The first day of SES San Jose is drawing to a close. I’ve only caught a few sessions due to client meetings and getting sidelined with work, but I thought I’d share what I felt were the most compelling tips of the day. Today’s tips come courtesy of the “Next Wave for Online Video” session from earlier this morning. Gregory Markel from Infuse Creative gave such a comprehensive presentation that most of the other panelists got content-jacked by his thoroughness.

Below are some valuable video optimization tips:

Possible YouTube Ranking Factors

The following are possible ranking factors that influence video success on YouTube:

• Usage of core keywords
• How community/social driven the video is
• The title and description of the video, as well as the usage of keywords, links and tags in the description
• View counts and frequency
• The video’s user ratings
• How often the video is shared and favorited
• How often the video is added to playlists/what playlists it’s on
• How often the video is flagged
• The number of comments the video’s received and how often it’s thumbed up/down
• Whether the video comes from an authority channel (like a site that gets a “one box” result)
• The amount and types of links pointing at the video
• How many times the video’s been embedded
• How many video responses (if any) the video has received
• The number of subscribers/channel views
• Whether you’re using paid search to promote your video (you can use paid search advertising for a short burst of awareness)

Video Optimization Tips

Here are a few video optimization tips for all you video dweebs out there:

• Research the competition for related keywords, tags and descriptions (text and links) to see what they’re doing and how well they’re ranking. Emulate what they’re doing but be sure to personalize it for your video (i.e., don’t copy what they’re doing verbatim — mix it up a bit so your video seems unique).
• Use YouTube’s keyword suggestions or Google’s keyword research tool to research relevancy/popularity of intended keywords.
• Access YouTube Ranking Factors (like YouTube’s public insight data) for stats and demographic information. You can see a lot of good data for various videos if the uploader hasn’t restricted the information from public view.
• Make great/unique videos and include call to actions early in the video since few viewers will watch your video in its entirety.
• Add “Subscribe,” “Favorite” and “Rate” prompts/calls to action to your videos either at the editing stage or via YouTube Annotations.
• Post a “video response” for the most popular/relevant video on YouTube that day.
• Add comments prompting people to watch your video on the video watch pages of popular/related videos.
• If they’re not time sensitive, post your interesting videos on Thursdays/Fridays – most of the time videos get the bulk of their views over the weekend.
• Join the YouTube Partner Program if you can qualify to gain greater network visibility.
• Use social media and websites (ahem) to submit/post your video links/embeds and spread them virally (such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, 12seconds.tv, bookmarking and tagging sites, article sites, free and paid PR sites, expert/profile sites, etc).
• Submit videos to multiple video sites using tubemogul.com and link to the YouTube video within each description page.
• Link videos together via YouTube Annotations.
• Create playlists to provide more inviting/sticker user experience.

Be sure to check back again when I post more tips from SES San Jose. I’ll also cover Greg’s social media session bright and early in the morning, so stay tuned!

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