Search today, is not the user experience it first was. When searching Google, Bing or Yahoo! we often see richer results than the traditional ten blue links on a text heavy page. Now it is very common for a search query to trigger additional types of results too, particularly when searching Google you may see images, local listings (with a map) and of course video.

Whilst there are many statistics about video content being more likely to get to page one than standard text content; and whilst there is a great deal of truth in such statistics, there are conditions and dependencies. Just having video content on your site is not enough. Setting aside the content subject-matter and quality, your video needs to be optimised so that it can be effectively interpreted by search engines. Search engine crawlers cannot “see”, or “hear” video content, so we’re much more reliant on technical structure and on-page set-up, as information and relevancy signals here.

Technical/Structural

1. One video per page

Having one video per page allows you to explicity target data about that page, to the content of the video. As an example, having a keyword-rich URL, that speaks to the video content will provide an additional relevency signal.

2. Navigational and internal links

Ensure that your video(s) are well linked-to within the site, both by navigation and by internal linking. With internal links it is much easier and more natural to link with explicit anchor text, which will add additional meaning to what it is, that the video is about.

3. Video directory or sub-folder

House all collated video on the site, in to a specific folder or subdirectory i.e. http://mywebsite.com/video/

4. Video sitemap

Tell Google about your video content by creating a video sitemap and adding it to your Webmaster Tools account, for the site.

On the Page

1. Embed content

Ensure you embed your video content, as opposed to playing in a pop-up window.

2. File names

Give the video file a keyword-rich, descriptive name.

3. Meta data

Ensure the page meta-title and description are a good balance of keyword rich, meaninful data.

4. Transcribe where appropriate

Depending on the length of the video and additionally from an accessibility perspective it is considered best-practise to provide a transcript of the audio. Not only will this make the content accessible to hearing-impaired users, but having the content transcribed on the page will add additional meaning to search engines.

5. Allow for easy sharing

Certain types of video content may naturally have that share-appeal, however it pays to make this as easy as possible by ensuring your content is extremely easy for users to share. Consider providing an embed URL, and certainly ensure that you have social sharing icons to make it easy for users to share with their communities in a single click.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook, a leading SEO resource based in the US, first reported this change in early November for the US market. In his post, Wall posits that for the set of sites that rank well for a term, rather than rank the page that might “traditionally” be the strongest (which is normally any sites’ homepage), Google is then applying “internal site searches & back in other relevancy factors to look for other popular & relevant pages on those sites“.

Looking at our client site rankings, and conferring with industry peers, it seems that this change hit UK shores around December 20th.

Here’s an example:

Simon owns one of the UK’s most established and authoritative sites retailing car parts www.potn.co.uk. The site retails products such as brake discs, alloy wheels, exhausts, high-performance tyres etc. Pretty much anything one may require in order to “pimp one’s ride”. Previously the site homepage has ranked in the top five for almost any term (product) that they retail. Post the 20th December update, Google now return the specific subpage listing for the term in question.

Search “alloy wheels” returns the following result, which was previously the homepage.

Although the listing has slipped a couple of places, one may imagine that the click-through rate on this listing may increase, as the URL shown is descriptive and entirely relevent to the user query. Plus, given the landing page is now the explicit alloy wheels page (on which conversion activity occurs), the revenue effect may be neutral to positive.

What is Happening Here?

Google are taking a further step in the persuit of relevancy and a better user experience, by applying site search (and other relevancy signals) to identify an even more suitable page from within the site; than the naturally more-authoritative homepage.

Who Should this Benefit?

Provided a site is well built, and contains good quality original content, any site can benefit; though in particular this could be useful for ecommerce websites, such as the POTN example above. Ecommerce retailers with multiple products, may now find that the specific product page now ranks where the homepage did previously – which should be great for both user experience and conversions.

Who Are the Losers?

Sites with poor information architecture and little, (or poor quality) content will fail to capitalise on this change. Sites that have failed to invest in content and infrastructure, but have instead chosen to game the algorithm by agressive link-building tactics will also find their poor strategy may no longer pay.

What if Google Are Showing the “Wrong” Page?

In most cases, this change should be quite positive for most quality websites. In some cases however, you may find that a sites blog (by its’ very nature more dynamic and containing more written content than a homepage) usurps a sites’ homepage. We have a client site, with very little written content on the homepage where the blog has usurped the homepage result for the sites core term. In this case, this is not a desirable effect; however we suspect from experience, that the user interaction (as fed back in the search metrics), will prompt the listing to revert to the homepage soon. In the meantime we’re making a couple of on-page changes to the blog, to de-prioritise the site’ core terms.

Future Considerations

This latest change to the Google algorithm makes an even stronger case for the necessity of good quality original content. Site architecture is pushed higher up the agenda. Best-practise in site artchitecture being to establish a flat and wide structure; that is, where content is divided up into as many channels as possible (without comprimising on what makes sense), where each channel is as close as possible to the homepage. That said; if applying site search is indeed the method Google are using to qualify sub-pages, perhaps there is a risk we may see the re-emergence of “SEO landing pages” and low quality keyword-stuffed content again.

If Immanuel Kant was alive today, I think he’d be an SEO on the side. I think the combination of knowledge fuelled by common results of repeated experimentation, combined with the all- too- common Cartesian doubt (did we really drop a place – or did they gain a place) would seriously appeal to him.

