Getting Started With Sony Vegas

 

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Sony Vegas is an all-purpose industrial grade video editor. It runs extremely fast and has a wide variety of export formats. It’s relatively easy to learn (compared to FinalCut or Adobe Premier.) If your main purpose is editing simple web videos or DVDs, you can learn everything you need to know about Vegas in under a week.

Its only drawback is that it lacks sound editing, which needs to be done in external software like Audacity. It doesn’t have many special-effects type of filters and is primarily a video editing program, not a motion graphics program.

All that said, Sony Vegas is a great all around pick for video editing. Here’s a basic guide to using Sony Vegas.

 

Step 1: Understanding the Interface

A good understanding of Vegas’ interface is imperative for being able to edit efficiently. Here’s the basic layout of Vegas’ interface.

1-Layout-Guide

1) Media Box. This is where you can view your existing media, add new media, manage transitions or effects.

2) Volume Bar. This is where you adjust how loud or quiet the volume is. It also allows you to watch the sound levels visually while previewing a video.

3) Toolbar. Select what kind of tools you’re using to edit your video.

4) Preview Box. Play the video and see how it’ll look after it’s rendered in this box.

5) Timeline. Move forwards and backwards in time in your video. This is where the majority of your editing work will take place.

 

Step 2: Importing Media

In order to edit video, you first need to import video into Vegas. Do this by browsing for media either in Windows Explorer, or in Vegas’ built in explorer.

2-Importing-Media

Anytime you see a video you want to import, just drag and drop it into the timeline. This works from both Windows Explorer and Vegas’ explorer.

 

Step 3: Navigating the Timeline

Editing involves constantly moving forwards and backwards in time, previewing how the video looks like, making changes and repeating the process. In order to edit well, you need to be very comfortable with moving through video.

Here’s how to navigate Sony Vegas’ timeline.

3-Navigating-Timeline

1) Basic Controls. This is how you Play, Stop and Pause video. You can also “Play from Start,” “Skip to End” or “Skip” to Beginning” with these controls.

2) Selection. You can select areas of video to apply effects to, to render or to cut. The area between the yellow triangles is the area that’s selected. Change your selection by dragging the yellow triangles.

3) Cursor. Your cursor determines where playback starts and stops. As you play your video, the cursor will move along showing you where in the timeline you’re currently at. Simply click anywhere on the timeline to move the cursor.

4) Playback Rate. You’ll often want to play your video faster or slower than normal. This will allow you to speed past parts that you don’t need to edit, or drastically slow down parts you want to edit so you can get to a specific frame. The Playback Rate allows you to adjust this speed.

It’ll really make your life easier to learn three keyboard shortcuts. These three shortcuts are:

J      K     L

 

J – Play backwards.

K – Pause.

L – Play forwards.

Double Tap J – Play backwards at double speed.

Double Tap L – Play forwards at double speed.

Triple Tap L: Play forwards at quadruple speed.

 

You’ll find yourself playing video forwards and backwards constantly throughout the editing process. Learning just these three keys will cut hours from your editing time.

 

Step 4: Basic Editing: Moving Clips Around

Now that you know how to navigate the timeline, let’s get into how you actually edit video.

To move video around, simply click and drag a video clip. For example, if you’re starting with this video clip:

4-Drag-Original

If you dragged the right clip to the right, it would look like this:

5-Drag-to-the-Right

If you dragged it to the left, so that it overlaps the first video, Vegas will automatically create a transition called a crossfade. Basically, the two videos would fade into each other, giving it a smooth transition from one clip to another:

6-Drag-Crossfade

 

Step 5: Basic Editing: Splitting Clips

Let’s say you take a 20 minute long video on your iPhone. In that 20 minute clip are 5 sub-clips that you want to edit separately, put transitions between, apply different effects to, etc. In order to do that, you’ll first need to split that one clip into several separate clips.

First, position your cursor where you want to make the split.

7-Position-Cursor

Then either go to Edit > Split or just hit S on your keyboard. The clip will then be split where your cursor was positioned.

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Step 6: Basic Editing: Adding Text, Backgrounds and Other Media

Often times you’ll want to add in things that aren’t already there in your video clips. For example, subtitles, text transitions, colored backgrounds, special effects and so on.

To do this, first navigate to the Media Box in the upper left corner. In the bottom tabs, click on the tab most appropriate to the media you want to create. For example, if you wanted to create text, you’d click on Media Generator, then Text.

9-Generate-Text

Drag and drop the text style you want onto your timeline. When you do, a text edit box will pop up.

10-Text-Edit-Box

Edit the text to look the way you want it to. The changes will automatically be saved.

The same can be repeated for special effects by going to the “Video FX” tab. Transitions can be inserted by going to the “Transitions” tab. Transitions must be dragged and dropped onto overlapping video.

 

Step 7: Using the Video Preview Tool

To see how your video will look when it’s finally rendered, use the video preview tool in the upper right corner.

You can change the resolution of the video by clicking the drop-down menu. By default, Vegas uses “Preview (Auto)” to save memory and processing power. If you need better quality previews, change the quality.

11-Preview-Box

To see the video preview in a larger screen mode, just drag the video out to the center, drag the corners to enlarge it and set the display mode to “Full” or “Half.”

 

Step 8: Rendering Video

Once you’ve finished editing your video, it’s time to take your edits and turn it into a real video file. The process is called rendering. During this process, it helps a lot to turn off other programs, as it’s very processing intensive. If you have a particularly long video, you may have to render overnight.

To start rendering, go to File > Render As.

12-Render-As

The “Render As…” box will pop up, with a number of options.

13-Render-Box

First, name your file in #1.

Tell Vegas whether to render the whole file, or just your selection in #2.

You can change the render template by selecting from one of the many selections in #3. These templates are generally all high resolution renders, meaning you’ll have files in the gigabytes, not the megabytes, even for short videos.

This is great for DVD-quality work. If you’re working with DVDs, it’s as simple as selecting the format you need to burn the DVD in and choosing that template.

However, if you’re editing for web, you’ll need to customize your renders. Generally speaking, you’ll want to render out a small sized video that’s highly compressed with decent quality for web work (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

To do this, click Custom, then click Video. Select the Sony YUV Codec.

14-Render-for-Web

If you want to get into the technicalities of video editing, there’s a lot you can learn about compression, codecs and how videos are encoded. That knowledge comes in handy when selecting how you want to render your video.

For most people however, Sony’s YUV codec is more than adequate for web videos. The NTSC DV setting is a good choice for DVD editing.

Click “OK” when you’re finished.
Congratulations! You now know enough to do basic editing in Sony Vegas. You now know how to import media into Vegas and edit that media by splitting it up and moving it around. You’ve learned how to move through the timeline by positioning your cursor or playing the video at 2x or 4x speed. You learned how to create transitions, how to add text, how to add effects and other media. You’ve learned how to change the quality of the preview as you’re editing. Finally, you learned how to render a video in both DVD quality and web quality.

 

 

Top 10 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Mistakes

search-engine-optimization

 

Many people will tell you that search engine optimization (SEO) has changed dramatically over the years. They’re talking about Pandas and Penguins…it’s a little hard to keep up, isn’t it? The interesting thing is that the basics and long-lived strategies haven’t changed much at all in the past 10 years. What has changed is that the tactics which were used to game the system no longer work, giving people a sense of uncertainty and the need to change strategy.

