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How To Use Local Video To Drive Traffic To Your Own Neighborhood Pages And Not Your Video Provider's Site

Local pages are a great way to build a sense of community and, as an agent or broker, farm that community for business purposes. Video is a great way to add content to these types of pages because you aren't asking people to write blog posts or take a lot of time to create local content - they'll just upload the videos for ball games, church events, local meetings, and neighborhood business videos that they create during the normal course of neighborhood life.

That said, it all sounds great until you realize the following:

- someone has to cut and paste all of that great local video into the neighborhood pages on a timely and regular basis

- visitors may have videos in different formats, different players, and not have the expertise to fit within the technical limitations of upload sites

- Video upload sites like Youtube and Wellcomemat generally focus the SEO benefits for your videos to driving Google searches to their own sites and not your site

How can we call neighborhood or local video "local" if the Google search results dont even point to a local page with your content on it?

Vidlisting has a way that you can quickly add an upload widget to any of your neighborhood pages, have the Google results point back to your local neighborhood site, and provide a common format of your choosing. You can even self host the converted video on your own server.

local video

There is only one step for your visitors to upload local video - it cant get any easier. They use the special upload widget that we provide and only requires adding one line of HTML code to your pages where you want your neighbors to upload video. Our code then converts that video and automatically sends (or FTPs) the converted video back to a directory on your own server. The video can then automatically just "appear" where it is supposed to on your neighborhood pages with your site retaining all of the SEO benefits.

We can even add an admin approval step that lets you quickly review uploaded content and select "approve" or "disapprove" for the content. Videos can be enabled or disabled with one mouse click. Its that easy and the entire configuration process takes about 10 minutes.

There is no better way for a local group of people to have a common way to upload and show local video content that can be actually be found in search results on your pages. Best of all, you wont be spending time cutting and pasting video embed codes

If you think that this approach might meet the needs of your neighborhood or group, contact me at tony@vidlisting.com to help you get started.

Edited to add a link so you can the configuration and the actual widget used: http://activerain.com/blogsview/666985/Free-Yourself-From-Your-Video-Upload-Provider-How-An-Org-Can-Self-Host-Video-Without-Headaches

Tony

Defining "Enterprise Ready": A Guide To Online Video Platforms For Brokers, Agencies, Associations, And Listing Portals

Posted by A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor on 10/26/2008 04:14 AM

Comments (40)

Video in the Technology and Tools Channel

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40 Comments on How To Use Local Video To Drive Traffic To Your Own Neighborhood Pages And Not Your Video Provider's Site

OCT

2008

All very exciting, and I'm grateful to be learning about it...I like your ilustration here, too! Nice job, as always...;-)

Interesting. Thanks for posting and sharing this important information.

Mara: Pictures, 1000 words :) I hope I'll see you at NAR.

Bob & Carolin: Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment.

Tony

OCT

2008

I think it's a great idea... What does something like this cost? IS anyoone on Localism using it?

Great Post, I'm iliterate when comes to this stuff. I haven't even done a virtual tour yet. But I will keep studying this because we do have local pages and I know this would help.

I love video's and the effect they have over other content. I'm coming back to study & apply this one! Thanks

It's gets us thinking...thanks for educating on new methods to market, draw attention and promote our areas!

Marcia: We just launched this functionality last month. We've just gotten started helping others realize the benefits of this approach. These are things that you cant do with Youtube or Wellcomemat. NAR Convention Pricing for this feature is less than $10/month for essentially unlimited uploads and conversions.

If nothng else, think of the value of your time in not having to cut and paste video submitted by others.

Joyce: Whenever you are ready to get started, email me or give me a call. I can get you set up in about 15 minutes...and its completely hands off - no tech knowledge required.

Sara: We've talked at length that the process of cutting and pasting videos into web pages is flawed for business usage. The problem is that most people dont know that alternatives are available. We are "putting our technology where our mouth is" so to speak and offering alternative approaches that actually save time and add benefits to the site owner trying to run a business.

Andrew: Thank you so much for stopping by and making my day!

Tony

Thanks! I am trying to build a n'hood site, this really helps.

I don't quite get it. If I embed a google video in my webpage, then google is going to pick it up and give it a value based on the fact that it is a google video. If I also have the video description containing a link back to the real estate page I want to juice this has value. If I syndicate this same video out to aol, yahoo, etc...it seems like that's the best way to juice the page I'm trying to bump.

