All Entries in the "Video Blogging" Category
Should You Run Videos On Your Blog?
Videos are great content to add to any blog in any niche, but there are some things you should consider before you just go off and start adding video content like crazy wildfire. First, too much can be as detrimental as not enough. For several reasons.
No. 1, the more videos you have on your blog the slower your load time will be. Videos can be a drain on a server, especially if you have limited bandwidth. But there are two ways you can slow your page load time with videos.
- Host the videos on your own server – This requires bandwidth. If you use excessive videos on your site then you’ll slow down your page load time by clogging up your bandwidth. To speed things up again you’ll need to purchase more bandwidth or expand your hosting plan.
- Embed your videos from another site – One popular method of including videos on a site is to embed from another site. YouTube is the most popular video host on the Internet. The problem is whenever you embed a video on your site a web browser must go to that other site to get what it needs to show a video to your site visitor. That takes additional time. Usually, embedding is not a problem but if you have an excessive number of videos on a page then you can expect a slower load time.
If you do use videos, try to stay away from autorun videos. People find them annoying and you’ll lose credibility with your audience quickly. If people leave your site because they find your content annoying they won’t be back.
If videos are the only content on a page you probably don’t have a well optimized web page. That will hurt you in the search engines. Learn how to optimize your video content for search. To do that best, you need relevant supporting text on your web pages and blog posts.
Video content is a good way to attract new readers and keep old readers interested. Just don’t overdo it.
Is Video Blogging Right For You?
That is a little like asking, “do you need a truck?”. The answer will depend on what you hope to achieve from a video blog and whether or not you have the skills required to produce the video.
I know a lot bloggers just don’t feel comfortable with idea of appearing in a video on their blog. In fact many bloggers don’t feel comfortable having a still photo of themselves on their blog. Video blogging is not necessarily about you. Video blogging can include many different topics and can make ideal ‘how to’s’
If you have a particular skill or trade, then video posts could be ideal. Having a short video on how to fix, service or upgrade something will certainly prove to be popular with many visitors who are interested in that topic. There are however a few areas that should be noted when publishing a video post.
First, ignoring the actual quality of the video, how often are you going to post? Many blogs work well with plenty of written content and the occasional video. Other blogs are devoted to videos with little in the way of text. The choice is yours.
If you are going to have the occasional video, are you going to provide a written summary or transcript. Being a scanner, I prefer the written summary. I will only view the video if the summary sells it to me – you have to give me a reason to view the video, after all it takes time to load, time I could be elsewhere.
Time is the third consideration. Will your blog service cope with a 100 visitors all wanting to watch the video? Hosting the video offsite through YouTube or similar is a sensible way to go. The visitor is then receiving the video direct from YouTube and not using any bandwidth from your site.
Without a doubt, video blogging is the future. Are they a part of your future? Only you can tell. One thing you should not do is rush in and produce poor quality videos on topics that have little public interest. Like any blog content, provide some value to your visitor and they will come back for more.
In the meantime, visit as many other blogs as possible and check out their video blogging. Note what works and doesn’t work for you. Learn from their efforts. If you come across a technique that interests you, don’t be afraid to ask. Asking a blogger how they did something is a compliment to them and they will normally provide whatever help they can. Video blogging – it is part of the future. Until your ready, continue to provide the best quality content you can.
BCP is always happy to discuss any of your daily blog content needs if you have difficulties finding that quality content every day.
Is Video Blogging Making A Rise?
Yes, I think we can say that video blogging is starting to rise. In November 2007, there were 9,299 votes cast for 10 nominees for the best video blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. In 2006, there were 6,434 votes. And in 2004 there wasn’t even a video blog category.
Are these facts in and of themselves evidence that video blogging is on the rise? No. But if you Google “video blog” you’ll find over 100 million results. The top results include some of the biggest names in search – Google has a video blog, AOL has a video blog, and online news source WebProNews has recently started adding video reports to its website. Many bloggers and blog consultants are now starting to experiment with their own video blog posts, such as Michael Martine at Remarkablogger. I think it’s pretty obvious that video blogging is certainly becoming more popular. But will it transform blogging as we know it?
I think the next two years will be a stepping out period for video blogging. I believe you’ll see more video blogs on the rise. There will be good ones, bad ones, and mediocre ones. There will be a lot to learn about video blogging – camera angles, lighting, pacing, scripting, editing, and even SEO. But I don’t think every company online will need a video blog. It will certainly benefit some companies, but it won’t be a necessary element for all. It will be interesting to see how video blogging matures and whether YouTube will be the host of choice for videos that companies put on their blogs.
Beware Of The Video SEO Wolf At The Door
I’m a big proponent of video. I think the future is here and it’s in video. Video blogging, video marketing, and even video SEO. Only, video SEO hasn’t happened yet. Unless you believe some people starting to rear up their heads now – like Divinity Metrics. I’d give them a link back, but if they can’t even get their own links then I’m not going to help them out with a freebie.
This website – you can Google ‘em – promises the sun and moon through some abstract term called “video metrics.” You are supposed to believe that they can SEO your video content and get you magical results in Google and every other search engine just because they say so. The problem is, no one knows how SEO video content. No one. Not us. Not Matt Cutts. And certainly not Divinity Metrics.
OK, maybe Matt Cutts knows. But he’s not telling. So the rest of us have to guess. Divinity Metrics wants you to believe that they have the secret. And if you go to their website and examine it for best practices of SEO, not only will you NOT see anything even remotely resembling SEO, even traditional SEO, but you can’t even tell that they know what SEO is. The index page has – count ‘em – five, yes 5, meta tags with it’s whopping PageRank of 1:
< meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" >
< meta name="Author" content="Divinity Metrics, Inc." >
< meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Fri, 1 Apr 1999 23:59:59 GMT" >
< meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" >
< meta name="viewport" content="width=1024" >
Of five meta tags, they can’t even squeeze in one useful one? No title tag? Where’s the description. You’d think they could at least give their index page a keyword tag. Nope. No useful meta tags. Just these silly tags that no search engine robot cares about. And they want your video SEO business.
Visit the company’s blog and you see blog posts all the way back to March 2007. They look busy. Again, PageRank 1. In one year’s time they’ve only been able to muster a PR1? I have a blog I started in November 2007 and it’s already at a PageRank 4. My guess is they backdated those posts this past week to make you think they’ve been online awhile. Sorry. I’m not fooled. Are you?
When it comes to video SEO, I’m all for it. But I’m not looking for Cinderella’s slipper. And you shouldn’t be either.
