Martell TV Beta Launches

I'm happy to announce that my company's web application, Martell TV, is now in live beta test mode.

For those who don't know, since starting this blog I became the CEO of a Youtube Partner Network / Multi Channel Network (MCN) called Martell Brothers Studios. While doing all the SEO work for our properties (and writing lengthy articles about video SEO) I started to think, "Hey maybe there is a better way to build audiences using Youtube than through search engines".

Martell TV is the ultimate outcome of that; my conclusion was the best way to use Youtube would be if it worked more like traditional broadcast, allowing people to create their own Station lineups and publish daily schedules of videos.

It's still very beta -- it is missing about 80% of the features I originally wanted it to have -- but it is a functional and solid application that does the essentials.

I hope you'll find it useful.

How to Outsmart Wiki Editors while SEOing

When it comes to SEO, there is a dark side to Wikipedia. Many of the supposed "do-good" editors on wiki sites are removing your links not because they honestly care if you're a reliable source or not, but because they are employed by SEO companies who are trying to protect their link juice (this is also why you may have trouble removing links from a wikia which obviously are spam. Some of the admins are the spammers!). They also do things like "wiki jacking" which ultimately benefit them while crushing competitors.

You might think it's despicable, but here's the thing: because this stuff goes on it becomes necessary for you to also engage in it. It's hard to compete with these sites who are receiving so much authority from wikis if you're not also being viewed as an authority site by wikis (so if you're gonna blame someone, blame the search engine companies for giving so much authority ranking to wikis, who are way too easy to manipulate).

The key to beating the rival editors;
wiki history pages!

It's pointless to engage in edit wars with them, because they control these websites and even if you manage to convince one person to not delete your link there will be others who will. So trying to protect your links on wiki sites is a gigantic waste of time.

Method #1 Link to older page versions

However, I have figured out a way to beat these guys. You see, Wiki sites allow anyone to view the prior versions of these pages and then directly link to them. All you need to do is go to the history page for that article and then find one of the edits before your site was removed from the page. Next socially bookmark that version of the page and even embed the link it into your articles and blog comments!

The even cooler thing about this technique is that your deleted link is now at the very top of the page in the part that shows what content was changed. This works well with services like Stumbleupon or Reddit, especially if there was any controversial statements made by the editors. Edit wars can spark the interest of Stumbleupon users, which can convince people to copy and paste your link into their browser just to see what the fuss was all about.

Unfortunately the older versions don't have quite as much authority as the normal pages do, but the domain names still carry a great deal of authority weight to them. As long as you help search engines find the pages by submitting the link all over, you can get authority ranking back to your site from these older page versions.

Lastly you can always add a bunch of links to your content on your profile page, and then submit that profile page all over the internet. And every time you post a signature on Wikipedia's talk pages, you'll be internally linking back to your profile page, too!

Haters gonna hate, but they can't stop this!

Method #2 Make a community blog post

The most latest Wikia version software allows any registered user to make a community blog. Moderators and rival SEO competitors pay very little attention to these blogs because they are so focused on controlling the articles. This means you can post your links on your blogs with a much lowered chance of having the links deleted.

Community blogs are a boon for back-links!

You may not be able to win the edit battles to ensure your links remain on the most recent version of  heavily trafficked articles (which the majority of users will see), but you can win the war to get authority ranking going back to your website from wiki domains related to your keywords!

Don't let rival editors stop you, just outsmart them!

How to monetize royalty free music on Youtube videos

This official Youtube video demonstrates how to monetize a video that has royalty free music included in it and for which you have a license to use the music.

Bear in mind, Youtube's full policy for monetization can be found here. You must still comply with all Youtube's policies for monetization.

How to monetize Youtube gameplay videos

As a Youtube Partner who creates video game reviews on my channel The RPG Fanatic, I frequently get asked about whether making video game reviews are allowed to be monetized or not.

The above video explains Youtube's policy concerning video game footage and fair use. This is important information to know because unless you have permission from a developer to use gameplay footage in your videos, you must abide by Youtube's fair use policy for videogame footage.

