In the previous installment we discussed why you should be making more use of your event video. In this part we will discuss how to put this into action.
Strategies for Hosting Your Videos:
If you’re building a New Media web page which uses web video as one of its components, then the hosting methodology really doesn’t matter much. If your video isn’t valuable outside of the context of your own page then few people will choose to link to it – instead preferring to link to your site as a whole. Thus your link-building process will consist of calling or emailing other site owners and asking them to link out to your site/page.
On the other hand, if you are trying to get folks to link to a specific video (usually for a very specific reason) then the hosting platform you choose begins to matter.
Let’s say your videos are all hosted on YouTube only – people embedding your YouTube video, are no longer linking to your site, but only to your video description/profile in YouTube. This is great news for YouTube, but what about your needs? It certainly does not aid your SEO strategy – well maybe a little – we assume you included your URL in the YouTube video description and the video itself.
While social video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo are a great way to give wider exposure to your video content it really doesn’t do much for your SEO and direct traffic generation.
What you really need to do is to have the videos sitting in your own web pages, where they will attract the attention of Google and other engines.
Here are 10 Steps to Maximize the Use of Video as “Link Bait”
- Self-host your videos or use a secure third party provider like YouTube and bring it into a big iFrame on a separate page on your website. (Note: don’t forget to turn off the in-built “embed” button as this won’t include a text link back to your site).
- If you’re using Vimeo Pro, Viddler or any other platform which allows you to publish your video outside of your domain – turn this feature off.
- Create a custom embed code for your video, using the free tool like the one available on YouTube. So the video has an “embed” call to action at the bottom of a page.
- Reach out to site owners who may be interested in linking to your video, ensuring you include the above embed code within the email (to make it easy for the target to link to you).
- Enable social share buttons on your page, with a custom message specific to your call to action or website.
- After a reasonable period has passed (3-4 months maybe) put the content on YouTube, Vimeo and other social video platforms in the relevant categories for your video content.
- Spread the word about your content on social media sites, making sure you include links to your video and try to get as many shares and links as you can to the YouTube/Vimeo versions of your video.
- After the buzz dies down from this – mark the content as “private” on YouTube and set up domain restrictions on Vimeo so it stops working for anyone who has embedded it – this will force them to look for fresh video content, which you can hopefully provide.
- Reach out to all the sites which embedded/linked to the YouTube/Vimeo versions of your video, explaining that this link now doesn’t work and ask them to link to the version of the video on your site instead. You won’t get a 100% return from this, but most of the leads will be fairly strong – as after all, they’ve already linked to your content.
- If your video is still relevant and valuable six months down the line, then you can always repeat steps 6-9
In the final analysis, the main principle behind using video as linkbait is threefold and fairly simple:
- Use video as your medium when it’s the best way to tell the story in question
- Target your audience specifically: create something that’s going to be valuable to a focused group of viewers on the web
- Minimize “Link Leaks” – ensure you minimize the amount of links pointing to domains outside of your own.
Getting these three principles right every single time is not easy and it can take many tries to see a return on investment. If one element is missing, your efforts may not always succeed, but the rewards are unmistakable for those with creativity, perseverance and technical know-how.