Barnacle SEO, YouTube, and Fast (Safe) Rankings

Many website owners are gun shy when it comes to building links and aggressively trying to rank for money keywords. In order to reduce the risk of getting your website penalized, Barnacle SEO is a method that often allows you to gain quick rankings while you are safely building the authority and rankings of your money site. While Barnacle SEO can be used on social sites and profiles on listing sites, we are going to look at how it can help you rank videos.

Leverage Videos to Rank Quickly for Competitive Terms

Videos can be used to offer a unique perspective, a detailed overview, or a sales driving testimonial to your potential clients, but only if you can get it in front of them. Video SEO is one of the most underused and overlooked methods of connecting to customers through search. This means that in many areas and niches you can quickly and easily rank a video on YouTube, the 2^nd largest search engine. Even if you video keyword does not get a lot of search traffic on YouTube directly, you will be glad to know that it can appear very high in the Google SERPs.

What types of Queries Trigger Videos?

While most videos are triggered by long tail terms including terms like “how to”, “tutorials” and “reviews” you can find video results on the first page for thousands of other terms. St Louis SEO is one example of a video appearing for a generic search term. Simply Google your main keywords and see if any videos appear on the first page, if so, you have a good target term for video SEO. The beauty of ranking videos is that it can be done much faster than ranking a page and if you get penalized for being too aggressive, it is too YouTube, not your site. Since YouTube has an insane amount of authority, you can build thousands of low quality links rapidly and still rank without getting a penalty of any sort.

This occurs because the video leverages the authority of the root domain, which in this case is YouTube. The same theory applies to listings on sites like Yelp or social profiles appearing high in the results and this is known as Barnacle SEO.

What is Barnacle SEO?

Barnacle SEO was first mentioned back in 2007 by Will Scott. A barnacle is a marine crustacean which attaches itself permanently to a variety of surfaces and feeds by filtering particles from the water. Put more simply, a barnacle is a parasite and Barnacle SEO uses the same principles of being carried by a host. When you search for a local company and see results like Yellow Pages, you are seeing companies leveraging barnacle SEO, many times without knowing it. Barnacle SEO is going to become a hot trend (again) in 2014 and beyond since it allows you to aggressively move to rank sites while reducing your risk of penalization.

How Can You Boost the Rankings of Your Videos?

Above I mentioned that you could build a ton of spam links to your YouTube vides and get away with it. While this is true, I am not suggesting that you do it that way as future YouTube search algorithm changes may wipeout your videos. If you are bent on spamming a video on YouTube, fire up GSA Search Engine Ranker or a similar program and let it rip. If you prefer to take a more wholesome approach, here is what you need to do to rank your videos. I also want to mention that a number one ranking on YouTube for a keyword does not mean you will be the first video displayed in the Google SERPs and this is especially true when you rank on YouTube with a ton of spam links.

Title and Description Optimization

When you upload you video you will be asked to provide a title and description for your video. As with a web page, you video title should contain your primary keyword, preferably at the beginning. The description field is often underutilized to improve rankings. I suggest listing your website and phone number in the first line of the description so it will appear in the SERPs. You should then include a 300+ word unique description that contains your keywords and some LSI terms as well.

Geo Tag Your Video for Local Terms

If your target keyword is location based then adding a geo tag to your video can be beneficial. To do this simply visit the advanced settings on your video and enter your location in the “video location” field. Hit search and YouTube will fill the coordinates. Save your video and you are finished.

Get Real Viewers

Several people sell fake YouTube video views and while it will make your view counter increase, it does not offer value in improving how your video ranks. In addition to getting real views, you need people to watch over 50% of your video for maximum benefits. You can find some services that can provide you real views for a reasonable cost but you run the risk of getting you video banned if you choose a poor service and gain view too quickly.

Get Comments, Shares, and Likes

Engagement metrics send a cue to YouTube that your video is relevant to your target term and as such, they improve the rankings. While there is no set number needed to improve how your video ranks, these metrics are generally correlated with higher rankings. The exception is the videos with 10 billion spam links, which can rank without any views or engagement. As with views, you can as a last resort buy comments and shares for your videos but again, this is increasing the risk of getting your video banned.

Build Links to Your Video

Link building to your video is one of the easiest steps of ranking it. Several methods such as social bookmarking can still be used to rank videos. Since YouTube has such a large and diverse link profile, you are able to build links using almost any methods you can think off without worrying about getting penalized. Here are some methods to get you going.

1. Buy Guest Post Links on Fiverr
2. Do Follow Blog Comments
3. Forum Comments
4. Web 2.0 Micro Site Links
5. Tiered Link Building
6. Create an Educational Video and Conduct Outreach Link Building
7. Use the Video to Get Video Submission Links From Other Video Sites
8. Create an Infographic and Submit to all Sites that offer a do follow links.
9. Create an image and get image sharing links
10. Create an audio file and share on all do follow audio site
11. Get a radio interview from My Radio Guest and mention your video
12. Convert you video into a slideshow and submit to doc sharing sites
13. Create a list and submit to list curating sites
14. Outsource Link Building on a site like Elance
15. Breakout the software and blast away!

As with any marketing, you should consider how long you want a video to rank for, what impression your potential customers will have if they find your video, and what level of risk you are comfortable with. If you are trying to make a few quick bucks, automated link building software can help. If you are looking for sustainable and safe ways to rank a video, the other methods above are the way to do it.

I would love to hear any tips, questions, or comments you have below.