Youtube's policy is very strict. They will not allow you to place ads on gameplay if there is no audio commentary tracks you have created yourself, and your commentary must provide educational or instructional value. This means you can't just upload video game trailers and expect to make money; Youtube won't allow you to do that.

Youtube also has an official video that demonstrates how to file a claim for videogame footage if you are invoking fair use,

For more information about fair use and DMCA on Youtube, please check the following links:

Using some copyrighted content in your video:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=143457

Youtube Video Monetization checklist:
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2490020

Partner Help Center: Video Game and Software Content
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138161

Center for Social Media: Fair Use for Documentary & Online Video Makers
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use

How to setup a Youtube Show page

A Youtube Show is more than just a playlist; it is a powerful tool for promoting your videos. Youtube Shows receive top billing in Youtube Search results. If you make a show title that is exactly the same as a keyword, you will always have your videos shown at the top of the search page for that keyword.

For example, I made a show called "Online Games" for my MMORPG related videos. Online Games receives several hundred thousand searches on Youtube per month. My videos now rank at the top of Youtube search results simply because they are connected to my show that has those keywords!

Youtube Shows are more than just a playlist!

Shows also appear on their own special search page, http://www.youtube.com/shows. They can also have the episodes made available for rental through Youtube.

Unfortunately a Youtube Show is an exclusive option for select Partners. Youtube does not give it to every channel. However networks tend to allow all channels associated with them to have a Show, so this tutorial can be useful to helping networked Partners learn how to use a Show page.

When naming a show, you should use the Youtube Keyword Suggestion tool to decide on the name. Try to pick something that is receiving lots of searches but doesn't already have a Show created for it. Youtube Search rarely displays more than one Show on the search page, unless that keyword is getting millions of searches every month. 

It's important to fill out everything correctly to have a show approved!

It is important that you fill out the Show page completely. As soon as you make it, the show enters an approval query for Youtube Partner support. You cannot just instantly be approved for a Show; it must be inspected first.

Several things can get your show rejected;

• Making a show that has the same name as an existing Show

• Adding videos which have "extra tags" in their description. All tag blocks should be in the "Tags field" of the video. If you want to use keywords in your description, put them in the form of a sentence.

• Not submitting high quality images for your Show.

• Not including any videos as episodes for your Show.

• Having video titles that are much too long or repeat words too much (for example, if your show is called "Bob's Game Reviews" then don't put "game review" in the title of your videos. Your show title will automatically be part of the title of all episodes attached to the Show page). 

If a show is rejected, the Youtube employee will have notes saying what needs to be done for the show to be approved. Unfortunately you won't get an email if your show is approved or rejected, so you will need to check back on your Show tab to see if it was approved. It may take up to a week for someone to review your submission.

How to use Tumblr to increase Youtube views

Tumblr is a blog format designed primarily for sharing images, and it has some easy to use share functions that can make content quickly go viral. Users primarily find content by subscribing to keyword tags like "gamer" or "roleplaying", and will then see any submissions users' post with those tags in their activity feeds.

For example, here are all the recent tumblr posts with the tagged keyword "youtube" and here are some with youtube-community.

Some people actually use Tumblr as their primary website but I personally find it more suitable as an auxiliary site to compliment my primary website with back-links and provide extra reach; for example, my tumblr RPG Video Reviews focuses on reaching gamers on Tumblr by using videogame related tags for my submissions.

Now there are a few ways you can use Tumblr to increase your Youtube views and in this article I'll talk about each one.

#1 Photo Sharing

This strategy works best in conjunction with the Pinterest strategy for getting traffic to your Facebook Page. Ideally, you want to add a funny or shocking image to your tumblr and then have the click-through link be to your Pinterest board where you already have images pinned from your Facebook Page and primary website, along with videos from your Youtube channel.

Set a click through link to something you want to promote!

It's important to ensure you tag your articles so they will be seen. Fortunately tumblr will suggest popular tags for you based on what you are typing into the tag box, which makes it a'bit more useful than Stumbleupon which expects you to psychically pick up on what the most popular tags on the site are.