The good news is that if you stick with the basics that have always worked, you can enjoy free traffic for many years to come. The first step though, is to avoid the mistakes that many people make when they approach SEO, and that’s what this guide is all about.

Avoid these top 10 mistakes and apply our alternate strategies instead for long-term, free traffic from the search engines. Let’s get started.

 

Mistake #1: Not Using a Description Tag

Now this mistake isn’t going to create any penalty for your site and it also probably won’t make you rank any better, but it could cost you some click-through traffic. Always use a compelling and relevant description tag for each page of your website.

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Search engines generally don’t use the description tag as a ranking factor, but many do display what is written in your description tag in their search engine results. This is what your potential visitor sees when they see your listing, so you want to ensure it’s on target, interesting and makes them want to click.

To write an effective description tag, think of the end user. If they were looking for information on a certain keyword, what would they expect to see? Include your keyword phrases as well, because they will be in bold in the search results, drawing the user’s eye to your listing. Google will show about 160 characters of your description tag, including spaces, so keep that in mind.

 

Mistake #2: Artificial Link Building

bad-habitsFirst it was link exchanges. Then people bought links and sought out one-way links. Now it has been proven that links you seek out yourself generally don’t carry much weight with search engines. Don’t go for the fake stuff. You would need to spend endless times on forums or commenting on blogs, hoping to grow the number of links back to your site. And while these activities can be useful to your growth and creating connections, they do nothing for your ability to rank well.

Instead, put your focus into real link building.

This means creating great content that your audience willingly shares and links to. This means building your audience and connections through social networks and other opportunities, so you have people who will gladly spread your content around. We’ll talk more about that later in this guide.

Mistake #3: Ignoring Social Media

IdeasThat brings us to the next mistake, and that’s ignoring social media. Search engines are taking more and more cues from what is being shared in social media to decide what content is truly popular and what should be in their results pages.

No, that doesn’t mean you need to be on Facebook every day, but it does mean that you should at the very least offer your readers sharing options. Make it easy for them to post your content to Google+ and other social sites.

 

Add to that, social media provides you with the opportunity to connect with people who run websites in your niche, in addition to the people who are simply interested in your niche. Knowing these people increases your chances of getting real links to your website and that’s what we all need, right?

Mistake #4: Trying to Use an SEO Formula

errorIf you’ve ever been told you need to mention a keyword phrase a certain number of times in your content or to follow any other formula, I’m afraid you’ve been duped. Either that, or the person who told you that, didn’t have the proper information at hand.

By using a formula, you alert search engines to the fact that you are trying to game their system and that’s not going to be good for you.

Instead, be natural in your content creation and throw away any preconceived notions of how your content should be structured.

 

Mistake #5: Not Making Friends in High Places

business_trustIt may seem unfortunate to some, but who you know can have a great impact on how well your content does in search engines. You don’t have to befriend a celebrity, political figure or anyone like that. But the more influential friends you have, the more likely your content is to be seen on the web and in search engines.

Just think, if your friend is the top blogger in the fashion niche and she decides to share your blog post on fashion trends, you get instant credibility with your target audience and the search engines.

It may seem difficult to approach the more influential people in your niche, but the key is to open up a conversation. You can offer to help that person in some way, or better yet attend an in-person event they will be at. Face to face is still the best way to make friends. It always will be.

Remember, it takes just one connection to make many more through introductions. The more you get out there and meet people, the better your results are going to be.

Mistake #6: Worrying About Word Counts

Just like it’s an error to follow a formula, there is no reason to worry about the word count of your content. Content should simply be as long as it needs to be to make your point and be useful. Search engines don’t care if you use 300, 500 or 1500 words. The most important thing is that your content is good.

In the past, a larger word count helped you make sure that you could easily insert your keyword phrase a number of times without sounding any alarms about a high keyword density.

Today, search engines simply care if your content is good. They want to see that if people click through your link on their search engine, that the visitor stays and doesn’t click back right away. They also want to see content that is readily shared.

By worrying about word counts, you can sacrifice that quality. So put your abacus away and focus on your message instead.

Mistake #7: Lack of Unique Title Tag for Each Page

It’s a rookie mistake and people don’t make it as readily as they used to, but it still needs to be mentioned. Each page of your website should have a unique and descriptive title tag.

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That means a title tag that is absolutely and completely relevant to the particular page. Include your chosen keyword phrase(s), but also make sure the title makes sense and isn’t simply a string of keyword phrases. You shouldn’t have your company or website name at the beginning of the title tag because that is the key piece of title tag real estate, and you need to use it well.

Title tags are also not only important for ranking, they can also impact your click-throughs in the same way a description tag can. It’s what people see at the top of your listing in the search engine results, so make it count. Title tags should be up to 65 characters, including spaces, to ensure your full title tag appears in the search engine results.

 

Mistake #8: Not Doing Keyword Research

Keyword research not only helps you optimize your content, it also helps you come up with topics for your content. You can use tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or even the free Google Keyword Tool. Analyze your competition and be realistic in the keywords you choose to optimize for…but above all, make sure your content is highly relevant for those keywords.

 

Mistake #9: Writing for Search Engines Instead of Humans

Following along from mistake #8, make sure you always write content for your visitors, rather than search engines. So while you want to do keyword research and use your chosen phrases in your content, it’s more important that you create useful content for humans. After all, it’s people who read our content, share it and help us rank better in the first place.

See mistake #4 (Formulas) and #6 (Word Counts) for more details.

 

Mistake #10: Not Updating Regularly

Search engines like to provide up-to-date and fresh content to their users. You should do likewise by keeping your site up-to-date and adding new content on a regular basis.

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As you can see, there are no tricks and there is no magic to getting search engine traffic. It takes putting out solid content, making connections on the web and earning your place in the rankings. Sure, it’s hard work, but isn’t free traffic for years and years to come worth it?

It’s your business and how you run it is your business. You can attempt to game the system for a few temporary rankings now or you can avoid the top 10 mistakes and enjoy long term results. The choice is completely up to you.

Top 10 Video Marketing Mistakes

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Video marketing is an extremely powerful yet often overlooked channel of marketing. People often (mistakenly) think that succeeding in video marketing is a matter of luck. That you just put out a video and cross your fingers and hope that it “goes viral.” That’s not how video marketing works at all.

Just like any other marketing tactic, video marketing involves taking systematic steps to create a desired result. Video marketing, when done properly, can bring in thousands or even hundreds of thousands of visitors. This happens deliberately, not by accident.

Yet most people who try their hands on video marketing don’t ultimately succeed. Why is that? It’s because they make one of these ten traffic-destroying mistakes along the way.

Mistake #1: Relying on One-Hit Videos

If any part of your business plan relies on your videos “going viral,” you’re out of luck.

Yes, a small (miniscule) amount of videos do go viral every day. But the amount of videos that make this mark are so tiny that shooting for it at all is completely unrealistic. If you’re spending any amount of time or energy on trying to go viral, you’re running yourself in circles.

If you’re going to get into video marketing, expect to be in it for the long haul. Yes, you can and will drive a lot of traffic. But it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not going to happen from one video.

Mistake #2: Not Developing a Channel

Having a YouTube channel allows anyone with a Google account to subscribe to your channel. It allows you to build your brand by customizing your background. It allows you to sequence your videos however you like. It allows you to lay out your page in many different formations.

