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Category: Image & Video Optimization

Explore how to optimize your website's images and videos for search.


  • I'm trying to avoid problems with Google Places; this is like "address confusion", but is rather "business confusion". We have a gym at a street address with a suite number, and a number of personal trainers who work out of the gym.  Several of them have their own websites and their own Google Places pages. 1 trainer has a Yelp account that lists the gym's street address including the suite number, and a Places page with the gym's street address. 2 trainers have the gym's street address on their personal/individual business websites, 1 with and 1 without the suite number. Is any of this going reduce Google's confidence in the accuracy of which business is really at the street address and suite number? What should we tell/require of our trainers in relation to this, if anything? Is there a chance Google will merge the Places pages? Am I paranoid?  (Google Places sometimes does at it wishes, to the dismay of several of my clients.....) I do know that there are often many businesses in a building, each with their own suite numbers, and nothing bad happens.  But ours is a case of multiple personal training businesses (including the gym: a small personal training studio) all at the same address And suite number. Thanks for any insight or ideas!

    | TheSEOWiz
    0

  • I think a lot of people are having this problem.  You spend years receiving great reviews on Google Places only to have the wiped out for no reason. That being the case what 3rd party sites do you all suggest that client reviews be hosted besides your website? Thoughts?

    | webestate
    0

  • I have heard it argued recently that the use of structured data such as schema.org to identify your business location on a website should help SERP in local search. Why is this important if the location is clear on the website and why should it make a difference if the site is already showing well in local search?

    | casper434
    0

  • I've read about the changes in requirements for Google Places - and hidden the address for my relevant local clients.  Is there any step I can take to speed up the edit being recognised and displayed in SERPs.  In addition, I would like to know, will the address also disappear from the actual Google Places page as well?

    | catherine-279388
    0

  • If so can where do I insert the geo tag? I want to do this for a landing page in a different city, and i've simply put the Geo tag in this landing page. Is this right? Help, NEWBIE!!!

    | Buzzwords
    0

  • Just curious if anyone else has had issues with any clients losing lots of reviews in the last week?

    | 4RealLocal
    0

  • Hi ! It's really good guide... I have few questions... We own ecommerce site. we are in process of building videos realted to our niche. I'm planning to host videos like this 😆 www.ecom.com/videos  where videos folder i m going to manage with wordpress and wordpress has plugins like :- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/ I am planning to host video on youtube and vimeo. as both will have same videos. which service provider i should use for my own sitemap... we know both can rank in google and my ecommerce site too.. Keeping SEO benefits and traffic in mind. what should i do... Thanks vinku

    | vinku
    0

  • Hi all, We have a YouTube channel containing about 25 videos we created professionally a few years ago. They are all product features and are hosted on our site for applicable products (a very small percentage of our overall number of products). This channel was largely forgotten about for a few years. It has now reached over 160k views. What's the best way to utilize these videos for SEO benefits? Any techniques anyone has to maximize our ever increasing number of views? Thanks

    | bradkrussell
    0

  • Hi, I am currently working with my first client on SEO, and I've been asked (among other things) to help  them get their video content indexed by Google. Since this is my first client, and I haven't worked much with videos, I hope I can get some tips. An example of one of their "theme pages" is about studying in Australia. The site is in Norwegian and don't mind the pop-up: http://www.studenttorget.no/australia I would love to get some feedback to what I should do about this page in order to help them get their videos indexed. By the way, they're considering hosting their own videos, and creating a system to keep everything local. Is this a better solution to seo than if the videos are hosting on YouTube/Vimeo or something else? Thanks. Jens P. Berget

    | berget
    0

  • We have a popular blog, but SEOmoz analytics is telling us that theblog  homepage has greater than 100 links and this needs to be addressed. One very big source of links on the blog homepage is the tag cloud. Can tag clouds be a source of link juice dilution? If so, is should we consider either removing the tag cloud altogether (not essential to the site) or consider doing no-follows? Thanks.

    | ahw
    0

  • I'm trying to figure out a process to find specific youtube embed videos using Google search.  But a lot of sites are not being returned.  For example, I know that the following video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MnylRaQC3w) is linked to and embedded on http://gizmodo.com/5898438/watch-how-fender-builds-its-iconic-stratocasters However, I can't figure out a set of search terms to find that in Google.  Searching for (1MnylRaQC3w  Gizmodo) doesn't return the right page in the results. I'd like to figure this out so I could see everywhere a certain youtube video has been embedded.