Tags are vital on Tumblr! Don't forget them!

#2 Video Embedding

You also can embed your Youtube videos directly into Tumblr. The process is identical as it is with adding photos. Better yet, you can embed videos from your Pinterest boards into Tumblr posts, which gives back-links to both your Pinterest boards and your Youtube channel at the same time.


#3 Tumblr Communities

Additionally, Tumblr has some special communities you can submit video content to. Here's a couple of my favorites

http://reblorg.com/about

http://storyboard.tumblr.com/

http://www.pinterestyouaredrunk.com/submit

http://stupidshitonpinterest.tumblr.com/

You can also make your own Tumblr community; for example, I've made one for the Youtube Gaming Community to submit their videos to.

You can find information on how to add a submit button to your tumblr at their official help page. 

#4 Customize your Tumblr to promote your social network accounts

You can customize your Tumblr to have your Facebook Page embedded into the sidebar, along with a link back to your Youtube channel. I also like to include my Twitter feed.

For instructions on how to customize your tumblr, check out this page. You'll need some HTML knowledge to do this.

Customizing your Tumblr will also
help you look more professional,
encouraging visitors to pay more
attention to what you post!

As with anything else, always use social bookmark services like Stumbleupon to drive traffic to your recent Tumblr submissions.



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Submit your Youtube videos to related Wikis

Did you know that many niche wiki sites allow Youtube video submissions?

A wikia's "Add A Video" popup!

For example, the Shin Megami Tensei wikia has a helpful feed appearing on nearly every page of their site which displays an assorted number of videos users have added to the feed. So I added several of my own videos related to that franchise to increase their exposure. 

My videos at the top of the feed

Here's a screenshot of some of my videos added to their database.

Just make sure your video actually has something to do with the article in question or you'll find your videos deleted by mods.

You might also want to keep tabs on these articles, because competitors like to delete links from wikia sites. Yes, there is an unfortunate dark side to wikias. This is the #1 reason why I made my own wiki game database website, RPG Fanatics. We don't allow regular users to delete user submissions and encourage everyone to share their videos.






Anyway, when submitting to the wikia feed app, keep in mind the videos tend to be organized by their titles alphabetically. You should also try to make the title something that will be at the top of the page.

Embedding videos is a great
way to get views BUT can also
attracted unwanted attention from
wiki editors who delete competitor links.

Lastly you can also attempt to embed your videos into wiki articles, though this can often attract the attention of competitors who want to delete your videos and insert their own, or simply delete any videos or links added to an article they have links at. This can be hit and miss, and getting involved in edit wars is something you should try to avoid because it nearly always ends poorly.





After submitting your video into a page you should then share the link on social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Reddit. This will help them gain visibility. Sure, other people's videos are on these pages too but if your video has an attractive enough thumbnail and title you can stand out of the crowd!


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Pinvolve App allows Facebook Page images to be pinned!

Pinvolve is pretty sweet!

Today I noticed that my previous article about Pinterest was getting a decent amount of traffic from Google Search, so today I want to talk about another great way to use Pinterest to build audiences.

The Pinvolve app launched last April and has already taken the internet by storm because it fills a niche with a big demand; allowing you to pin images from Facebook Fan Pages to Pinterest boards. Normally you can't do this, which sucks because Pinterest boards would be a terrific way to drive traffic to your Facebook Fan Pages.

That's why Pinvolve is so great. It makes it possible to do just that. In a couple minutes I was able to create this Anime Cosplay Photos and Pictures web album from images hosted at my Weekly Texas Jump Facebook page.

The service was even endorsed by George Takei, whose been using image sharing to build his massive Facebook following.

Upload images to FB that people will want
to share and you'll build an audience!

Now let me give you a really great tip. Not many people realize this but one of the most effective tactics for getting 'likes' to your Facebook page is uploading images people want to share like internet memes. Normally it is hard to get people to pin a Facebook image, because Pinterest makes it hard to do so.

But the Pinvolve app makes the process simple and fast.


