ReelSEO ► Video SEO ► White-Hat Video SEO = Good Old-Fashioned Hard Work

White-Hat Video SEO = Good Old-Fashioned Hard Work

  |  2 years ago   |  

White Hat Video SEO = Good Old Fashioned Hard WorkIn every area of the economy with potential lies the Madoff's of this world. You don't have to go far to find the "get rich quick" schemes peppered all over the internet- preaching the panacea of money making if only you send a $12 refundable deposit to receive 14 hours of cds, combined with the bonus pack!

SEO started out as a trial and error game, what will get my site up the rankings. The first step was meta-tagging, then increasing keyword density, then submission.

Two schools of thought developed. One was white-hat, which believed in providing value for money, giving a quality service, and complying with the search engine's best practice optimization principles so as to avoid potential penalties and maintain a more positive user experience.

The other was black-hat, or spamdexing, which was based on submitting (spamming) your site to 1 million search engines and directories, hiding keywords in pages to increase density, cloaking, and using link-farms to produce faux popularity and so on.  Additionally, there is the grey-hat, which walks the line between white-hat and black-hat.  Grey-hat uses more questionable techniques that aren't as overtly against codes of best practice.  However, what's considered gray hat SEO today might be black hat SEO next year.

White-Hat Video SEO vs. Black-Hat Video SEO

It's important to take a look at how this trend is developing with video search engine optimization services.

At the bottom of the rung are the services offering VSEO "secrets" for $12! Followed closely by Youtube bot submission services, best spotted by advertising "buy video views”.

Further up the ladder, not in black-hat territory but not performing quality promotion either, are the likes of SENuke, TrafficGeyser and their numerous copycats. Yes I'm aware this may invoke a negative response. But the days of SEO being as simple as submitting your site to thousands of search engines and directories are long gone in the non-video world and will be long gone in the video world shortly. The effect is to get a few video views per site (not that high quality), which cumulatively amount to a few hundred or possibly a few thousand if the video has intrinsic long-tail value.

A true white-hat Video SEO company will work to provide high quality, highly targeted video promotion services - specializing in getting results by reaching the right people!

Instead of getting a few views per video, each video will be worked to its maximum, targeting by interest group, keywords, location, and demographics.

Yes, technology needs to be used to help the process, but that is only 1% of what needs to be done- the other 99% is good old fashioned hard work! There are no shortcuts in life and anyone who preaches them is either delusional or a con artist!

The only way to do effective SEO whether it's for video or non-video content is to spend a lot of time researching the search engine's algorithms, best practice optimization principles, and spend thousands of hours a week dotting all the i's and crossing the t's - it's not pretty, it's not easy, it's not glamorous, but it does get results, the white-hat way!

About Our Guest Author

Daniel Solden is the General Manager of SeoYoutube. SeoYoutube provides high quality, highly targeted video promotion services, guaranteeing a minimum of 20,000 views/month on Youtube and the video sharing websites. You can learn more about SeoYoutube by going to www.seoyoutube.co.uk

Posted in Video SEO, Youtube Marketing
2013 Video Marketing Summit
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What do you think? ▼
  • Dave

    >>There are no shortcuts in life

    So true. Of course, as Daniel points out, we can use tools to focus our efforts. It is possible to work hard at the wrong thing!

  • http://reelseo.com/about/grant Grant Crowell

    The problems with black-hat Video SEO are the same problems dealing with black-hat SEO in general – something I found myself getting into arguments with so-called SEO specialists back as early as the late 90's. The biggest challenge is dealing with a public that wants the benefits of SEO, but doesn't want to hear about all the work and expertise involved. So naturally the volume of customers gravitates to those who are telling them its "easy" and offering low prices. Because once you've got the money, you can burn the client and move on to the next victim, and give Video SEO a bad name in the process.

    That's why its important to not only stress the importance of education, but call out the posers and impostors.

  • http://www.VideoLeadsOnline.com/ Ronnie Bincer

    Something kinda "smells" here...
    The article talks about no easy way to get views and what white hat does... "A true white-hat Video SEO company will work to provide high quality, highly targeted video promotion services – specializing in getting results by reaching the right people!" But the byline of the author offers: "...SeoYoutube provides high quality, highly targeted video promotion services, guaranteeing a minimum of 20,000 views/month on Youtube and the video sharing websites"

    I have not researched them, but stating that they are "Guaranteeing a minimum of 20k views/month" sounds a bit fishy to me. kinda like what he is saying the "Black hat" people might say... hummm.

    What is the point of the article? That VSEO is work just like Reel SEO is work (like the play on words)? I guess that is worth writing about, but I'm not so sure.

