming from Birthe. And she is asking "do on-site views of videos count towards your YouTube views?"
Brenda Malone 38:39
Yes. Yes, they do. Google is so smart. Within their embed code, it's connected to your plays. So anytime that video is played on an influencer's platform - Twitter, MySpace, Hello - your ad, you will get counts for that video. You don't necessarily have to be on that platform and play the video on YouTube. It just doesn't work like that, which is cool.
Sam Torres 38:51
That is cool.
Brenda Malone 39:15
It's a good question.
Begum Kaya 39:16
Yeah. So as we are getting closer to wrapping up this episode, Brenda, do you have anything else that you want to share with us?
Tory Gray 39:24
Any parting advice?
Here is a wrap up of Brenda's closing thoughts on video optimization.
Brenda Malone 39:26
Go forth and make videos, make good videos. They don't have to be giant productions like "Gone With the Wind" or anything like that. Explainer videos are the wave of the future. People have stopped reading as we announced earlier in the talk. So make an explainer video. Of any process that you are familiar with that you think people are searching for. Go to Search Console, go to Answer the Public, do some keyword research.
Brenda Malone 40:03
Make your video answer queries that people want to know about. You can do them very quickly. There's a lot of...you know, fiber folks who can do a quick explainer video, we've all seen the hand that moves and writes text. Those are valuable. Think of the last time that you went there. And that's all you needed, if you needed to know how to do one specific thing. That was a great video. And the more you do it, the more helpful you are, the more successful your video's site, your own website, and you as a person in the space and your industry, the better you will be. So go forth and video.
- From Juliana Turnbull, Freelance Marketing Consultant
Begum Kaya 40:51
Yay. Wonderful, wonderful wrap up. Yes. And any 'go to' video optimization experts you recommend checking out?
Brenda Malone 40:59
I don't really concentrate too much on specific video people. I'm all over SEO people in general. But I do look at videos from Morning Fame. Brian Dean, of course, he's the master of everything, SEO and video. And there's a woman called Gillian Perkins. She is very relatable, and her videos are nice and soft. And she teaches you all of the latest tricks. So other than just those three, I generally will follow SEO people in general, because we're the smartest people and we know the tricks.
Sam Torres 41:11
I like it.
Brenda Malone 41:24
We are. That's why they pay.
Begum Kaya 41:55
I'm out of my words...I haven't been in a group that is like so self conscious? I would say I think?
Tory Gray 42:07
The Imposter syndrome
Brenda Malone 42:08
Well, we know the value that we bring even though sometimes our clients don't. Sometimes people don't even think they need us. Funny story is every time I go to a new website, you know, somebody recommends "Oh, go to this site". The first thing I'll do is I'll go up to the SEO PRO extension and see "oh, they don't have description on their video. They need SEO." We're smarter than the average bears if they let us be.
Brenda Malone 42:08
That's true. I do agree with that. We make the internet better! Hopefully...
Brenda Malone 42:13
One link at a time, one video at a time.
Brenda Malone 42:17
Yes.
Begum Kaya 42:19
Wonderful, thank you so much for this amazing episode. Thank you, Brenda.
Sam Torres 42:56
Thank you for joining us Brenda.
Brenda Malone 42:57
I appreciate the opportunity to talk. I'm a talker. So thank you guys for humoring me today.
Tory Gray 43:03
No, thank you we really appreciate you.
Brenda Malone 43:07
Thank you.
Begum Kaya 43:09
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