I hope this article has empowered you on how to better promote your Facebook Page. In the comments below please let me know how things go for you as you use the app, because I'd love to know!


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Looking for more information about what you can do with Facebook Pages? Check out these other articles I've written.

• The Importance of Facebook for Youtube Partners
• Buying Facebook Ads
• Send a Mass friend invite on Facebook
• Facebook Pages now show Reach

Myvidster.com for social sharing your video bookmarks

Myvidster.com

The Myvidster.com service is similar to Pinterest in that it is a social bookmarking site but it focuses on bookmarking videos from various video streaming websites (including Youtube).

I made an account the other day to promote my Youtube videogame videos and I'd like to share with you some tips on how to effectively use the service.

Web Albums are key to using Myvidster

Firstly, you should create your collections using long tail keywords, such as Video Game Video Reviews. As I've talked about in previous articles these phrases are easier to capture search engine traffic for because fewer people use them but many people search for these terms.

Long tail keywords are the most ideal!

Your profile also has an RSS feed (for example, here's mine). Just as you would with any other RSS feed you should submit them to directory sites that accept them.

Lastly you can create a group where other members are allowed to share videos to your albums. For example I created this MyVidster group for sharing Video Game Videos .

There's not much else I need to say about the service. It's a social bookmarking tool focused on videos and many categories have little content, so early adopters can take advantage of the site to drive traffic to their videos.


Hey, have you heard about Youtube Money Storm? Click Here To Learn More!(Advertisement)

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Get more Youtube views by using Yahoo! Answers

The other day I came across this blog article that does a great job of running through the basics of how to use Yahoo Answers to drive traffic back to your blog, but felt I could give some additional tips for how you can use the service specifically for promoting Youtube videos.

Plug links to your videos to answer questions

I've tried the tactic myself and found it to be fairly effective at promoting sites where my content is embedded, so I know it can work.

You will have competitors attempt to flag your responses as "spam" but if you are chosen as the Best Answer by the person who opened the question you will get the top spot on the page.

I like to use the shortened URLs for articles on Yahoo Answers!, using a service like the one Google offers. It tends to make the article look tidier and more attractive to users, especially if your video URLs are massively long because they are connected to playlists.

Unfortunately back-links from Yahoo Answers! are nofollow tagged so they don't add link juice but search engines still use links from the service for determining authority, which does help your rankings in the search engines.

One thing I'd suggest doing is make a video response to common questions people ask on Yahoo Answers! and then post the video URL as an answer to every open question where that answer applies.


Note that Yahoo Answers! won't make it terribly easy for you to start off as a new user. All brand new accounts begin at level 1 and any links you place won't become clickable backlinks; people will need to copy and paste the urls to see your content.

However once you gain about 250 points you'll be made a Level 2 user and all links you have ever posted as an answer will become click-able backlinks.

The most important value of using Yahoo Answers! is you'll get a tiny amount of authority ranking of your videos to search engines, and your answer will be seen by other people searching the site for answers to a similar question. Occasionally Yahoo Answers! posts become the top Google or Bing search result for a common question.

Lastly, you can also help your answers rank higher in search engines by plugging them in your Squidoo articles or using a service like Netleeks, both are services I've written about in previous articles.

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TopBlip.com offers views and prizes to music Youtubers

I stumbled upon this website today, TopBlip.com, which is designed to integrate with Youtube videos to get them more views in the form of a contest. Unfortunately for me the site is oriented toward people who sing covers for music owned by major labels and I don't make that kind of content BUT I figure there are enough music Partners out there that someone who reads this blog might be interested.

For more information I was able to find this interview with the founders of the site, Sean and Justin Bingham, as they promote their service.

Personally the site seems designed to promote the major label artists more than the Youtubers, but if you already upload cover songs to your channel then you might as well embed your videos here so you can get some traffic back to them. It's tough to stand out when hundreds of thousands of people are also making cover songs, so you might be able to get some traffic this way since there are way less people adding their videos to Topblip than uploading to Youtube.

