The internet is coming down with video content. To give you some idea of the scale, in January 2009 YouTube alone had six billion videos viewed.

Of those six billions views you might have already seen the home grown videos such as the “Charlie bit my finger” 109 million views, “Battle at Kruger” 45 million views, “David After Dentist” 25 million views , “Star Wars Kid” 13.5 million views, “Beached as” nearly 5 millions views. And, who could forget the entertaining Sparta the Mean Kitty who’s video has been viewed 25 million views and counting.

Now of course, there is another breed of video content, the sort that originates from advertising agencies and corporate offices and has defined commercial intent. Brands are increasingly using it for marketing brand messages, promoting services, educating consumers and establishing a presence online oftentimes entertaining their consumers (and potential consumers).

But can there be some SEO payoff for a brand entering social media with video? Can a brand publish a video online, get the desired exposure and improve performance in organic search? The answer is yes and here are some other recent examples of videos that have truly gone ‘viral’ and done well for the brand behind it:

Dove Evolution of Beauty

One of the most notable videos to come from any brand was Dove’s Evolution video which was part of a campaign by Dove in 2006. By striking a chord with female viewers the video showed how model’s beauty is often artificial but with a little Photoshop magic, Dove turned an ordinary women into an airbrushed beauty. Dove’s angle is an honest approach to beauty and has been rewarded with well over 9 million views, 9,219 ratings and 4,241 comments. What’s more, the original video has spawned 100’s of clones, remakes, and parodies. And what about the SEO payoff? The video page on YouTube has 8,823 links. Unfortunately, those links benefit YouTube and not Dove’s websites.

Evian Skating Babies

No doubt Evian saw the huge amount of views that baby videos were getting, such as “this laughing baby” and “Charlie bit my finger” and then realised that there was an opportunity produce something creative. So far, Evian’s Skating Babies original video has had over 8 million views. The website promoted on the video Evian Live Young has a growing portfolio of precious links.

The Crisis of Credit Visualization

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Jonathan Jarvis made an impressive video making simple the complex story of the US credit crisis for his thesis work for the Media Design Program. Over the span of 5 months the video has got 1.9 million views on Vimeo and another 1 million views on YouTube. What’s more, the main Crisis Of Credit website, has amassed a powerful portfolio of 21,000+ links.

Compare the Meerkat

What have meerkats and car insurance got in common? Nothing in particular. However, that didn’t stop one UK-based car insurance comparison site from making a connection. Launched at the beginning of this year, the videos play on the similarity between the name of the website “Compare the Market” and the Russian pronunciation of the name by loveable meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov. How successful was it? There are five original videos on YouTube now with combined views of 257,000+. The Compare the Meerkat website was nominated for a webby and has amassed over 11,000 links meanwhile the main website now has close to 40k links. On the social front, Compare the Market now have a powerful brand mascot if the 491,866 of Aleksandr’s Facebook fans are anything to go by then.

Computer Tan

Computer Tan was launched back in February to appeal to sun-starved Brits who want to “look great in the office” by using new desktop tanning technology. Ridiculous as it sounds, quite a few pale poms were fooled momentarily because of course the website & iPhone app is an elaborate hoax, a hoax with a serious message about the dangers of skin cancer. The charity behind the campaign, Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity Skcin, skillfully combined humour, hoax and skin cancer with video to score over 1 million visitors , 125,000 YouTube views. Breit Bart’s story about it was popular on Digg with 1720 diggs. And the SEO payoff? Thousands of links to ComputerTan.com and Skcin.org from blogs and authority websites including BBC.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk.

There has been a lot of discussion out there on the SEO forums regarding Google’s changes in June 2009.

Reports of Google PageRank updates, backlink algorithm changes and the continued effect of brand keyword reshuffling noticed by the wider SEO community, particularly within Google UK.

The last item, Google’s brand reshuffle, or what has been called ‘Vince’, was initially seen in US markets in Feb and March. It was widely reported and the Outrider Australia team posted our comments on the initial Vince update back in March.

At the start of June, the UK has undergone similar changes to the US in regard to Google ‘Vince’ with the results pages consistently showing major brands taking place of long standing optimised sites. There is an interesting post about the recent Google UK brand shuffle on SEO Unique.

Usually a Google PageRank update occurs every three months. This time, at around the 24th of June there were reports that another PageRank update occurred. Considering the previous Page Rank update was in May 2009, it seems very early for a PageRank update, with some reports of a glitch on Google’s behalf.

While a PageRank update doesn’t mean a lot on it’s own, it could be related to recent discussions on Google’s backlink algorithm. The backlink algorithm change is being reported over at the Webmasterworld forum. With 90+ comments there certainly are a lot of webmasters noticing the changes!

Google Webmaster Tools also underwent several changes, as follows:

- Reduced Link Count
- 301 redirected URLs do not appear in the link list

Read more about the changes to Google Webmaster Tools in June at SEO Roundtable:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020336.html

The Outrider SEO team continues to monitor the search engines status and will update the blog with any information as it comes to hand.