So, it is with some sense of compassion that I wanted to reference this hilarious Google result for the search term “Google Ireland”. Have a look at the top ranking results…

Notes on a small Ireland

How good is that?

Maybe someone did a misspell in the meta keywords, cos – like New Zealand is an Ireland, right? Of course the search engines don’t use meta-keywords to inform the ranking algorithm though.

Regardless. My point is that SEO is an inexact science, though we can use learned inferences and experimentation to support our hypotheses, but when all is said and done – even Google can fall foul of their own algorithm.

Diddums.

We can hopefully help you a little further as here we’ve taken the Top 5 Ranking Factors from the SEOmoz report, and explained what they refer to in layman terms.

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

Anchor text refers to the clickable text part of a hyperlink. Anchor text is thought to be weighted quite highly in search engine algorithms as the linked text is normally highly relevant to the landing page. Thus, the anchor text of a link is an indicator of what the linked page is about and can help search engine spiders understand the subject of the target webpage better.

It is best to try and use anchor text which is similar or identical to the keyword targets for your website. Whether the link is from from an internal or external source, even if you can’t use one of your keyword targets, never, ever use a generic phrase such as ‘click here’.

2. External Link Popularity

External link popularity is a measure of the quality and quantity of external links that point to your website. External link popularity is an off-page factor that is supposedly impartial. The theory is that the more links that point to your website, the more popular it is therefore the more useful the pages should be. Content-rich sites should attract lots of links easily; content-poor websites should find it difficult to attract websites.

However it isn’t just about the quantity of links – it’s also about the quality. Not all incoming links are equal; a link from a well-repsected site from a well-respected page (such as the BBC’s homepage) will be worth far, far more than 10 links from an obscure link directory. Naturally, the more respected the website is, the harder it is to get a backlink therefore the more weight the link will carry.

One-way links are thought to be the best kind of link to have (where Site A => Site B only). Reciprocal linking (where Site A => Site B, and Site B => Site A) is useful, particularly if both websites are well respected, however the link is not thought to carry as much weight as a one-way link. Three way links (Site A => Site B => Site C => Site A) are at attempt by some webmasters to create more ‘natural’ looking links. Three way linking can sometimes be better than normal reciprocal links as each link looks like a one-way link.

3. Diversity of Link Sources

Link diversity refers to the number of different root domains that link to your website. Although link quality and link quantity are important, the variety of links is also a critical factor in the search engine algorithms. Example www.themediaflow.com/about and www.themediaflow.com/contact are two different links but are not diverse as the root domain is the same ‘themediaflow’.

The more domains that link to you, the more trust and authority your site is likely to have. Links from a variety of sites are also likely to create new traffic opportunities as well as giving your site exposure to a larger audience. Linking repeatedly from the same domains also looks slightly artificial – a wider sphere of influence means your site will tend to look more authentic.

Having a wide source of links is also a good insurance policy – if you have links from just one or two websites, what if one of the sites loses all of it’s content? You’ve suddenly lost a whole bunch of links. Or what if the search engines adjust their search engine algorithm? You could be out in the cold.

As a final word on link building, when you are building links for your site, don’t just look for the followed links (when links are created, you can apply an HTML attribute called ‘nofollow’ to the link which tells the search engines that the hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the SERP. Many blogs, directories and bookmarking sites have ‘nofollow’ applied as standard to any link). OK, ‘nofollow’ links won’t pass your website pages any link juice however it is slightly suspicious to only have full-fat links pointing at your website – it will probably look more natural if you have diversity in your links. Also, link building is not just about the SERP – it’s about traffic. Some of the ‘nofollow’ links may actually drive good (free) traffic at your site – and having a diverse source of traffic is great insurance against search engine algorithm changes.

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

There are two titles that are worthy of mention: the first is within the metadata and the second is within a link.

Metadata title tags should appear in every page on your website and every page on your site should have unique title tags created for it. Titles should always include the keyword targets for that particular page and it is also a useful place to put in alternate spellings in the hope of ranking well (e.g. customisation vs customization). Always front-load your titles with your keywords, but don’t put too many in as this will ‘water down’ the relevance.

Link titles serve two purposes: to help users predict what will happen if they follow a link and to give more relevance pointers to the search engine spiders. Link titles are usually seen by the user when their mouse pointer hovers over a link. The link title should be descriptive, however they should ideally be less than 60 characters and certainly no more than 80 characters long. The link title should be used for supplementary information and to backup the anchor text of a link.

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains

The link distance refers to how many hops you are away from a ‘Trusted Domain’. The closer you are to a ‘Trusted Domain’ the more trust/authority you inherit from that link.

So what exactly is a ‘Trusted Domain’? Trusted Domains are domains which search engines believe they can trust. Unfortunately, there is no known public list of trusted domains although places such as brands are likely to be on the list. Once a site is classed as a trusted domain, it is believed that any link published within the site will get a little bit of extra link juice. Even if you can’t get a link directly from a trusted domain, by having a link from another domain which does have a link from the trusted domain, you will probably still see a little extra link juice.

I’d say we’re pretty much in agreement with the SEOmoz Top 5 Ranking factors, though there are a number of other factors that can have both a positive and negative effect on your ranking in the SERPs that are also not to be ignored. Finally; one thing that is worth stressing time and again, is that you need to have a fair amount of good- quality, original content that grows and updates frequently. When it comes to SEO you really can not polish a turd.