    | nixforsix
    0

  • Hi guys, Ive been doing local seo for quite some time and had great results from both organic listings and local maps listings (and a merged listings). However ive noticed time and time again that local maps listings dont appear in serps on all local searches, even the most popular local search terms. Take the phrase "marketing company glasgow" local phrase,local intent but no maps results. But if you click on maps on the laft hand side, theres clearly tons of mpas results. Any ideas why google dont display local businesses on certain local intent phrases? Is there any way around this? Even with good on page seo, and good rankings organically, it would be great to get the maps listing on page 1 too. Thanks Robert

    | glasgowseoguy
    0

  • I've set up a new campaign for a website specifically targetting a service offered in a specific UK city. It's on a .com domain, and we've managed to get a few powerful links and while its only been going for a few weeks it's starting to get decent rankings in Google.com but is nowhere to be seen in Google.co.uk. It's getting good traffic but not traffic that converts probably because it's targeted to the UK and most visitors are from the US. I've just set up Google places, changed geo targeting to the UK, I've moved over to a UK host and we're targetting UK sites for links. I think while things are still at an early stage it would be a good idea to move everything that's on the .com over to the .co.uk with a 301 redirect and send all new links over to the .co.uk. What do you guys think? Is this a good idea? Thanks

    | sandanista
    0

  • Hello SEOmoz folks, I'm curious as to whether it will be more beneficial for a website to host a video on the site itself or to host it on YouTube and then embed the code on your site. The options so far, as it seems, are: 1.) Host the video on YouTube or Vimeo or wherever else, then embed the YouTube code into your own website's HTML. 2.) Host the video on your own website by itself. 3.) Host the video on your own website AND YouTube AND Vimeo. I'm wondering which option is best. And if hosting your video on your own website is a good way to go, whether to go that route solely or in addition to hosting on YouTube, what is the best way to go about that? Do I have to embed a player AND the video info into the HTML of my website? What player is best for this? Flash, or something else? And once I get the video on my site one way or the other, how do I write the code to make sure the video thumbnail shows up next to my search results in Google to maximize the SEO potential for the video clip? Sorry for the long question, but I've been searching everywhere for this and I'd love just a direct answer on it. Thanks for your help! Cheers, Dani

    | MountainMedia
    0

  • I have set schedules upload of Test Data Feed in Google Merchant Center. Today, I have found duplicate item error in test feed status summary! There are 2697 error for duplicate item. But, my http://www.vistastores.com/feed/test_data_feed.txt does not contain any duplicate item. I have checked test feed twice before raise this question. How can I fix this issue?

    | CommercePundit
    0

  • Goal: Leverage videos to get links and traffic back to website not video hosting platform site (e.g. YouTube) to generate website leads **Issue: ** If we place a video on a website using video YouTube embed code and video sitemap for the crawlers to index our video DOES show up in search results BUT that link goes back to YouTube. Great for increasing views on YouTube but not increasing link popularity for client website. Question:  What are recommendations / best practice for SEO (such as using another player like Viddler, etc.) that will get video results from search engines back to the website? We want to leverage videos to build links and generate leads to client site.

    | jfeitlinger
    0

  • This is the first time I have run into this problem, but hopefully someone can answer this. If a business is located in lets say in South Londonery, but everyone is searching for Londery what is the best way to tackle this. I should also add that both have different zip codes but as far as search there is no distinction as they are considered the same, and South Londonery is never used. So while it would be easy to rank high for South Londonery, it's pretty much useless.

    | KGHollywood
    0

  • Hi there, We were ranking no. 1 for one of our key terms for a long time, however a competitor of ours by the looks of it purchased a load of private blog network links and managed to shift above us. The page we rank for on that term has a video with the markup to trigger a video box rich snippet (which i've noticed never seems to be given on position 1 but can be for 2 and below) - so that is now what our entry in the SERPs is. Since then we have actually dropped down to 3rd, with the web page now being in 2nd not having any new links / content in a very long time. Therefore I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about whether the video box could actually reduce CTR which could have resulted in us dropping down to 3rd ? The meta description text seems to be reduced to 100 characters with the vid box, so we're not getting our full message across where the others in the results are. My natural assumption would be that the video box would gain a higher CTR, but i'm thinking this may not be the case for us. Does anyone know of any data relating to the video box in the SERPS ? Many thanks, Stuart MtsbA.jpg