Each of your videos should be a part of a larger plan for your entire channel. Don’t just publish standalone videos. It’s impossible to “follow” a standalone video. If you’re just publishing single video after single video, you’re not going to build an audience.

Work towards building a channel. Spend time perfecting your channel’s layout and design. Your channel’s followers are your core viewer base.

Nicole Munoz Youtube

 

Mistake #3: Focusing Too Much on Fancy Effects

Fancy special effects are a fantastic add on to your videos. If you want to add a flashy intro sequence, if you want to “blur in” your subtitles, if you want to “explode” out of your video at the end, that’s all great. But special effects should never become to focus of your video.

You should also never let special effects hold up the production of your video. If it’s going to take forever to get a special effect intro done and you’re ready to launch now, then you’re probably better off just saying “go” now.

Special effects, more often than not, are done primarily for the video creator’s ego. They don’t truly add any value to the end viewer’s experience. Focus on the content, not the effects. If you can get effects in without too much time or money, go for it. But don’t let your product get delayed special effects.

Mistake #4: Getting Hung Up Over Video Equipment

Video2The world of video equipment can be incredibly confusing. Should you get a wide lens camera or a long lens? What about telephoto? Should you get a condenser microphone or a dynamic microphone? What about wireless – Should you go with a lavaliere mic or an over ear mic? How do you avoid static? What about lighting? How many lights do you need and do you need to purchase a lighting kit?

The questions go on and on and on. You could literally spend days researching the perfect video setup and still have questions leftover.

The reality is, for most people who’re doing their own video setup, a simple setup will do. You can go very far with just an iPhone 5 camera and a dynamic microphone. Your whole setup can be done for under $200.

Give yourself a deadline. If you’re setting up a studio from scratch, give yourself two days to do all your research and buy what you need to buy. No more. Don’t spend weeks and definitely don’t spend months figuring it out.

If you really want quality high enough to warrant months of setup, you’re better off hiring a professional to shoot for you than trying to set it up from scratch yourself.

Mistake #5: Not Knowing Your Audience

checklistThe kind of content you think your audience wants can be very different from the kind of content they actually want. For example, you might have a YouTube channel geared towards real estate agents. You might share some of your personal best tips for closing sales and feel great about sharing. But your audience’s main problem might not be closing sales – It might be getting leads in the first place.

If you don’t know where your audience is at, it’s very difficult to produce the kind of content they’re looking for. So how do you know where your audience is at?

Ask. Ask them what kind of content they want. Respond to their comments. Better yet, respond in the video itself. Acknowledge them by name, read their question then answer it for them.

Get to know your audience. Don’t just share what you want to share. Instead, aim to actually figure out what your audience wants and needs and give it to them.

Mistake #6: Expecting Results Too Quickly

It’s quite rare that a new channel starts up and instantly gets hundreds of millions of views. Instead, you’re more likely to start off with just tens or a couple hundred views. Then your second video will get a few more viewers. Your third will get even more.

As you publish more videos, more and more people will join your audience. Your reach will have a snowball effect. A few months or years down the line you’ll be able to publish a brand new video and have it get hundreds of thousands of views instantly. But that takes time.

Expect your video marketing efforts to take at least six months to pick up.

Mistake #7: No Call to Action

Does your video tell people what to do next, or does it just give them the content then leave them there?

When you create a high quality video, you create a lot of goodwill. But in order for that goodwill to translate into clicks, into leads and into sales, you have to have a call to action.

Your first call to action is probably going to be to “click here” or to direct people to an address on your website. Make your call to action as clear and as powerful as you can. Then use other call to actions to move people through your sales funnel.

 

Mistake #8: Being Afraid to Spend Money

money-fitnesIt’s very hard to create a high quality video without spending any money. Here are just some of the things you’ll probably want to invest in:

  • Getting a professional intro sequence done.
  • Video editing.
  • Having slides put in.
  • Editing software (if you’re doing it yourself)
  • Audio quality enhancement
  • Etc

Yes, it is possible to do it all yourself and not spend any money. But the result will probably be a lot of wasted time and an inferior video. Trying your best to spend as little as possible is a terrible way to create a video.

Instead, focus on how to intelligently invest your money. Invest in things that’ll really make a big difference.

Mistake #9: Not Tracking and Analyzing

analyzeYouTube offers a fairly comprehensive analytics package. It can tell you how far along people watch in your videos before leaving, it can tell you what your traffic sources are, it can tell you about who’s watching your video and more.

A lot of people completely ignore YouTube’s analytics. Even people who’re fanatical about website data for some reason seem to ignore YouTube data altogether. This is a huge mistake.

YouTube’s analytic package is a gold mine waiting to be explored. Using this data, you can hone in on exactly what’s working and what’s not. This will help you create more home run videos in the future.

Mistake #10: Not Promoting Your Videos Enough

Another mistake is thinking that you just put your videos up on YouTube and they’ll promote themselves. That’s not how it works.

In the early stages, most of the traffic that comes to your video is going to come from you and your existing audience. In time, your YouTube audience and YouTube’s traffic will bring you a lot of people But when you’re first building up your following, you have to be the driver of traffic.

Promote your video(s) on your website, on your list, on your Twitter feed, on your Facebook page and on anywhere else where your audience is. Get the word out about your video(s) and start driving those view numbers.

These are the top 10 video marketing mistakes people make. Video marketing can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool if you approach it right and give it the time and energy it needs to flourish.

Top 10 Pay Per Click Mistakes

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Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the fastest ways to gear up internet traffic. While SEO, social media, brand building and other types of traffic often take months to scale, PPC can go from zero to tens of thousands of visitors in just a matter of weeks or even days.

Of course, the flip side to this kind of scalability is that you can lose a lot of money just as easily. If you’re not careful and you end up buying traffic at a loss, you can easily end up hundreds or thousands of dollars in the hole.

If you ask business people about PPC, they’ll often tell you: “I’ve tried it – It didn’t work.” This experience is so common among business people because very few people truly understand how to make PPC profitable. They often make mistakes that trip them up, reduce their profitability and ultimately sabotage their campaigns.

These are 10 of the most common mistakes people make when they first foray into PPC. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors.

Mistake #1: Not Split Testing Enough

This mistake comes in two forms.

First are the people who don’t split test right from the beginning. Some people simply want to set up an ad to see how it performs. Others are just lazy, or figure that they’re not spending enough money to get data anyway.

That’s a mistake. Any time you’re buying PPC traffic, you should be split testing. You should be split testing the ad and the landing page. You should always be gathering data, trying to improve your conversions and your ROI.

The second group of people are people who test for a period of time, then stop testing. For example, they might start off with an ad that’s getting a CTR of 0.7%. They get the CTR up to 1.5%, then they stop split testing. They figure they’ve already done a good job.

What they don’t realize is that if they kept testing ad after ad, they could get their CTR up to 2.5%, 3% or even higher. If you’re sending traffic and not split testing, you’re wasting money and missing out on valuable lessons.

 1-Split-Testing

Mistake #2: Too Many Keywords Per AdGroup

In Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter (which manages Bing and Yahoo! Search,) keywords are separated into AdGroups. You write a different ad for AdGroup.

If you put 100 keywords in one AdGroup, that means that whenever any of those keywords is triggered, your one ad will show. The same is true if you put just three keywords in an AdGroup. Whenever one of the three keywords is entered, your ad will show.