How to get Pinterest traffic to your videos

Carey Martell's Pinterest Profile

At first it doesn't seem obvious how Pinterest can be used to generate traffic for Youtube videos. If you simply pin your videos to the service and do nothing more, you end up with the same problem we have on Youtube; our pins get lost in the sea of other submissions and it is difficult to stand out from the crowds.

However the problem is many people use Pinterest in an ineffective way, pinning all day long without doing any actual marketing of their pins. Youtubers are no exception, and in fact many users just pump out video after video to their channel without even considering that they should embed the videos on other websites.

It's easy to get the tunnel vision because many Partners focus exclusively on thinking their only product is their video content. So they don't have a website, they don't market any products and they attempt to make money solely off the ad overlays on their videos.

This is the wrong approach.

Instead you should be trying to use your videos as part of a larger offering of content and products. Youtube views shouldn't just be about how much ad revenue you make-- the views are more valuable for their ability to drive traffic to websites.  Anyone who wants to use Youtube for business purposes should be taking full advantage of this fact.

While I have a network of websites I control, my main focus of late has been on RPG Fanatics, a wiki database of games that also has powerful community engagement systems. One of the unique things about us is the way we display game box art and Pinterest gives us an excellent way to take advantage of this to market our site.

So I'll take you through the process I use to create my Pinterest boards in order to capture search engine traffic (which is how the site should be used!)

For deciding what keywords to tag our boards with, we once again turn to Google's AdWords Keyword Tool.

The keywords I decide upon are,

• "game cover" - 135,000 searches
• "boxart" - 60,500 searches
• "game covers" - 60,500 searches
• "games covers" - 49,500 searches
• "video game box" - 14,800 searches
• "game box art" - 6,600 searches
• "video game covers" - 6,600 searches
• "vg box art" - 4,400 searches
• "video game box art" - 2,900 searches
• "video game boxart" - 1,900 searches

Based on the number of searches for these keywords and the lack of boards using them, I decide to create my board with the title, "Video Game Covers and Boxart".

Using these keywords means that if I can get my board to the front page of Google Search then it has the potential to reach around 67k people every month.

To make things easier on myself I install the Pinterest button add-on for Chrome. I've got hundreds of box art images on my site so I need to quickly be able to index them all.






I then created a copy macro for pasting the keywords "Video Game Cover / Boxart" after the name of each game.

After an hour of this I end up with 416 pins to my video game box art Pinterest board. I can now plug this board as a link, just as I would with any other article.

You see, I already have a modest network of game related blog articles built up on various websites, so I can add this board as a back-link to any of those articles with the anchor text using the keywords I listed above. This will send signals to search engines that they should be ranking my board for searches involving game cover art. Additionally, users on Pinterest who like the images will re-pin them to their own boards BUT the URL for my website will remain. The re-pinning is really great because it allows you to tap into audiences other users have been building with their boards.

One thing you might do is create a board for you and many other Youtubers to have your videos pinned to. For example, I've got this board titled, Videogame Videos on Youtube which my friends and I pin our videos to. I do the same back-linking with it to help it rank highly in search engine results.


The important thing to realize about Pinterest is that the boards are just an article of images with backlinks to whatever website the images are hosted on. So you could make images of cooking recipes or schematics for hacking iphones-- whatever it is your Youtube channel is about, you could make a Pinterest board to help advertise it -- but only if you have a website for your Youtube channel that is hosting the images.

So if you haven't made a website yet, go make one!

Update: I've made another article pertaining to Pinterest, this time about an app called Pinvolve that integrates with your Facebook Pages. If you plan to use Pinterest you NEED to be using this app!

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5 Easy Steps to Become a Youtube Partner?

Today I'm sharing with you an infographic that has been floating around the web, created by http://www.comescaricaremusicadayoutube.it.  It uses data from the Youtube Creator Handbook which Google released several months ago and is supposed to summarize the necessary steps to become a successful Youtube Partner.