    | stukerr
    0

  • I have been doing SEO for almost 10 years. I deal with mainly Industrial B2B Companies. I am entertaining starting a "Directory" It would be a a "local directory" for a tourist town I just moved to. Ther eis already an existing directory that seems to do very well....has been around quite q while with a PR of 5 and lota of good content. Am I kidding myself? I would like to think "long-term" since I will be living here but realize the obstacles. New Domain No trust No links Lots of content to develop. Any advice or suggestions? Possibly a way to buy an established domain? Platform to use? Ways to generate gest content etc. Thanks for any advice...positive or negative..

    | Reportcard
    0

  • Hi there I'm doing some SEO for a restaurant/bar/night club. Now I'm wondering whether I should create multiple entries on Google Places or one for all. I had in mind: one for the bar/night club and one for the restaurant, as the target audiences for those can be rather different. We have only one address (and one website), but several phone numbers, so it would be possible to have several entries. What's your opinion: One or several entries?

    | zeepartner
    0

  • Hello Mozzers, Working on a site that has locations around the country and is targeting words like "city name+long tail keyword". They're fairly well optimized on-site, so we're working on recommending localized content but could use some advice for link building. Beyond Google places, what have you guys seen that works?

    | RiseSEO
    0

  • Sometimes you can verify and claim a Google Places listing via phone, other times they will only send a post card. ANy reason why? Is it lack of trust to verify via phone or old dulpicate listings? Post card is just so unreliable. ANy way to "force" a phone verification?

    | Reportcard
    0

  • Does any one know best SEO and backlink service that uses white hat method. I dont have anytime for optimization. Im looking for one way backlinking and on-page and off page optimization.  Will appreciate help.

    | tanveers
    0

  • Uploaded a Geo-sitemap last week and made sitemap_index.xml that includes the geo & normal sitemap. Google Webmaster tools shows a warning for the geo sitemap, telling me that the geo tag isn't supported. This is how the xml looks like: <urlset<span class="webkit-html-attribute"> xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"</urlset<span> xmlns:geo="http://www.google.com/geo/schemas/sitemap/1.0">http://www.mysite.com/locations.kmlgeo:format</geo:format>kmlSomebody, anybody knows the fix?

    | nvs.nim
    0

  • Do you have any tricks to getting reviews to stick on yelp? Whenever we ask out customers to review us on there their reviews end up getting "detected" as fakes. I have tried it out myself, and the only way i've gotten them to stick is making several reviews of various different local businesses with average ratings and then dropping one in for the client with a better rating. Perhaps this is a little on the blackhat/greyhat side of things.  But if our customers are legitimatly trying to review us and it doesn't stick, i don't feel all that bad taking this route, the only real problem is time consumed. What about google? has anyone had any luck gaining more reviews for their client on google?

    | adriandg
    0

  • Is there SEO benefit to embedding YouTube videos made my other people or companies on pages? The indirect benefit would be a better user experience and increased perceived value and usefulness of the page which could lead to more links. Are there any other benefits?

    | ProjectLabs
    0

  • Hi, We host all of our videos on You Tube and use embedded links to display on our site. When people search keywords related to our videos they are linking back to You Tube through SERPs. Is there a way link SERPs to websites instead of You Tube? Any advice would be appreciated. Sean

    | DonaldRussell
    0

  • Can someone please provide some details about  key ranking factors for Google Places? Such as Keywords, reviews, pictures, location? I've tried getting reviews, adding lots of details, + Pictures etc..

    | charles1
    1

  • hello, what is the best and easiest way to creat and submit a video site map. I have abot 20 videos in production and would like to optimize them Thank you, much appreciated MOzzers! Go Mossers!

    | vijayvasu
    0

  • Hi everyone, I accidentally added a google place account for a client that had already an existing account. Could you tell me if I delete the new account if it will affect the existing one?  If deleting isn't good what should I do? And what are the different risks if there are? Thank you,

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0

  • What is the best way to internally link via images? I have a website about shoes with all different brands. Let's say I'm trying to rank for "ABC sandals", and on the ABC page I have a "related brands" section with 4 logos of related sandal brands, linking to their respective page. Currently the alt text of the logos is "XYZ Logo" with the link title text "XYZ." Would it be beneficial to have change either the image alt text, or the link title text, or both to "XYZ sandals"?