Most people make the mistake of putting far too many keywords in one AdGroup. It’s very difficult to write an ad that’ll truly hit home if you’re trying to write for 100 keywords at once. People who stuff too many keywords in one AdGroup invariably end up with ads that are far too generic.

To optimize your CTR and improve your keyword relevance, try to keep your keywords per AdGroup as low as possible. Group only very tightly related keywords together in the same AdGroup.

Mistake #3: Targeting Only Mainstream Keywords

keywordsIf you’re targeting only mainstream keywords, you’re in for a tough fight. The only companies that can really profit from mainstream keywords are those that have extremely streamlined conversion funnels and very high earnings per customer. If you’re a newcomer on the scene, you probably won’t be able to compete.

Even if you could get it profitable, you’re usually looking at razor thin margins. Since most payment processing companies will hold your cash for a few days to a few weeks, most small to mid sized marketers will have a hard time funding a campaign with such a low ROI. In other words, if you have a 5% positive ROI, that means that to make a $500 profit you need to tie up $10,000 for as long as it takes for the money to circulate back into your account.

The best approach for most marketers is instead to use deeper keywords, more targeted keyword and more unusual keywords. Look for keywords that other people aren’t pursuing and optimize your campaigns around them.

Mistake #4: Ignoring Brands and Product Names

People often mistakenly think that it’s against the rules to bid on brand names or product names. For example, if you run an insurance company, is it illegal to bid on the name “Geico” or “Allstate?”

The answer is “no.” Though brand names are trademarked and copyrighted, bidding on the name does not violate their intellectual property in any way. You just can’t use their name in your advertisement. As long as you don’t use their name, you can still bid on their name so ads appear when someone types it in. The same is true for product names.

Product names and the brand names of your competitors will often be your highest converting keywords. Don’t make the mistake of leaving these out.

Mistake #5: Only Going to the Home Page

onsite_optimizationYour PPC campaigns should take people to the most relevant page. If you sell food online and someone types in “noodles,” they should be directed to your noodles page, not to your home page.

Also, it often pays to create custom web pages just for your PPC visitors. If you’re bidding on a high amount of traffic for specific keywords, build a custom landing page for them.

Perhaps the worst place you could send PPC traffic is your home page. Your home page is untargeted, it doesn’t speak directly to the people who just landed on your site and will generally not convert very well.

Mistake #6: Not Understanding Broad, Phrase and Exact Match Types

These three match types are very different. You should never bid on all three at the same time with the same bids without tracking the response of each on a separate basis.

Broad match will give you the most traffic at the lowest cost, but your conversion rate will be much lower. Phrase match is slightly more expensive and converts a bit better. Exact match will give you the least traffic but the highest conversion rates (and the highest cost.)

Test each one. Make sure you know where each conversion you got came from. Eliminate the match types that aren’t profitable and keep the ones that are.

Mistake #7: Only Using One PPC Source

PPCThe 500 lbs gorilla in the PPC space is Google AdWords. But to focus only on one PPC source is a mistake. If you can’t get one to be profitable, there’s still a great chance you’ll be able to get another one to be profitable. If you can get one to be profitable, there’s no reason to think you can’t get another to be profitable and drastically increase your traffic.

The other two major networks are Facebook PPC and Bing. Facebook PPC is very, very different than AdWords and requires a very different mentality. Bing or Microsoft AdCenter is more or less the same as AdWords, with slightly more space for your ads.

Then you have a whole myriad of third tier PPC sources. Sometimes your biggest profits will come from third tier networks rather than first tier networks.

Mistake #8: Not Geographically Targeting

Another common mistake marketers make is lumping all English speaking countries into one campaign and blasting traffic at it. What many people realize is that Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and the United States are not the same place and don’t convert the same. A campaign that takes off like a rocket ship in the UK might completely flop in the US.

If you’re targeting multiple countries, make sure you’re tracking each conversion geographically. Figure out which countries are converting for you and segment them out. Stop driving traffic to non-converting countries.

You can take this a step further and even break down your campaigns by state. You can also try targeting non-English speaking countries with translated pages.

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Mistake #9: Not Tracking Conversions Carefully Enough

It’s been said many times throughout this article, but it deserves to be said again: You need to be tracking everything. A lot of marketers believe they’re tracking, when they don’t have nearly enough detail to make the kinds of decisions they need to make to improve their ROI.

This is just some of the data you need to get:

  • Which specific keyword generated the conversion? You need to track your conversions back to specific keywords, not just broad campaigns.
  • What times of day convert? What times of day don’t convert?
  • Which days of the week convert?
  • What’s your total conversion rate after you account for your email follow up sequence?
  • What percentage of people will buy a second product?
  • What’s your average customer value?
  • What country converts best? Which countries don’t convert?
  • At what CPC point does each match type become profitable? For example, exact match might be profitable for you at $0.55, while a broad match click needs to come in at $0.25 to be profitable.

If you don’t have tracking software that can give you this kind of data, you need to seriously look into upgrading your tracking software.

Mistake #10: Having Weak Copy

contentmarketingMastering PPC is both an art and a science. Most of what we’ve discussed so far is the science. But if you want to succeed in PPC, you also need the “art” piece – The copy.

The copy is in many ways the most important component of the whole campaign. It’s what determines whether you catch people’s attention and whether you get them to click on your ads.

Learning to write great copy is tough. It can take months or years for you to truly master copywriting. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a world class copywriter to buy traffic profitably.

Start by learning the basics of copywriting. Learn AIDA and read a couple books on the subject. Then look at how other people in your industry are writing their ads and landing pages. Copy what’s working for them while adapting it to your own style and audience.

These are the 10 top PPC mistakes. Mastering PPC isn’t easy. It can take weeks or months before you hit your first profitable campaign. Once you do however, the traffic and the revenues can quickly come gushing in. Keep persevering, keep tracking and keep testing and you’ll eventually get to profitability.

Top 10 List Building Mistakes

Mails List At Laptop Shows Ongoing Messages And Communication

Making mistakes in the list building phase can be devastating for a business. It has an exponential effect on the rest of your sales funnel. Fewer email signups means fewer phone calls, fewer free gifts, fewer initial purchases and fewer sales all the way down your product line.

Many of these list building mistakes can seem quite small on the surface. It could be as simple as failure to click one button. Yet the effects could be as drastic as a 30% drop in revenue (or more!)

Building a strong email list is the cornerstone of any successful internet business. Knowing about these mistakes can help you avoid them – And save you and your company a lot of time and money in the process. Without further ado, here are the top 10 list building mistakes.

Mistake #1: Assuming You Know What Works

Internet marketers can often get a little too confident in their own abilities. It happens to everyone, from seasoned 10 year marketers to the brand new marketer.

If you ever start assuming you know what works or what your audience responds to, you can be fairly certain that you’re leaving money on the table. The right way to design a squeeze page is to come up with several “best versions” and let the statistics do the talking.

Never, ever assume you know what works in your industry or with your audience. Always split test it.

1-Assumptions

Mistake #2: Split Testing Too Similar Pages

Another common mistake is split testing pages that are far too similar. For example, marketers will often split test different fonts, different colors or variations on a headline (like adding “who else wants …” to the front.)

These are all great things to test. However, those tests need to come down the line, a long, long time later.

In the early stages, you need to test completely different pages. Page 1 might have an autoplay video, page 2 might have a giant image and page 3 might be only text. Each might have a completely different message.

Paint with broad strokes first. This is what will really swing the needle. Figure out broadly what works, then gradually narrow things down. After a few weeks or months of testing, then and only then should you test the small stuff.