Personally speaking, I take issue with some of the facts in that book (for example, joining a network will boost your subscriber count by 90%? Not necessarily. Many networks just scheme to monetize as many channels as they possibly can and do absolutely no promotion for the overwhelming majority of channels they take in) but I thought the infographic at least summarizes the basic idea of what you're supposed to do with a Youtube channel. So I'm embedding it here for your viewing pleasure.

Before you read on I want to say the most important thing to understand is none of this stuff is special.

These are the basic things everyone should be doing, and because everyone is doing them they aren't necessarily going to bring you a ton of traffic. But they are required in order to for everything else you do to make any difference.

Nobody can find your videos if they don't have key-word rich titles, descriptions and tags; Youtube is a social network so communicating with your subscribers is vital; making videos that provide value to people's lives, rather than re-uploading someone else's music video, etc etc

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How to increase Squidoo Lens Rankings

As I've mentioned in previous articles about Squidoo, embedding videos into articles I add to the website is an important part of my SEO battle plan for driving traffic to my Youtube videos. In this article I'll talk about some very easy ways I increase traffic to my lenses so they pass link juice to my primary websites.

There is a step by step PDF about what to do titled, Squidoo Step by Step. You should definitely read it before the rest of this article.

Add your articles to Squidoo focused directories

The key is to submit your lenses to directories that specialize in Squidoo content.

These websites are,

• The Kingdom of Squidoo
• Lenslike
• Squidoo Directory
• SquidUp
• Squidoo Encyclopaedia
• LensRoll

Every lens you make should be submitted to all of these directories, as they will provide high PageRank backlinks to the lenses and the sites are followed by people who are looking for great Squidoo articles.

Create and submit an RSS feed for your lenses

You can also create an RSS feed for your Squidoo lenses. Normally Squidoo doesn't provide a link for this but through a third party website called http://squidutils.com/ you can obtain it. By associating your account with them you can generate an RSS feed of all your lenses, and then submit them to the directories. There is also a tool for allowing you to ping search engines when you update an individual lens.

As an example, here is my lensmaster RSS feed,

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lensmaster/carey-martell

There are many RSS directories you can submit your feed to that will boost your rankings just by getting listed but these directories are also used by hundreds of thousands of people every month. Getting listed will introduce new audiences to your articles.

Check out this article from me for a list of directories you can submit to, as well as some info about Youtube channel RSS feeds.

Cross Promote with other Squidoo authors

Cross promoting with other authors is great!

Another great technique is to reach out to other Squidoo authors and cross-promote each other's lenses and blog articles which have related subject matter. This is effective because everyone wants backlinks to their articles, and including backlinks to one another's content saves both parties from having to manually create another link.




There are even Facebook Groups formed specifically to allow Squidoo authors who wish to network to find one another.

• Post a Squidoo Lens Here
• Squidoo Facebook Community
• Squidoo Farm
• Squidoo For All
• Squidoo It All
• Ask a Squidoo Expert
• More than Squidoo Share
• Squidoo and Tweet

Granted not everyone in these groups always understands what you are trying to do. Many people do not fully understand the Penguin and Panda updates to Google Search, and seem to be under the impression cross-promotion is not allowed by Squidoo or Google.

Some of the conversations I've had with people about the topic of cross-promotion leads me to believe that they think Google can detect the motivation of every link on every article, when that is impossible. What Google does is punish content mirroring, because content mirroring is obviously being done for promotional purposes. Google also punishes linking to articles which have no relevent keywords to the page the link is coming from; for example, making an article about Dora the Explorer link to an article about astrophysics wouldn't be considered relevant, but linking Dora the Explorer article to another about cartoons would be perfectly fine.



The unfortunate reality is that many people would rather sit at their laptops all day writing their own articles on thousands of websites than collaborate with other users to maximize efforts.

In the end, it may take a lot of effort and approaching people individually to get some results with cross promotion.

Despite what naysayers claim, mutual backlinking is allowed on Squidoo

Buy other people's lenses

Another thing you can do is just buy other people's pre-made lenses that have established search engine rankings, and then use them to add link juice to other articles you've made. To assist with the buying and selling of lenses, check out this Facebook Group, "Buying and Selling Squidoo Lenses".