    | Hakkasan
    0

  • Hi I am looking for some advice / lists of recommended local search directories / citations that I can add my hotel/restaurant to - as part of our strategy to improve local search rankings and increase our visibility on the web. For example I have added the business to the likes of Yelp
    Qype
    Urbanspoon
    Tipped
    Ufindus
    Hotfrog
    Freeindex
    Brownbook
    Trip Advisor But are there any specific hotel, wedding, conference and restaurant specific sites that I should add the business to also. Many Thanks

    | ocelot
    0

  • If you search for the term, "Crappie". Listed 4th is a row of images. These kinds of images always seem to grab my attention above the actual search results-- or at least they do for a moment. These images seem to be in order of google images rankings. I may try to take a swing at ranking for these images. Is there anything else I should know before I start? I can't seem to find any guidance on the topic. Thanks

    | terran
    0

  • I'm having this issue with the keyword "miami printing" raking local for Miami, FL. My website is miamiprintingfl.com and part of my listing, photo, some reviews and etc, belongs to another listing miami-printing.net that last domain is not working at all. Is there anyway to solve this problem? Thank you Here my listing link: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&ix=seb&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1600&bih=799&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=miami+printing&fb=1&gl=us&hq=printing&hnear=0x88d9b0a20ec8c111:0xff96f271ddad4f65,Miami,+FL&cid=13803935199736027265&ei=mxFdT7LKJar50gGPk8WICg&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=1&ved=0CI8BEOIJMAA And the other website that google its getting my listing mixed: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&ix=seb&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1600&bih=799&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=miami+printing&fb=1&gl=us&hq=printing&hnear=0x88d9b0a20ec8c111:0xff96f271ddad4f65,Miami,+FL&cid=16945901725821376380&ei=mxFdT7LKJar50gGPk8WICg&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=3&ved=0CJ4BEOIJMAI

    | jpgprinting
    0

  • Hi, I have a client that has an address that is shared for a few different businesses in the holistic health field. My client is a chiropractor. There is an eye doctor, massage therapist and acupuncturist aslo sharing the same address. It's a subburban setting with two buildings all sharing one address. In the interest of preventing any merged listings down the road, I recently added un unofficial suite number to his website and Google places business listing. I also did this for all of his online directory listings, and for Bing and Yahoo as well. Did I do the right thing here? It seems to be having a positive impact on his local SEO as far as I can tell. Or at least there has not been any negative impact in the last 6 months Your thoughts?

    | MozMan2
    0

  • Hello All, I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking. Here is an example of a page with a video on. If you click the play button you will see But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here. Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)? Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help? Or is there some other issue at work here? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rich

    | JBGlobalSEO
    0

  • Hi I was just wondering if you guys knew of any You Tube Seminars / Events held in the UK. I cannot find anything anywhere. Thanks Adam

    | AMG100
    0

  • Does anybody know what is going on with this message? Instead of our Google Places page, we get the above message. 😞 To be mentioned that Google representatives called our business to verify this listing 2 times this week... Anybody got the same problem? Thanks!

    | echo1
    0

  • Seeing a recent comment about promoting infographs here in the forum, I thought I might ask if anyone has any resources on getting them made, obviously they are a great way to promote and are extremely shareable becoming a link building source. I am not a graphic artist so am wondering if any of you have used someone to build them with any luck?

    | kbloemendaal
    1

  • Have a bit of a quandary; I am working with a site that ranks fourth for their main term via a Google Places listing. However, I can't seem to find a traditional organic listing to save my life.The only way I can do it is to search from a mobile device, or expand the search results to 100 listings. When I do that, the site appears in the top 10 organic listings. That got me to wondering, is it possible this client's traditional organic listing is being cannabalized by their listing in Google Places?