2-Similar-Split-Tests

Mistake #3: Using Double Opt In

Using double opt in is one of the worst decisions you could possibly make when you’re building an email list. You can easily lose as much as 30% to 60% of your email list simply because you’re using double opt in.

Many marketers fall for the double opt in trap because their autoresponders push it so heavily. Some of them make it sound like you’re a criminal if you turn off double opt in.

The reality is that turning on double opt in is the best interests of the autoresponders, but not the marketer.

When you turn on double opt in, you instantly guarantee that you’ll lose a segment of your list. It might be 10%, it might be 30%, it might be 60%. There’s absolutely no reason to do this. Your spam rate won’t lower significantly, your total opens will go down, as will your total revenue.

The argument that it “improves your open rate” is absolutely meaningless. Out of 1,000 who signed up, if you lose 500 of them and of the other 500 you have a slightly higher open rate, it doesn’t mitigate the fact that you lost half your subscribers to begin with.

The lesson is simple: Use single opt in. Every time.

3-Using-Double-Opt-In

Mistake #4: Not Having a Strong Sales Hook

People are very hesitant to give out their email addresses these days. They’re already bombarded with more emails than they want to handle. In order for you to get someone to give you their email address, you have to really make an offer that stands out.

The hook for your autoresponder should be something that they really want. They should be dying to get their hands on whatever it is that you have to offer.

If your hook sounds like a “me too” product, people are just going to leave your page. In order for your hook to work, it needs to sound unique and powerful – And it needs to seem like it’ll benefit their lives in some way immediately after reading it.

4-Weak-Hook

Mistake #5: Under Delivering on the Hook

This one is an extremely common mistake. A lot of marketers do understand the importance of a good hook. That’s why they go out of their way to make some very big promises.

Unfortunately, many of them end up not delivering on those promises. They get people’s hopes up and get them excited, then deliver a shoddy report or freebie.

What happens then? Sure, you may have gotten their email address. But they’re never going to open your emails again in the future. They’re never going to link to you. They’re certainly never going to buy from you.

If you’re going to give away a free hook, make it good. Make it phenomenal. Make it so good that it exceeds your promise. People should be shocked at how much great content you’re giving away.

This not only builds your list, but helps you create a list of avid readers who’ll open every email you send.

5-not-delivering

 

Mistake #6: Using a Slow Autoresponder

When you promise to help someone solve a problem, they want that solution right away. If you promise to help someone lose 20 lbs in 20 days by giving you their email address, they want to read that solution immediately after typing in their name and email.

Yet many autoresponder services can take as long as several hours before delivering the welcome message and the accompanying free gift. This can cause people to be frustrated and disappointed as they stare at their blank inbox waiting for your promised freebie.

They might then step away from their computers. When they come back, they won’t be as excited and might not even end up opening your email.

Use a fast autoresponder. Don’t use your own mailserver unless you really need to. Go with top name email services that have a reputation for speed.

6-Slow

Mistake #7: Relying on Just One Contact Point

You should give people as many opportunities to sign up as possible. Don’t just use one contact point.

For example, many marketers simply use a lightbox popover as a kind of squeeze page. When the visitor lands on the site, the opt in box pops over. They have no other opt in boxes on their site.

However, there could be many reasons why this customer doesn’t sign up at the popover. For one, they might just have an ingrained habit of closing any and all popovers immediately. Also, they might not know who you are yet. After reading something you write, they might be a lot more inclined to join your list.

Put your signup box beside your content, under your content and occasionally even in your content. Use squeeze pages and popovers on top of that to boost your opt-in rate. Use multiple contact points to catch people in different parts of your funnel.

7-Multiple-Touch-Points

Mistake #8: Not Experimenting With Different Traffic Sources

Most small marketers pick just one traffic source that works for them and stick with it. For instance, if what has been working for you is SEO traffic through blogging, then chances are that’s what you’ll focus on.

While focusing on and doing what works is a great habit, it can also be limiting. Truly successful marketers never use just one traffic source. They use a multitude of sources that turns their trickle of traffic into a torrent.

Try different traffic sources. Yes, many of them won’t pan out. But if you try six new traffic sources and end up with two that work, that’s all you need to double or triple your traffic. That means a massive increase in your list growth rate.

8-Trying-Different-Traffic-Sources

 

Mistake #9: Using a Stock Squeeze Page

Your squeeze page should be personalized to the wants and needs of your audience. If you’re simply using squeeze page templates along with “time tested” headlines, chances are your squeeze page is going to look very generic.

In very low competition markets, this can work. But in moderate to high competition markets, where people have seen squeeze pages before, you’re most likely just going to get an eye roll and a page close.

To catch attention, both how you present your material (your design) and what you say (your copy) has to be original and authentic. You can use other people’s pages for inspiration, but ultimately what you put out into the world has to be your own.

9-Stock-Opt-in-Pages

 

Mistake #10: Buying Subscribers

You can easily buy hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of subscribers for just a few dollars. You can buy lists of email addresses from many different vendors. You can massively expand your list in a matter of minutes … Right?

Wrong. Almost invariably, buying subscribers is a bad idea. If they didn’t explicitly opt in to receive your mailings, chances are they’ll never buy. In fact, they’ll probably end up clicking the spam button, which can get you in trouble with your autoresponder.

There are a few exceptions to this.

First, you can pay affiliates on a per lead basis to generate emails for you. The key is that they have to explicitly opt in to your list.

Second, co-registration leads can be profitable. It’s a very difficult industry to break into and get a profitable ROI on. That said, co-reg leads when done properly can be both ethical and profitable.

Straight out buying subscribers or email leads should always be out of the question.

10-Buying-Emails

 

These are ten of the most common mistakes email marketers make when building their list. Some are complex, like testing many traffic sources. Some are very simple – Like flicking a button to turn off double opt in. All of them can make a big impact on your bottom line.

 

How To Get Better ROI on Your Videos Checklist

Side view of group of young creative people wearing casual clothes collaborating at meeting in office and smiling looking at laptop screen

YouTube success isn’t just about getting views. It’s also about making sure you maximize the amount of revenue you generate from those views.

Here’s how to get the best ROI on your online videos.

Step 1: Optimize Your Thumbnails

YouTube by default doesn’t let you upload a custom frame. Only YouTube partners, highly trafficked consistent uploaders, can choose their own images.

They used to let anyone upload custom thumbnails in the past, but marketers abused the privilege by uploading unrelated pictures designed just to get clicks. Today, YouTube only lets you select from a number of frames taken from within your video.

To change your thumbnail, click “Edit” to enter the editing menu:

1-Click-Edit-Video

Then scroll down and choose a thumbnail in the “Video Thumbnail” box on the left.

2-Choose-Thumbnail

If none of these thumbnails matches what you want your thumbnail to be, trim a few seconds off your video and re-upload it. YouTube will re-sample the video and have a few new thumbnails for you to choose from.

 

Step 2: Watermark Your Videos

Watermarking does several things. First, it builds your brand throughout the video instead of just at the end. Second, anytime someone embeds your video, you have a chance of getting them to come and visit your website.

To watermark your video, first create a logo in an image editing program like Photoshop. Make sure you save it as a PNG, which supports transparency without aliasing. JPEGs don’t support transparency at all and GIFs don’t do transparency very well.

In a video editing program, just put your PNG file above the video file and wala, your video is watermarked.