You're suggesting that the seo benefit of a private hoster is greater than syndicating a video. Please explain the benefit in more detail.

Tony, I started using video this summer. I'm not sure I understand how/where the video shows up and how much you're really talking about cost wise.

Great information you've put together here. I need to start using videos more often. ;)

I am subscribing to your blog for that.

Pat: Thanks for the comment. Shoot me a link to the neighborhood site once its up.

Boca: It depends on what benefit you are trying to gain and the audience that you want. If you are trying to attract people to your local site that are interested in a wide range of information about the local area or neighborhood, then it makes sense to redirect people to your local site that you are publicizing withn that community when they find you on search result pages rather than sending you to a provider page. The aggregation alone has value, doesnt it? If people want to build their community on Youtube rather tha a localy focused page, then that's a different issue.

Since you asked about "juicing up the page", the proof is actually in the pudding (in this case, the search results). If simply embedding a video in a page gave sites extra SEO juice, why dont we see more video on the first pages for any major consumer search keywords like [town name] real estate? It's the other optimization on the page that determines search placement and generally . Technically, any widget is also an outbound link from your site that by any measure gives the receiving site more benefit than it gives your site (especially if you have a high PR).

There is nothing inherently superior to having your own page. The control that you have over the SEO on that page can give you benefits and flexibility that a hosting provider cannot provide.

You asked :)

Connie: Excellent question. Our standard setup involves a widget that rotates in the last 3-5 videos uploaded via the widget on your local widget. We also provide a searchable and sortable library of all content uploaded via the widget...therefore, there is no cutting and pasting required for the local video to show up on your site. The admin approval menu presents all of the content that hasnt been approved yet. One other important point is that these videos dont show up anywhere else - not vidlisting, not anywhere. You control the content and how it is presented. The price for everything I mentioned above is $120/year until the end of the NAR convention with essentially unlimited conversion. Hopefully, that answers your question a bit better. If you have further questions, just email or call me.

Tony

Colleen: great...there is a lot of great information on AR about video. Take advantage of all of it.

David: Welcome. You'll definitely find a whole set of alternative things to think about by subscribing to this blog :) Also, consider joining me on Twitter if you are a member there - @Vidlisting

Thank You AR Gods For The Featured Post! You guys are the best. I'm humbled by the friends that I have made and things I have learned here.

Tony

Tony,

Amazing! So, let me get this straight: you bash WellcomeMat every single chance you get and then email me (today) wanting to do business with us? Wow man...strange way of warming up to partners! I just got your email about meeting at NAR, and will be ignoring it.

Second problem: you are claiming to address SEO for videos, but all you are alleging to do is speed up the process of embedding videos. Am I wrong? Just getting a video to show up on a page does nothing for SEO. The site administrator still has to index the video(s)
correctly, and the page has to be set up correctly (meta data etc) for the SEO that you're referring to to take place. But wait...there's more...

You are trying to sell people on the idea that embedding an upload form on the page where they want to have their videos show up is somehow better than embedding a video player on that page. Regardless of the process that one applies, the end result is the same: if the page isn't set up properly, the search engines ignore it. It sounds like what you are doing is making a case for the AR/Mixpo solution, where the page is being indexed and automated with video. They have done a good job...I agree!

Tony, you should consider pitching your company based on strengths rather than negative commentary about your competitors. As a team, I can promise you that WellcomeMat will not speak negatively about your company. I wish we could garner the same respect from you/yours, but it's plainly obvious that this is not the way you conduct yourself. We do appreciate being assimilated to YouTube though. Barbar Corcoran did the same a while back and it feels good.

I will not be responding to any more comments on this post. Feel free to grab the last word my man...the mic is yours.

-Christian Sterner | Team WellcomeMat

I thought this is what you tube did. Can you explain the difference?

Sounds like you do a fair amount of work with video, what operating system do you run on, and what do you use to edit your video? Thank you!

All this information is awesome but how easy is it really? I mean I am just really learning how to get on line it seams. Great information thanks

Christian: Thou doth protest too much. You received the same email that we've sent to a number of companies in the space. We figured that it would be neighborly to invite you too, but apparently not. If we have said that WM doesnt do something that you actually do today, then I'll gladly correct it.

