Enhancing Search Engine Listings with Videos
In the coming months a small start-up in Texas called SiSTeR Technologies hopes to introduce short video clips to search engine listings. Folks used to say a picture was worth a thousand words. That of course was in the days before video was an instantly accessible medium.
Video advertising can so be sophisticated; a two minute ad can be a more powerful sales tool than a million lines of print. Search engine listings tend to express a fair amount of information about the site behind each link. SEOs and site designers try to write strong descriptions and body text in order to generate a good paragraph under their links to attract visitors to the site but in the end, reference links often look very much alike. When competing for clicks with several other web-documents, conventional wisdom says it is smart to somehow stand out from the rest.
An interesting new tool from SiSTeR Technologies will allow advertisers to create short video clips that would appear alongside regular organic listings. They are currently speaking with a number of large players in the search engine world and if talks go well we may see the products of their labours very soon. Last week, SiSTeR Technologies CEO Israel Alpert and Marketing Director, Tomer Alpert gave me a behind the scenes tour of their products.
SiSTeR’s plan is to allow search engine advertisers to produce short video clips of up to 5-minutes that will appear to the left of your search listing. The clips are very easy to produce using SiSTeR’s “Pic-2-Vid” and “M-Plat” online editing platforms which combine digital images or videos with voice-overs recorded by telephone.
Tomer guided me through the seven or eight simple steps involved in creating a video and within 90-seconds I had created a fifteen second clip. In less than an hour I could easily create a credible 60-second commercial that would appear beside my organic search listing, or perhaps as part of a paid-listing.
At the cost of one-cent per minute of broadcast, SiSTeR’s pricing structure is also simple. A one-minute clip that receives one thousand views would cost the advertiser $10US. Stretched across thousands of advertisers, 365-days and tens of millions of daily searchers, the lowest possible fees should still provide a fair return for SiSTeR’s efforts.
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Jim Hedger is a senior editor for ISEDB.com. Also he is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim works with a limited group of clients and provides consultancy services. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be reached at jim.hedger@gmail.com