Here’s what a watermark might look like:

3-Watermark-Example

 

Step 3: Begin Your Video With a Quick Promo

Ever notice how most popular YouTube channels have a quick, 5 second promo at the beginning? It’s similar to how The Simpsons or Family Guy has a 1 minute song intro in the beginning.

The purpose of the intro is to set the vibe for the rest of the video. It’s like welcoming someone to your brand, your video and setting the expectations for what the rest of the experience is going to be like.

Furthermore, it also makes the video look more professional. Especially if the intro is very well done.

How do you create an intro? It could be as simple as a fly in text with a carefully chosen background. A combination of Photoshop and a basic video editor should do the trick.

 

Step 4: End With a Call to Action

What do you want someone to do after seeing your video? Do you want them to visit a link? Sign up for a newsletter? Become a subscriber to your channel?

Whatever it is you want them to do, ask them to do it clearly. Put the call to action at the end of your video and make it a good 10 to 15 seconds long.

Why? Because the moment the video ends, YouTube is going to put their own promo for other people’s videos at the end of your video. Instead of sending your traffic to someone else’s video, just put a long call to action at the end.

That way, a visitor would have to stare at the call to action for a good 15 seconds before they’d be presented with the “related videos.”

Here’s what a call to action might look like:

4-CTA-Example

 

Step 5: Link to Your Channel or Videos in Your Video

Instead of having users go to other people’s videos after watching yours, why not direct them to your YouTube channel or another one of your videos?

You can make links and annotations clickable in your videos. Here’s how.

First, go to “Annotations.”

5-Click-Annotations
Then in the drop down box next to “Add Annotation” and select the type of annotation you want.

In the bottom right section of the “Add Annotation” box, click the checkbox named “Link.”

6-Click-Link-Box

Then select which type of page you want to link to.

7-Choose-Link-Type

Note: Unless you’re a YouTube partner, you can’t link to an external page.

Finally, enter the target URL into the URL box.

 

Step 6: Put a Link in Your Descriptions

Having a link in your description makes it easy for anyone to click on it, even when there’s no link on screen.

YouTube gives you 1,000 characters to write your description with, a generous allocation by any standard. Great descriptions can help give visitors additional information that wasn’t provided in the video.

The link however should be provided in the first 27 characters. YouTube will automatically display the first 27 characters without cutting anything off. Anything after 27 characters will automatically be truncated and followed by an ellipsis.

This is what a link in the description should look like:

8-Sample-Link-in-Description

Anything beyond 27 characters will be cut off. If your link can’t fit into 27 characters, consider using a service like bit.ly or tinyurl to shorten your URLs.

These are some of the most important factors to getting your videos to convert on YouTube. Remember, it’s not just about the traffic. You can easily earn more with a video that gets a few thousand views than from a video that gets hundreds of thousands, if the former is better optimized.

 

Optimizing Videos Embedded on Your Site for Search Engines

 

video5

If you’re in the habit of putting embedded videos on your site, how can you help make sure those videos get ranked? What makes a video page rank, while others don’t?

Let’s examine some of the most important rankings factors, along with how you can get your embedded pages to the top of the search engines.

 

Step 1: Optimize Your Title Tag

Take a look at the keyword data for some of the main keywords in your market. You should try to target some of those keywords, especially to “how to” keywords and the “video” keywords.

For example, if you have a fly fishing website, you might target keywords like:

  • How to put a fly on a hook
  • Fly fishing video
  • Fly on hook video
  • How to reel a fly fishing rod

And so on and so forth.

Once you’ve selected your keywords, make sure the keyword is in the title tag of your website. Lead with the keyword, then have the title of the page after it.

Make sure your title tag is less than 66 characters. Why? Because after 66 characters, your title tag is cut off in the Google search results. The rest of the title will be replaced with “…”

 

Step 2: Optimize Your Meta Description Tag

Your description tag is what search engines will use to describe your website, directly below the title tag in the results.

2-Hire-a-Transcriber
To change your description tag, add or edit the meta description tag in your HTML <head> tags.

 

Step 3: Get Your Video Transcribed

As amazing as Google’s technology is, they still can’t “listen” to a video and understand what’s being said. Therefore, anytime you just have a video embedded on a page, Google won’t know whether you have a content-rich page or not.

You could either write a complete article to go along with the video, or you can just get the video transcribed. Just go on oDesk or eLance to create a job posting or to find a transcriber.

Many transcribers in India or the Philippines can be hired for as little as $5 an hour. It takes about 4x as long to transcribe as the video length, so a 5 minute video will take about 20 minutes to transcribe.

Here’s an oDesk screenshot, search results for “Transcriber”:

1-Description-Tag

Step 4: Get Increased Distribution

To get more traffic to your main videos on your site, it often helps to distribute a few peripheral videos to other video sites like MetaCafe or Vimeo. There are literally dozens of such sites, and while none of them have the kind of traffic that YouTube does, combined they’re a formidable source of traffic.

Instead of distributing the videos by hand, the work will be much faster and less tedious if you used a service like TubeMogul (free) or TrafficGeyser (paid) to distribute your videos.

 

Step 5: Embedding Mini-Videos to Increase Page Views

One powerful way to get more views to your video is to place a small video on every page in your website. Every time the video is loaded, whether it’s played or not, will count as a view on the video.

Let’s say you run a career-related website. In the sidebar of your website, you embed a small 100 x 75 pixel video. The user can click play to watch the video if they want, but the majority won’t.

Even if they never click play, the mere act of loading your video (because it’s on your sidebar) will increase the view count by one. Every time someone visits a page on your site, it’ll load the video count by one again.

This way, your video count will go way up utilizing traffic you already have.

 

Step 6: Offer a “Put This on Your Site” Code

One of the factors that YouTube looks at when deciding how your video ranks is how many other people embedded your video. If many people are taking your video and putting it on their sites, YouTube’s going to assume that the video should be ranked higher.

You can make getting embeds easier by offering the embed code on your site.

Simply put the embed code below your video, with the heading “Put this video on your site!”

3-Add-This-Video-to-Site
If you want, you can even hide the code so people need to click a button for the code to show.

 

Step 7: Getting Backlinks

Backlinks play a very large role in getting pages to rank. Some would even say it’s the most important factor of all.

Deep linking, or the strategy of linking to specific pages rather than the home page, is often more effective than concentrating all your links in one place. If you have many videos, try to build a number of backlinks to each of them.

Here are a few potential sources of backlinks:

  • Forums
  • Blogs
  • Web 2.0 Properties
  • Article Directories
  • Guest Writing
  • Press Releases
  • Resource sections on other people’s sites

The most effective backlinking strategy in the long run is to simply put out top notch content. Other people with websites on your topic will then link to your videos as valuable resources.
Optimizing your embedded video page isn’t that different than optimizing a web page for search engines. Follow good SEO practices in your title tags and backlinking strategy. Make sure you always have text content as well as video content. Distribute your videos using a distribution service to get more exposure, and try embedding your videos in main pages to get more view counts and higher rankings. Finally, offer the embed code to visitors to help spread your videos through the web.

 

How To Add Promotional Text To Videos

When using video to market your business, you can get more bangs for your buck by adding promotional text to your videos. It’s easy to do and only takes a few minutes using Windows Movie Maker software. Here’s how.