    | phantom
    1

  • Hi, how are you? I'm working with the SEO of a hotel. I completed the Google Places profile, but i'm having a problem: when you go to the map in google maps near the hotel, it shows all the hotels around like in the picture i'm attaching, with little icons like a fork for restaurants, a bed for hotels, a bag for shopping malls. Do you know what reasons could cause that my hotel isn´t appearing like that, with those icons? I'll be really grateful if you can help me with this. Thanks! Ariel

    | arielbortz
    0

  • Our videos are not appearing in Google video search. We use Brightcove for our videos and thety are in embedded in the site as flash and html 5. We are using meta data on the Brightcove videos We have added a video sitemap and submitted it to GWT - but after several months, our videos are still not showing up Any ideas how we can address this problem and better optimize our videos for the search engines? While we post some of our videos on Youtube, we  use Brightcove when we embed and publish the videos on our site

    | tim.mcgovern
    0

  • Hi all! My question is: if a search query gives 2 regular results, then the Google Places results, then 8 more results on the first page, is it possible for a website to appear in both in the regular listing, and in the Google Places listing at the same time? In other words: if I do everything well, can my website be the first result, and also be one of the results in the Places listing as well? Or does a website only either apper in the regular listing or in the Places listing? Thanks for the answers!

    | Diginin
    1

  • Hi Mozzers- I just watched the recent Webinar on Google Places optimization. Unfortunately I missed the live broadcast. I have a couple of questions: It was advised to use an email at the domain for claiming the listing. What about a Gmail address with the company's name in the address? I try to use an email at the domain, but sometimes I'm not able to get one setup. One of my clients provides a service where clients don't necessarily have to come to their location. I used the radius option within maps but they are still not coming up in other locations. I should note that they have very good visibility in the metro area where there is more competition. Some of their competition is showing up for lots of locations and they have offices in one location. Tips? Thanks in advance! LHC

    | lhc67
    0

  • After watching Benu Aggarwal's webinar, I have updated the NAPs for local search for one of my clients.  She recommended getting rid of "Inc" for incorporated companies if that is not how the name is displayed in other places.  Most of the NAPs already had the Inc, but some spelled out "Incorporated", and a few left out the inc entirely. So my question is - How  much damage do you think is caused by having a minor difference in the name, such as "Inc"? Is it worth my time to edit listing just for that one minor change? I'm guessing yes, but just wanted to hear some opinions.

    | jastos
    0

  • Hi Hi, I recently saw the Seomoz Webinar "All About Google Places", and there was the advice to make a custom map with google spreadsheet. I tried it, but it hadn't worked. It seem, that this service is deprecated: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/spreadsheetsmapwizard/makecustommap.htm I can't find another way doing this with spreadsheets. Can anyone help? Thank you! André

    | waynestock
    0

  • Hi, Just wondering if anyone knows if YouTube uses transcripts uploaded to videos as search signals? ie will the video rank better in the SERPs with a transcript? Thanks

    | Digirank
    0

  • Hi guys, I have a question that might have been asked previously but warrants asking again. What is the best workaround for Google Local verification for a business that is located at a physical address that does not receive mail. I have a friend who lives in an area that does not receive mail. This particular person tried using a local PO box to verify, but as it turns out that is a poor option a) because it is not allowed within the guidelines of Google Local, and b) because the listing was not accepted as a unique address and is listed without an address in Local because of this. Is there anyone with recent experience in terms of getting around this and verifying perfectly legitimate businesses in no-mail areas? I would have thought Google would have provided a workaround for those types of businesses. Any thoughts / experience would be appreciated!

    | toddmumford
    0

  • Howdy, A client of mine has a shared office space, where several other businesses share the exact same address, including the same suite number. I realize that this is likely one of the biggest issues holding them back in local/blended search results in their market, which is a very competitive one. (They do have a completely unique local phone number.) They have tons of citations -- way more citations than anyone else at the same address -- so they are definitely the most visible. They are ranking pretty well -- top of page two in organic results (overall top 10 organic if you exclude the places results) and top of page 3 in places results for some select local search terms. But obviously top of page one as a blended result is where we want to be. They have a lot of great content, a lot of quality links and citations. Out of all the competitors ranking ahead of them, a few do indeed deserve to be there, but most do not -- i.e. they have lower DA, PA, worse links, fewer links, no content / shit content compared to my client, and some even have incomplete Google profiles. I really think this could be the sole issue holding my client back from appearing in blended results on page one. What should we do? If I convince them to change their address, we'll have to update thousands of citations, many of which we don't have access to. In reality, we would be able to update some, but not all citations. This also could cause a short term rankings decline, and/or Google Places limbo for who knows how long! Is it possible to overcome this problem if they keep the same address? In a less competitive market I would think it's quite possible, but I'm not so sure in this case. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
    David

    | djreich
    0

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