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Changes to Google’s Universal Video Listing SERPs

April 29, 2011
by Gradiva Couzin

As SEOs and other search-aware people know, Google and Bing are constantly experimenting with changes to their search results. So we were not surprised to see a change to the universal video results formatting in Google today.

Previously, Google’s universal video results were displayed side-by-side, in a 2-pack or 3-pack, as seen here in the search results for the query “how to braid hair”:

This morning, we’re observing universal video thumbnails shown vertically, one above the other. Each video thumbnail includes full snippets:

Even before this change, video results were prominent on the page. With this new look, video results have an even more dominant position, holding 4 out of 5 of the above-the-fold listings.

What does this mean for you?

2011 continues to bring major shifts in search result prominence. Local results have gained massively in search real estate, and now we see the potential for a video results “land grab” as well.

Even if Google doesn’t choose to continue with this particular layout, the clear interest in video result positioning reinforces our longstanding recommendation that site owners pay attention to video optimization. Basic strategies include:

Consider an upload to YouTube if your video serves as an advertisement for your company, product, or service
Optimize your YouTube page for keywords; used closed captioning if possible
Make sure the videos on your site are crawlable and indexable. If you’re using a video hosting service such as Brightcove or Bits on the Run, don’t worry, these videos can still be indexable on your own site.
Display your videos separately on individual URLs
Create and upload a Google Video Sitemap and Bing Video Sitemap or mRSS feed
Optimize video pages for keywords; include a transcript if possible

Readers, what are you seeing? Do you think Google will roll out this change across the boards, or is this just a temporary experiment?

Uncategorized

Basic Robot-Friendliness SEO Checklist

April 13, 2011
by Gradiva Couzin

People often ask us to write SEO checklists for them. But SEO encompasses such varied efforts – from blog writing to technical site review – that squeezing it into a checklist can be difficult. However, we always try to work with our clients’ processes, because we think that’s the most effective way to get SEO results. Here, we share a basic robot-friendliness checklist.

ROBOT ACCESS

Search engine robots must be able to navigate through the site in order to access and index all pages on the site.

All content on the site should be accessible by clicking on standard HTML links.
Whenever possible, use a shallow site architecture that allows all pages on the site to be reached by under 5 clicks from the home page.
It should not be expected that robots will perform searches or fill out forms on the site. We recommend that you provide a robot-navigable path that does not require these actions.
If there is content hidden behind a login or registration, search engine robots will not be able to see it. We recommend that you create a “logged out” version of each page that shows teaser content that can be indexed by search engines.
Use extreme caution with deindexing pages using the robots.txt file or the <robots> meta tag.

ROBOT READABILITY

One major goal of SEO is to display content to the search engines that accurately represents the content on the site. The easiest content for search engine robots to read is standard HTML text. Search engine robots have limited javascript capabilities and should not be expected to run javascript in order to generate page content. Search engine robots also do not gather cookies or session IDs.

Search engine robots can be considered a special case of accessibility. As a rule of thumb, how a page looks to a screen reader for the visually impaired is similar to how the page will look to a search engine robot.
Ask: How does this page look to search engines? Is the search engine view of the page an accurate representation of the human view of the page? You can use the tool at www.seo-browser.com to approximate the search engine robot view, or use “Fetch as Googlebot” in Google Webmaster Tools, or view the cached version of the page in Google by typing <cache:www.yoursite.com/url-of-page.html> into the search box.
For interactive sites, search engine robots may not be able to replicate the human experience. Is there a simplified version that can be shown to a search engine robot? For example, if an interactive experience requires that a person click through a series of steps before seeing text, consider presenting the text in robot readable format.
Content in video and Flash are not easily indexable and require special SEO management.

This checklist would need to be used in conjunction with other SEO checklists, including editorial, social media, technical, video, and Flash specifications.

Readers, do you have anything to add to this simple robot-friendliness checklist?