You will need:

  • Windows Movie Maker
  • Previously Created Video
  • Promotional Text

 

Step 1: Open Movie Maker

When you open Movie Maker, here is what you’ll see.

1-open-movie-maker

 

Step 2: Import Video to Project

Click the Add Videos & Photos icon in the home tab navigation as shown above.

Locate your video on your computer. Select it and click open.

2-import-video

 

Your video should now show up in the story track on right side of Movie Maker as shown here.

3-video-imported

 

Step 3: Select Slide to Edit

Click the slide in the video that you want to add the promotional text to. As you click each slide, you’ll get a preview in the left side of the screen.

In our case, we want our promotion to show on the last slide to direct people back to our website. Therefore, we’ve selected the last file in the story track and we see here the preview of that file.

4-last-file

 

 

Step 4: Add Promotion

On the home tab, next to the snapshots icon, you’ll see a list of three editing features.

  • Title: Adds a new title before the selected item
  • Caption: Adds text that displays over the existing video or photo
  • Credits: Adds the credits, director, stars and location to the video

5-captions

Click the Caption icon and you will have a new text box added to the slide you’ve selected. Simply click to enter your promotional text and click away from the slide when you’ve finished.

6-text-caption

 

Once you add text, you will see a Text Tool tab option open up. Here you can change the text format to suit your needs.

7-promo

 

Step 5: Save Video

At this point, the editing is done. But before you do anything else, you need to save your video as a project in case you need to edit it later. Click the small arrow next to the home tab and then click Save Project As. Name the project and click save.

8-save-as

 

Now that the project is saved for future edits, you can save your video in a format suitable for viewing. Again, click the arrow at the top left of the screen and this time you can do one of two things:

  1. Publish the video to the web (to places like Facebook, YouTube, etc)
  2. Save the video to be viewed on the computer and/or uploaded to the web at a later time.

We want to save the video and upload it later so we mouse over Save Movie.

The next step is to select the size and quality of the video being saved. The most popular settings are pre-defined and include:

  • High Definition: The highest quality and creates a movie at a 1440×1080 pixel resolution.
  • Burn to DVD: The next highest quality creates a 720×480 resolution video.
  • For Computer: Videos with this setting will be of medium quality with a resolution of 640×480.
  • For Email: This is the lowest quality and has a 320×240 resolution.

There are also settings for viewing on mobile devices and manual size settings that you can browse through at your leisure.

9-quality

 

Once the movie is finished saving to the new format, you’ll get the following dialog box where you can play to preview your video.

10-saved

 

 

Optimizing YouTube Videos For Search Engines

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND – OCTOBER 03, 2014: Youtube application close up on Apple iPad Air device.

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, larger than even Bing or Yahoo. It’s by far the world’s largest video search engines.

A well optimized video can easily get you tens of thousands of viewers – Each. A video that goes viral can get hundreds of thousands and even millions of views.

Here’s how to optimize your videos for YouTube.

 

Step 1: Determine Target Keyword Volume

Much as you would if you were optimizing for search engines, the first step to optimizing for videos is to determine both the keyword volume and the competition for each keyword phrase.

Use the Google Keyword Tool to compile a list of potential keywords. You should target a variety of keywords, some of them high volume and high competition, others lower volume with lower competition.

1-Keyword-Volume-Estimates

 

Step 2: Determine Strength of Competition

How strong are competing videos? Do as search for your target keywords and analyze them by:

  • Number of views
  • Number of comments
  • Number of replies
  • Number of likes
  • Number of video responses
  • Percentage of people who liked the video, out of total viewers
  • Channel subscribers

To view the number of likes, just open a video. It’ll be right under the view count:

2-Views-Likes

To count the number of comments, click on “View All Comments” at the bottom of the page:

3-Click-Comments
The comment count will be right above the comment box:

4-Number-of-Comments

Put all this data, along with the total number of views, into an Excel spreadsheet. Do this for at least 20 keywords.

Match up the number of views to the strength of the competition. Look for the weakest competition, as compared to the highest number of monthly searches. Then select the keywords with the best volume-to-competition ratio to optimize for.

 

Step 3: Write a Keyword Optimized, Attention Catching Headline

The headline has two jobs:

  1. To get the video to show up when someone searches. Google uses a relevance check to make sure the videos that show up are relevant to their search.
  2. To convince people to actually click on your video once it shows up in a search.

The most important thing in writing the title tag is to make sure your main keyword is in the title.

The second most important thing is to make sure that your title has well written copy that gets people to click.

 

Step 4: Get as Many Favorites, Likes and Comments as Possible

The number of likes, favorites and comments you have are some of the most heavily weighed factors for search engine rankings. The more likes, favorites and comments you have, the more YouTube is going to think you have a good video.

How can you increase your number of likes, favorites and comments?

One method is to ask people to do so in your video. You can either hard code into your video, or you can do it in annotations.

To do it in annotations, click on “Annotations” when you’re editing a video.

5-Click-Annotations

Click the drop down box next to “Add Annotation” to choose what kind of annotation to add.

6-Add-Annotation

Finally, craft a mini-sales message to get people to add comment, like or add your video.

7-Annotation-Example

Step 5: Ranking for Related and Suggested Videos

Two potentially lucrative sources of traffic to your videos are related videos and suggested videos. What are they?

They’re the videos that show up when someone else finishes watching a similar video, or the videos that appear on the right hand side of any video you’re watching.

8-Related-and-Suggested

How do you get your videos to appear for on related or suggested videos? Especially other high trafficked and relevant videos?

First, work on the credibility of your own video. The more views you have, the more comments you have and the more likes you have, the higher your likelihood of showing up in suggested or related videos at all.

It’s hard to get a new video to show up in suggested or related videos. But after you have a few thousand views, it really makes sense to try to get them to show up.

Start by copying all the keyword tags that other videos in your industry are using. Having closely related (but not identical) keyword lists tells YouTube that your videos are on as similar subject.6

Then, try to also duplicate the same keywords they target in their title. Of course your title tag should be completely different, but having the same main keyword can really help you land in suggested or related.

Finally, make sure you pick a good video snapshot for your video. In addition to your title, your snapshot is what others will judge your video based on. The higher the CTR to your video from a related video, the more YouTube will think your videos are related and the higher your video will show up in the future.

Step 6: Getting Backlinks

Much like getting rankings in the SEO world, getting rankings in videos requires getting backlinks. The more backlinks, the higher your video will rank.

How do you get backlinks?

The first and most important thing is to have a truly original and high quality video. If you create a video like that, it’s only natural that other people will want to link to your video as a resource.

In addition however, you can do quite a bit of manual link building.

Use sites like Squidoo and Hubpages to get high quality, relevant backlinks. Link to the video from your own site(s). Use distributed articles to get a high number of backlinks.

 

To wrap things up, it’s important to remember that the majority of YouTube users never try to deliberately get their videos to rank. If you’re focusing on video rankings, you’re already in the top 1%. In time, if you follow the tips outlined in this report, your rankings will very likely beat your competitor’s.

 

Video Editing Checklist & Tips

Want to create a great video? Even without a lot of video editing experience, anyone can create a professional-looking video if they just follow the right principles.

Here’s a checklist of a few of the most important principles to follow when you’re creating your video.

 

Video11. Start with the End in Mind

Have a mental image of how you want your finished video to look, before you shoot any video. This will help a lot in deciding what shots to take and what shots not to take. It’ll help you determine what kind of equipment you need, what kind of assistance you need and it’ll help you set your budget.

