So about three weeks ago I created Origami Scene, and as the title suggests, it is an Origami site teaching people how to create origami items like cranes and houses. The site is using Wordpress with a premium theme, customized a bit with a freelancer who I paid to improve the theme to my taste. Though I like origami a bit, the main reason I built this site is to earn some extra cash. The website already has hundreds of page with Youtube videos I uploaded on each page, though I am also thinking of adding an additional page where visitors can submit videos and pictures of origami creations they have made themselves. Origami Scene is currently getting between 0 to 20 visits a day, which I suppose isn't too bad for a site that's very new. But, I do want to take this site to new heights. Most of the traffic to my site is coming from Youtube. I want to improve the SEO of my site so that when people search for "origami" or "how to make an origami crane" on Google, they see my site at the top of the list. I'm also thinking about using adwords to get to that point. I'm willing to spend a few hundred dollars if I get the money back. I'm not too much of an expert in all of this, so I'll take all the ideas and suggestions I can get. If anyone has any questions, I'll be sure to respond quickly. I appreciate any help. Thanks!
First of all the site looks very nice! The biggest thing is to add text content to the page. Google can't "read" the contents of a video, so all they see on the page is the generic boilerplate description. It might not be worth the time (or money to outsource it), but I believe you would rank better by also including the instructions written in a list. However the easiest win for you will to optimize your title tags. The title of the page is just "Apron | Origami Scene" when you probably want it to be "How to Make an Origami Apron | Origami Scene". This can be achieved very easily using the Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress. Just set the meta title for posts to "How to Make an Origami %%title%% | Origami Scene" If all that you're making money from are the banner ads on the site, it is likely that each visitor will be worth less than 1 cent to you and you will not be able to make you money back using AdWords, unfortunately. There is probably room to monetize better with affiliate links to origami papers and books on Amazon or somewhere else, but I would not think about that until after you have enough traffic to make it worth your while.
I appreciate the suggestions! I'm considering including suggestions in each page, and I did just make the change to meta titles for posts. I'm also going to consider monetizing with affiliate links later on. Thanks man!
A bit more text will help, but you don't need to go over the top. (Don't worry about article length - it's BS that you need "500 words" and the other rubbish, generic advice you'll see on most forums. Matt Cutts even mentioned it recently and look at popular blogs, news sites, etc, they often have short articles/posts.) Remember to do it for your audience - write a unique description for each one, add an anecdote where possible. Don't drone on, or they will click away with boredom. Interlink where relevant. I take it you already have a YouTube channel, so take it a step further - also set up for Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Direct traffic from there to your YouTube channel and your site. Interact with your followers. Don't just try to promote your site, but also mention other origami stuff - news, international competitions, world records, or whatever. Have a blog, too, for more detailed posts. Go after the longer search phrases first. These are usually fairly easy and once you start ranking for those it will only help strengthen you for things like "origami", "origami paper" and similar. It sounds like a lot of work, but if what you are after is building trust with Google, a following that will last and a rank that won't disappear with each Google update, then it's worth the effort and will pay off in the long run. The best thing is if you're doing the social stuff yourself, then it's free. You'll get people to link to you. For free. These organic links are the most valuable, will last the longest. Head over to SEOmoz (blog and YOUmoz, the user-submitted blog), where you'll find lots of good advice and even case studies. Advice on getting the best from social media, YouTube, etc. Good luck.
Every video that is posted on my website is on Youtube. After about two weeks, I've gotten over 3,000 views, which isn't too bad. I'm definitely gonna look into social media. I appreciate the advice, ryan_uk. Thanks!
Good luck, mate. That is a good amount of views. I remember there was a post on SEOmoz's blog (it might have been YOUmoz) about dominating YouTube. It might help you optimise further. Yeah - this was the one: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/dominating-youtube-search-and-related-videos-results-case-study Also, a good post on social media: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/define-and-align-a-manageable-content-and-social-media-marketing-process I should have mentioned before - Pinterest. Also a good option as your content is very visual.
I've never used Pinterest before, but I'll look into it and see if it's the right idea for what I'm trying to accomplish. That link on dominating Youtube is definitely something I'm gonna want to read, so thanks again.
Colby, A couple of suggestions for you: Make your videos on Vimeo instead of YouTube. With YouTube if someone embeds your video into their website, the link credit goes to YouTube. However with Vimeo you get the credit back to your website. I love the design of your website, but like many DPers said above you need better content! As well I would look into structuring your website differently for search engine crawlers. While your site looks awesome, the usability is not there. I recommend always sticking to the KISS (Keep It Stupid Simple) theory. It looks like your whole homepage is Dynamic. Change that to a static homepage ASAP so that it can be crawled easier by search engines. There is some things to get you started. If you need any professional help you can always ask me a question on my Twitter account (in my signature) or you can PM me if you need more in depth help. Best Wishes, Nick B.
That doesn't make sense; he's getting good traffic from YouTube. So what if "credit" goes back to YouTube? People go to YouTube for more and then his site. All good. Links could also be included in captions, for example, and at the end of the video (if it isn't already). You're forgetting that videos are content. Not much text is required (2-3 sentences is enough). Source: http://www.stonetemple.com/matt-cutts-and-eric-talk-about-what-makes-a-quality-site/ And he definitely shouldn't make his website different for search engine crawlers. It's cloaking, however you want to justify it. Google are clear on this: make it appear the same for crawlers and visitors. This translates to: the thumbnails and links are placed in using javascript, probably in a way that Google can't crawl it. This will be as a result of the plugin you're using to add the content. You don't need a "static HTML" page, but instead just for Wordpress to produce HTML code for the thumbnails and links. Also, in terms of your URL structure for the categories/tags and paging it's worth considering removing the hash tag "#", but remember to do 301 redirects. This might sound like a lot of work, but can be made easier by getting a list of links (for example, a sitemap) and using the Wordpress redirection plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/ If you do go the route of re-doing your URL structure, spend some time planning, make a backup, do an offline test (if possible) and then migrate. Redirection includes a module to log all 404s. Speaking of sitemaps, it's worth adding one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ Or if you use Yoast's Wordpress SEO then this can also do it: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
True, however if a user embeds this same video on their website, chances are they are not going to include your description and then YouTube gets the rep... not your website that you worked so hard to promote. As well their are several other conversion marketing tactics that persuade users to transfer to YouTube from your website instead of focusing everything around your content. I am not saying to avoid YouTube, I am just saying that you should certainly use Vimeo when embedding videos on your own website. Why not write a step by step written tutorial to enhance the user experience as well? In a post panda world textual content plays an enormous role in rankings so not using it and having a 1% text-to-HTML ratio could possibly hurt your website. Plus I would take a look here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-links-with-video-content. All in all I would suggest ditching the dynamic content method and using a static more hierarchical approach to the website structure. For instance: Origami Tutorials > Nature > Animals and then you could have farm animals | wild animals or other categories pertaining to relative keywords. Don't go over the deep end here though. Try to keep it to a max two - three levels to avoid visitors bouncing. This is going to help search engines in the long run and definitely enhance the user's experience. ~Nick B.