There is also this page over at webnuggetz.com where you can buy pre-made Lenses for $5.

The benefit of buying lenses is you can use them to add links to your other lenses, increasing the reach you have and expanding your network of articles.

Constantly revise your articles

Due to the way Google works, the "freshness" of an article matters. The more you update an existing page, the fresher it is valued by Google. So because of this "fresh factor" many Squidoo authors take advantage of it by revising their lenses every week and then alerting search engines to the changes by using a service like Ping-o-matic.

Personally I find this tactic requires too much time and effort, largely because I already have a heavy workload. Constantly making tweaks to existing articles just to bump them a little higher isn't as worthwhile for me as creating brand new articles so they can send link juice to other articles. Still this tactic may be worthwhile for you to try.


I hope this post of mine has given you a lot of useful ideas on how you can increase views to your Squidoo Lenses and boost their rankings.

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Using your Youtube RSS feed to increase views

Finding your channel's RSS feed is easy!

Did you know that your Youtube channel has an RSS feed? You absolutely do! By going to the Youtube API page you can quickly generate an RSS feed for all the latest videos on your channel.You just need to enter your username in the 'author' field and make sure the field is sorted by publish date, and you'll have a feed that continually updates with every new video you upload.

As an example, my RPG game reviews Youtube channel 's RSS feed can be found by clicking on the contextual link I just provided.

Amazingly these Youtube RSS feeds include dofollow links to each video, as well as any website URLs appearing in the video description section. This is a great SEO technique that can really save you a lot of time if you want to embed your videos into a blog feed without messing with plugins that may or may not work.

Additionally, I strongly encourage you to submit your Youtube channel's RSS feeds to RSS feed directory sites; as an example I routinely submit the feeds for all the featured contributors to my RPG Fanatics website.  This will give you a backlink from their domains to your channel and visitors to these sites might find your videos while they perform searches for blogs.

I also submit the RSS feeds for all the blogs I embed my videos into, including my Squidoo articles.

My favorite RSS Aggregation sites

The following is a list of sites I use to submit my RSS feeds. 

http://www.feedage.com

FeedAge is great because they have a feature called an RSS blend which allows you to combine several RSS feeds together as one RSS feeds. I use this to create a feed for all my featured contributors to have listed together. This allows the feed to update more often and have more varied content for pulling keywords.

As you can see in the accompanying screenshot, within five days of submitting my feeds I already received about 70 views to them. That may not seem like much but those are each new people being introduced to my videos. And it only takes a few minutes to submit these feeds to the website, which also provide some strong backlinks to my channel.






http://www.bumpzee.com/

Bumpzee is currently in a closed beta but you can submit a request to join the site.

http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp

Plazoo is a search engine that crawls RSS feeds to find information for its users. Each listing makes for a great dofollow backlink!

http://feedfury.com/faq
Feed Fury costs $5 per submission but it does provide a strong dofollow link back to your site. The choice is up to you whether you want to pay for a link or not.

http://www.rssmountain.com

 RSS Mountain allows free submissions and has a lot of different categories for you to submit your feeds under. It's one of the more popular directories.

http://www.rss-network.com/submitrss.php

RSS Network has an easy to use form that allows you to submit a feed to their expansive database.

Unfortunately they don't like the Youtube RSS feeds because the 'description' field is missing but you can definitely add feeds for the blogs you embed your videos into!




http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html

FeedSee has a painless submission process compared to many of the other directories I've listed here and their database is moderated by live people to prevent spam links from appearing in the database. Getting listed with them will provide a solid back-link.

http://www.rssmicro.com/feedsubmit.web

RSS Micro is another fantastic directory you should get listed on. It's even one of the top Google Search results for RSS directory, ensuring that you'll get some decent traffic from it for being listed there!


You can find more RSS directory sites to submit to by reading the article at this link. 

Lastly you can use Ping-o-Matic to manually tell search engines that your feed has updated.