By knowing exactly what you want in the end, you’ll avoid the all-too-common problem of not having one shot and having to get all the equipment out again just to take that one shot.

 

2. Learn the Basics of Shooting Video

No matter how good your editing is, you can’t make shoddy film look like great film.

One of the “secrets” to video editing is starting with good footage to begin with. While you don’t need to take a 6-month course in cinematography, it can really help to read up on the basics of how to hold a camera, how to pan a camera and how to take different kinds of shots.

 

3. Don’t Use Too Many Transitions

One beginner mistake is to use too many different kinds of transitions, especially flashy ones.

Airplanes flying in and wiping out the screen, the first scene exploding into the second scene, etc. are effects that can be used occasionally.

Your videos will actually look a lot more professional if you just used crossfades, fade-to-black or fade-to-whites. Pick one and stick to it.

 

4. Break Up Your Videos (Informational)

If you’re shooting informational videos for DVDs or online lessons, break up your videos.

Anytime you switch to a new topic, fade to black and show a title shot for 3-5 seconds with the title to the next section.

This helps break up the clip and prevents people from feeling like they’ve been sitting and watching the same video for 20 minutes. Instead, they can feel like they’ve been watching 4 different interesting 5 minute clips.

 

5. Audio is More Important Than Video (Informational)

For informational videos, audio is more important than video. Even if your video quality is low, people can still understand you and get the benefit of your product. However, if your audio can’t be properly heard, you’ll immediately lose your audience.

Again, the secret to great audio comes before the filming. Invest in a good mic. Good wireless lapel mics are very common, inexpensive and barely show up on camera.

You should almost never use a camera’s built in mic for filming informational products. Camera mics are notorious for picking up extraneous sound.

 

6. Learn the “Remove Noise” FilterVideo2

Background noise is often picked up, even if you’re using a high quality mic. For most beginning editors the “remove noise” filter will quickly become your most used and most loved audio filter.

This filter allows you to take a small sample of “empty” video to sample for noise. It’ll then create a noise profile and take out noise from all of your video.

There are different degrees to which you can remove noise. If there’s a lot of background noise, you usually won’t be able to get rid of all of it. Removing too much noise can result in strange pops and other audio artifacts.

All that said however, the “remove noise” filter can still be a lifesaver for anyone working with audio that has background noises.

 

7. Pick One Primary Application

Don’t hop from FinalCut to Premier to Sony Vegas. While it’s a good idea to dip your toes into a few different programs to get a feel for what you like, you should pick one as quickly as possible to really learn the ins and outs of the program.

Each program will have different filters, different tricks, different rendering filters and different shortcuts. Being able to edit video quickly means learning the ins and outs of one program, not to learn a little bit about many.

 

8. Learn the Keyboard Shortcuts

Learning keyboard shortcuts will shave hours off your editing time. Nobody expects you to learn all the keyboard shortcuts for any given program, but you should learn all the keyboard shortcuts for commonly executed commands.

Shortcuts for things like Play, Pause, Stop, Play Backwards, Split, Copy, Paste, Cut, Insert Marker, etc should all become second nature to you.

The 3 seconds you save by not having to reach for the mouse add up very quickly.

 

9. Supplement Video Editing with Photoshop and/or After Effects

Two programs that most video editors also work with are Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Aftereffects.

Adobe Photoshop is the world’s most popular graphics editing program. Being able to create and edit graphics is important for creating title screens, for creating images to add into videos and for creating DVD covers and boxes.

Adobe After Effects is a powerful motion graphics program. Unlike a video editing program, a motion graphics program specializes in special effects. It works much like Photoshop, with layers and effects, except it works on a timeline.

In After Effects, you’ll be able to create just about any special effects you can imagine, export it and add it to your video editing program.

You usually can’t create very many special effects in an editing program. Likewise, though you can edit in After Effects, you’ll usually want to edit in an editing program instead. (It’s much faster.)

 

10. Learn the Basics of Color Corrections

Learning how to use tools like White Balance, Levels and Curves can make your video look much sharper and more color balanced.

Because of lighting, sunlight or just the way your camera works, your film may come out with more blue, red or green than it should have. The whole clip will have a “cast” of color overlaid over it.

Color correction allows you to remove this color cast and restore the clip to how the colors look.

In addition, color correction will allow you to increase and decrease brightness and contrast to create a video that really pops, rather than a video that might have slightly dull colors or light.

Learning to use these tools well takes just a few hours to half a day of reading tutorials and experimenting.

 

11. Background Music

Background music can really add “vibe” to a particular clip. In an intense moment, playing suspenseful music can help really get the adrenaline flowing.

The trick to background music is to select the right music, but make sure it’s subtly in the background enough that it doesn’t interfere with the conversation on screen and isn’t consciously noticeable by the audience.

 

12. Stick to Basic FontsVideo 3

Unless you’ve studied typography, it’s usually much safer to stick with proven fonts like Times, Arial, Tahoma, Garamond, Helvetica, etc.

Selecting type is an art and science in and of itself. Beginning editors who use outside the box fonts usually end up making their videos look amateurish rather than creative.

But what about the creative fonts you see in the opening of Spiderman or The Matrix?

Those fonts were constructed from scratch by professionals to match the vibe of the movie. Yes, creative fonts can really add spice to a video – But there are so many things that go into choosing and creating fonts, that unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s safest to just stick with proven fonts.

 

13. Computing Power

How much computing power do you need?

It depends on what kind of editing you’re doing. If you’re just cutting clips together to create a whole video and you aren’t editing regularly, you’ll probably be able to get by on 1.5 GHz processing and 1GB RAM.

On the other hand, if you’re running Photoshop, FinalCut, After Effects and Maya (3D animation) simultaneously, you’ll probably want at least 2.2 GHz processing and 2+ GB RAM. Duel-core processing is a huge plus.

The more hard drive space you have the better. The amount you need depends on your video source.

If you’re taking videos from your iPhone, then the video sizes will be relatively small, taking up about 1 GB per hour. On the other hand, raw video footage from a high def camera takes up 13 GB per hour.

You should have enough room for at least 4 hours of video. In other words, if you’re editing iPhone videos, you should have at least 4 GBs free. If you’re editing high def, you should have at least 50 GB free.

 

14. Making Notes in Your Edits

For any projects that take more than a day or two, you should carefully note what’s what with markers.

Markers are little bits of text you can put above your timeline. For example, you can put “Mark talks about zebras” in the part of the speech where Mark is talking about zebras.

This can help you find the exact spots you’re looking for on your timeline much faster. It doesn’t matter as much for short videos, but once you’re getting into complex projects the many hours spent trying to find the exact moment in a clip where something happens can end up taking a lot of time.

 

15. Understanding Compression

When you’re first getting started, it doesn’t really matter if you understand compression. But if you want to produce videos to the exact quality and file size you want, then understanding compression becomes quite important.

It’s not just a trade-off of video quality to file size. You also have issues like whether you want square pixels (for computers) or rectangular pixels (for widescreen TV.) You have issues like interlacing or not, which can change how certain things in your video looks.

Most people will usually only need to produce to one or two formats. In other words, you’ll primarily be editing for web videos, or primarily for DVDs, etc. You really just need to learn enough to find the one or two compression settings that you can use regularly.

 

If you follow these tips for editing video, you’ll be able to create high quality, professional-looking videos yourself without having to spend thousands of dollars on the project.