Jean: Youtube doesn't provide services to companies that want to self-host their own videos on their own server. You have to upload into their player and if you have multiple contributors (which a local site would likely have), you may have be aware of content that is uploaded into other channels.

Youtube also requires that you cut and paste embed code for every video that is posted by any of your contributors - our method only requires that you add a single line of code one time and all of your videos that are uploaded via your local widget regardless of contributor automatically appear on your page.

You can control all of your SEO if thats what you want. If not, we can set you up so anyone that you choose can help you as well.

Thanks for sharing

Rich

Charlotte NC

Boston Condo Guy: We have a mixed network of editing machines. We also have a completely automated set of conversion servers that autodetect such technical data as the file type, codec, aspect ratio (4x3 or widescreen 16x9), etc immediately upon video upload. That also lets us know that the uploaded file is a legitimate video file and if the proper codec is loaded on the server before we begin conversion.

The system started out for our internal conversion and we made changes so that we could scale it up to just about any number of conversion servers.

Richard: What I can promise is that it is MUCH easier than having to cut and paste a video player into your page each time someone uploads a video. It normally takes about 15 minutes and then you wont need to fiddle with it again.

Tony

Great information Tony. SEO is an exhausting endless everyday task someone has to be aware of. Nonetheless sounds like a great idea. Keep up the good work.

Rich: Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment.

Castellum Realty: The real advantage here is in the administration and management of your content. Others have exclusively focused on developing their player and asking businesses with many videos to use the same approaches as the blogger with just one or two. It doesnt work...we know it and we know that you know it. We took the game changing route and developed a system where a business can have their content management needs met as well.

The real business benefits here come from the ability to present content on your own branded site in a way that saves time and makes you more productive rather than spending more time on mundane activities like cutting and pasting video embed codes.

I always love seeing your comments. You guys do great work here on AR.

Tony

Oh my... I freeze up when the topic of videos is mentioned. I'm so in overload. That being said, I am busily taking videos and even sent a few to clients. Another month, and I'll probably be a real pro with help from you and other ActiveRainers. Thanks much.

Margaret: Lots of great info on AR. Take advantage of it. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Tony

Cool deal. I was wondering how to make something like this work. Now if I can just get my web guys to answer the phone! I've been 25 years IT and I still have my head spinning with all this stuff. In reality, I think I was born about 150 years too late. :-)

looks and sounds very interesting.. I need to check this out in great detail

OCT

2008

Good idea.

Mike: Funny...the changes have been amazing since I started programming 25+ years ago. I think that this is one of our best projects - we are really breaking new ground on how video content can be automatically managed rather than manually maintained. That's what computers are for, right? :)

Roland: Let me know if you have any questions.

Sham: Thanks.

Tony

Some more thoughts on the SEO piece of the solution.

The whole reason for "going local" is two-fold:

- far less competition for the really local keywords

- higher density of those with vested interest in the area

Getting on the first page of Google for a focused and less competitive is actually often as easy as simply mentioning those keywords in a post or a page title. I'm not sure of the benefit to you to have your visitors redirected to another website in this case.

Hosting providers guard their own interests (which are driving traffic to their own sites). If you are the big fish in the little pond, you dont need to compete with your video hosting provider for your own long tail traffic.

Tony: Just a "courtesy call." Now I can put a real picture to the Avatar, and at the same time satisfy my curiousity.

OCT

2008

Boomer: You are too funny. :) Stop by more often...

I use both video and virual tours on my website but most of my clients prefer virtual tours to video....

Tom: Completely fair observation. Go with what works. Using both is smart...there is a lot more cool stuff on the horizon for video.

Tony

NOV

2008

I am trying to figure how to get from my current - visual tours based system to an easy flexible you tube -- video world system.

NOV

2008

thanks for the tips.

Tom: We started posting narratives and videos (virtual tours of communities converted to YouTube) and we were informed that they were "not public or member". Any ideas on what this means. We contacted AR with no response. We have over 700 of these that we think would add value. We own the content, www.virtualhomes.com.

NOV

2008

Eric - welcome to the brave new world of real estate video

Lee - Thank you for visiting

Fred - unfortunately, I have no idea what you may be referring to or enough context to help. Please contact me privately by email and we can get it sorted out. Thanks.

Tony

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