Why video on the website?

Video has become a huge phenomenon on the web. When people visit your website, they basically absorb your information through one or more of their senses: listening to audio files, reading your company information, or viewing the graphics. Since a basic business goal is to reach the greatest number of visitors possible, you’ll want to present information that stimulates all possible senses to wow each prospective client.  Since video is the latest and hottest online trend, adding video clips is a wise marketing decision to add that WOW factor.

How can video help my search engine ranking?

Video on the web is an extremely powerful tool for generating high search engine results.
Uploading video to websites such as YouTube,Google Video,myspaceTV, and metacafe has proven to dramatically help search rankings. Companies who have a more aggressive video marketing strategy that take advantage of syndication, video site mapping and embedding transcribed videos within their sites will result in a higher overall site ranking.

What file format is best to use for optimum performance and quality:

All video file formats have their advantages and disadvantages, but over all, FLV has pulled ahead of the pack to become the industry standard in web video compression. FLV lowers streaming cost and is one of the most widely-supported cross-platform players available in 81.7% of mature markets. It is the most common plugin which means, virtually everyone will be able to view videos produced for the FLV format. The newest release of Flash player 9 brought the Flash Player cache for Flex framework caching, hardware-scaled full screen, multi-core rendering, and H.264/AAC HD video. The FLV file format is use by virtually all large publishers such as Google Video, Reuters.com and YouTube.

What should I look for when looking for a company to handle my website’s video needs?

Creating, impementing, optimizing, and distributing video content for the web is quite complex. There are several variables to consider. When looking for a full service web video company you want to start at the beginning. First thing to remember, just because a company does video production doesn’t mean they know the web, and just because a company does web-design doesn’t mean they know video.

On the video production side – be sure the company you choose has a clear understanding of all areas of web-video production and advertising. Make sure they can match your needs whether you want a 2 minute video shot in a “news style” format or a 30 second clip produced more like a commercial. On the video side- you want to consider how they intend on framing the shot. General web videos at this point are viewed in smaller size players. It’s important that the shoot be framed up tight so you don’t cut someone’s head off in an interview. Another thing to keep in mind is that camera movements such as pans and zooms can degrade the video quality when it comes time to compress for the web, this is also true with very intricate motion graphics. Lots of movement means the computer has to work harder and the file size will either have to be larger to get better quality or you will have to sacrifice quality.

On the web integration side – When it come to web integration it is very important the company you select has a very clear understanding of video codes and compression. The compression process will determine the quality of the video. Ask about the delivery method, will it be progressive or streaming? For more information on this topic read our blog post: progressive vs streaming. On the advertising side of thing you will want to find out where the ad will be placed, how long the ad will run, and if there any statistical information on video performance viewership.

How will my business benefit from online video advertising:

Online video gives your business an new outlet for advertising. Smaller advertisers are beginning to use simple online video ads, tagged and indexed for search engine pickup, to connect with local audiences. The question is: how can small companies create the most effective video ads on a budget? The answer is with online videos, they can be placed on a site and be twice as effective as a small banner ad.