Know of any other great directories or uses for Youtube channel RSS feeds? Let me know in the comments below!
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Creating Subreddits for Fun and View Traffic

Despite what reddit pitches to its user base, it's no secret that reddit is frequently used by social media marketers. This write up from The Daily Dot talks about the case of Ian Miles Chiang (a moderator for many communities such as r/WTF,  r/Politics and r/AskReddit) who was was hired by the GlobalPost to promote their articles in the reddits he administrated.

One of the comments left on the Daily Dot article

What I find interesting is that some users claim Ian often used his mod status to delete and ban other users who competed for views with him.


Sadly this kind of admin abuse is not uncommon and has been reported by other sites as well. Even I have written prior articles about how subreddit mods have blasted my submissions even though the content submitted was appropriate for the topic of the community.

The only way to not deal with moderators who want to compete with their subscribers for views is to create and grow your own subreddit communities. This is the tactic I'm now taking. The thing is, it can be difficult to stand out from the legions of other subreddit communities that already exist for every conceivable topic under the sun.

So what I've done is try an experiment; I created a subreddit for users of my website to share news, videos and other kinds of links relevant to all things RPG. I also made it clear the community was associated to my site, so there can be no accusations of "spamming" or misleading users.



Another thing I did to differentiate my community from other subreddits about RPGs is let people know they won't be banned for self-promotion. Nearly all subreddits have mods looking for any excuse to use their mod powers, so my belief is that by allowing people to self-promote we can find a niche.

I also encourage my users to submit links, because I will be using the community to find news about games to promote on my RPG Fanatic Facebook Fan page. So if they submit one of their own high-quality articles it might receive a personal plug from me.

The benefits to creating my own subreddits are simple to understand:

• Nobody will be deleting my links anymore.

• Because my links aren't getting deleted, I'll be able to gain more link karma as people upvote my comments and links.

• I can include links to the sidebar of the community to things I want to promote, including other communities.

I'm planning to start more subreddits but at the moment I haven't quite nailed down how best to promote a new subreddit. I shall have to write about that in a future article.

Update: I've taken over moderation of an existing the sub reddit,

http://www.reddit.com/r/YouTubeGamers/

We'll see how this experiment goes.

Why RPGFanatic.net and other community blog sites are great for Youtube Video SEO

This is going to sound a little like tooting my own horn but the strategy behind RPGFanatic.net is insanely great for Youtube Partners who make gaming content, and I really want to tell you why.

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, Google made a lot of changes to the Google Search algorithms that have altered the landscape. The "freshness" of a website is now heavily factored into what web pages are displayed on the front page of the search results; that is, the more often a website makes new pages, the more likely that site is going to be having articles be displayed on the front page of the search results.

This is why community oriented sites where users have the ability to add content are fantastic for SEOing. On RPGFanatic.net you can have tons of people writing blogs every day and editing the wiki database. Once the site really kicks off with a few hundred daily users it is going to have a very high Page Rank and search engines will favor content related to it. I've already managed to get one of my articles on the front page of a Google Search listing for a game, so I know it is possible to make this work.

Another thing is that you can plug your personal blogs, Youtube channels and Facebook Fan Pages inside your blog posts, creating a backlink from Rpgfanatic.net to your own content. This has the effect of increasing your site's visibility in search engines!

If you want to get your content seen, all you need to do is embed your roleplaying videogame videos into our database and then plug those articles on other websites, such as forums, Squidoo articles and your own personal blogs. Share them on Facebook, reddit and Twitter! This has the effect of not just driving traffic to your videos but it improves the ranking of your content in search engines.

You will also be introducing more people to RPGFanatic.net who might start adding content of their own, which increases the "freshness" value of the website in Google, boosting the Google Search rank of ALL content that exists on the website!

And note that while there are other websites which allow you to submit your content to them, most of them have mods who discourage you from submitting monetized videos and will ban you for "spamming" if you embed your entire library of gaming videos. RPGFanatic.net will never ban users for adding legitimate content to our servers; we want you to be able to earn revenue from your game reviews, let's plays and walkthroughs!

We realize the more successful our users are, the more successful we will be.


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