    And what about those of us that do the hard work (research, watch the video space, try to keep up, etc.), but also use the tools (i.e. Traffic Geyser) to cut down on man hours involved in uploading videos all over the place? Is that "Black Hat" to upload using a tool rather than "by hand"? Sounds like the author is saying if it isn't black hat it isn't real promotion either.

    The assumption is (I guess I'm the "negative response dog" this time) that all of us that use the tools are just trying to spam the net to get a few views here and there... it seems that using these tools helps you get your videos ranked in the Search Engines -- and I thought that influencing the Search Engines was part of what VSEO was all about?!

    Ruff

    • http://www.reelseo.com/ Mark Robertson

      ruff ruff ;-)

    • http://www.SeoYoutube.co.uk Daniel Solden

      Ruff, thanks for your comments.

      Firstly: the point of the article is to evoke discussion and awareness about the difference between white-hat and black-hat and where the lines lies.

      Secondly: It's to bring to people's awareness that there are 3 levels of Vseo. The bottom level is black-hat, the middle layer is white-hat automation (Tube Mogul, Traffic Geyser), the top level is white-hat automation and by hand (hard work!)

      I was not proposing it was not a good idea to use automated services- every little helps. I was merely pointing out that they will only take you so far.

      We provide white-hat services which is why we can only guarantee 20,000 views/ month. There are over 1 billion videos watched on Youtube/ day. And there are hundreds of other video sharing sites. 20,000 views/ month is not particularly substantial given the amount of videos being watched on the internet.

      Although we often achieve far more than 20,000 views/ month. It very much depends on the type of video and the target audience.

      Feel free to fire any questions, comments, criticisms- all are welcome! :)

      Daniel Solden - SeoYoutube

      • http://www.VideoLeadsOnline.com/ Ronnie Bincer

        Woof... thanks for the clarification. It looks like the difference between Grey & White-Hat (from your reply) is the addition of "by hand (hard work)" - and that you are OK with using tools like Traffic Geyser (TG), but stating that TG alone is not enough.

        re. Number of views... perhaps I'm small time, but I'd be very happy with 20,000 views A MONTH for my or my client's videos!

  • http://www.seopros.org Terry Van Horne

    Dave, blackhat SEO? Give me a break here bro... there is almost for sure an algo in YouTube and Google that is measuring embeds. Traffic Geyser is just old style directory submission that unlike directories delivers traffic! Same principles different "product". Sorry... to call that blackhat is to not really have a clue what blackhat SEO is or what finding your audience is about in a time of the "socialization of search". Sorry about the late comment just catching up...

    • http://www.reelseo.com/ Mark Robertson

      Terry..... I would actually argue that " there is almost for sure an algo
      in YouTube and Google that is measuring embeds" this is incorrect. You
      would assume so as the embed has the same URL convention as the YouTube URL
      but Ive done quite a few tests and it doesnt appear that any "link juice" is
      passed through embeds. I think that Traffic Geyser is "gray hat" at best,
      but there are some issues with those services if ask me. Hey = on another
      note.. Let;s talk soon. Ill email ya. Good to see you on here Terry.

      • http://www.seopros.org Terry Van Horne

        Mark... we'll definitely have to go over the embeds when we talk. On TG I assume it is the promotion on Social Communities part that is borderline. In that regards it is always a fine line between convenience and abuse. Also for me blackhat is referrer spam or hacking 302s to highjack traffic... the rest is an interpretation of the guidelines... subjective. I wouldn't advice blindly over promoting which I agree some Traffic Geyser tools do.

  • http://desertstandard.com halfacat

    Hey Daniel, Nice post to bring up discussion on BH vs WH vseo techinques. I have been doing SEO for a number of years and am now coming up to speed on doing the video part as well. I am curious to hear more on what you consider WH techniques. The list you give is a good start but still pretty vague stuff.

    Do you have any suggestions or outlines on how to study the engines algo's? Obviously this is trade secret stuff for your business but if the goal of this post is to get people to move away from BH techniques it would be helpful to know where we should be looking. (Of course the reelseo.com website seems to be quite the treasure trove in itself.)

    Thanks again for taking the time to start this discussion.

  • http://www.SeoYoutube.co.uk Daniel Solden

    Good question! I have to be careful with the answer though! Here's a trade secret: don't think of vseo in terms of seo. Don't use any old assumptions.

    Old seo: Users find website's in Google by searching for keywords. So the aim is to make those keywords very valuable (link building, on-site seo)

    Vseo: Users find videos in a multitude of ways. Do some research into how videos are found and you'll be 50% there. There's a lot of great information of reelseo, good luck! :)

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