How to Increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a VO Talent: Part 1

This article is the first in a series of articles on increasing your SEO as a Voice Talent.  

If you are a working voiceover talent, you already know that there is so much more to the business than just having fun in the studio.  A considerable amount of time needs to be spent in developing, nurturing, and maintaining the business aspect of this creative and fun career. Naturally, one of the main goals of your business should be acquiring new business, as well as effectively maintaining existing customer and client relationships.  To grow your business successfully in today’s economy, a primary goal should be for you to establish an effective online presence.  This should include some,  or all forms of, the following:

• Website(s)
• Your Social Media presence(s)
• Blogging!

Pingdom released numbers about the Internet in 2010. Take a look at the HUGE Social Media stats below. If you think Social Media is a fad, you'd better think again! Here are some highlights:

The Internet

1.97 billion internet users worldwide

107 TRILLION emails were sent in 2010

There are 255 million websites

In Social Media

25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010

100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010

175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010

600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010

250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010

Videos

2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.

35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

186 – number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month.

2+ billion – The number of videos watched per month on Facebook.

20 million – Videos uploaded to Facebook per month.

I just read this recently that Lady Gaga is the first personality to have over 10 million Twitter followers!  Keep in mind with this type of audience, there is huge potential for you to grow your business!

So, What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the ability to have your website, and not just your website really – it could be your name, your brand, any affiliation or interaction that you have had on the web, show up at the top or within the first page of an Internet search.  In order to better understand SEO and implement it effectively as a voice talent, it is prudent to first understand some basic key principles of search engines and search concepts in general.

Image from theword.co.uk

To start, let's take a look at the current Search Engine market share.  As you can see on the diagram on the left, Google has the largest market share of all of the search engines.  Not really surprising huh? J I know that I use Google pretty much exclusively when it comes to searching for things, unless of course some application has installed the Yahoo toolbar (Internet Explorer) or Bing (my mobile phone) – these applications tend to install their search engine as a default.  For the purposes of this blog, I will be showing you examples with Google search, but just know that the process of SEO affects all search engines, each of them having their own unique way of mining all of that available data on the Internet.

Let's Google Search for “Voice talent”

If you were to go to Google and enter the fairly broad search term of “Voice Talent”, you’ll probably get close to a mere 12 million matches, or search results.   Now at first that might seem alarming, and you might think that that means that there are 12 million voice talents out there.  Well, not to worry, what that really means is that in terms of Google’s database, there are that many matches for those particular words.   When searching, you need to think about how the page you are looking for will be written. A search engine is not a human, it is a program that matches the words you give to pages on the web. Use the words that are most likely to appear on the page.

Google search for "Voice talent"

When you look at the results page in Google, you can see that at the top of the page, highlighted in yellow, are the sponsored ads – If you have used Google for a long time, you’ll notice that this is different than how it used to be.  They used to look a lot more like actual ads – now Google’s strategy is to have them look similar to the “organic” , or “un-paid” results, which are the ones that you see directly below the box in yellow.  Now of course this strategy is to get more of those sponsored ads to be clicked on because there is revenue in that.  However, only about 20% of those ads are ever clicked on, so everyone’s dream is to be at the top of the list of the organic search since there is no fee involved.  A couple of things about the results page that you should note: 

• Location – If you have a Google account and have filled out a profile that indicates your location,  Google will show relevant local matches for your search terms.  You would really notice this if you use a generic search term such as “restaurant”.  Google will display matches for restaurants in your local area first, as well as display a map with locations on the right hand side of the results page. If you do not have a  Google profile, Google uses their self proclaimed  "location detection" technology, which automatically sets a location for you based on your IP address.
• You may have noticed that lately Google has been including results from Social Media - such a Twitter and Facebook posts.  This is a recent test deployed by Google to improve their search engine.  Presumably, you will see more integration with Social Media in the future that will enhance user searches even more based on your social circle. 

In the world of SEO, Searches are defined and classified into three categories:

• Organic Search – This is a natural, or "unpaid " search, and results can be Local,  Regional, or National
• Local Search – This is a search which is based on a local city or town.  This is becoming increasingly popular with SEO companies who help you to optimize your pages.  It has been shown that business owners who include local search engine optimization advertising as portion of their over-all marketing and advertising program will see a great improvement in their levels of success. There are some wonderful benefits that you can gain from concentrating on local advertising, and it is rapidly becoming a well-known strategy of generating cash online
• Sponsored or Pay-Per-Click – This can be a local, regional, or national search.  Statistically only 20% of people click on the paid advertisements – the other 80% use the “Organic” search.

Let's get Local 

Google search for "Voice talent Orange County"

Let’s add a more localized perspective to our Google search and add "Orange County" to our original search term of "Voice Talent".

Here you will see that we have less results than our previous search - only about 887,000 results !  Notice that my VO website appears on the first search page for this type of search.  My underlying strategy is that by localizing my SEO, I will increase my business by capturing the attention of local clients who might want to work with me in their studio!  One of the main reasons I was attracted to Orange County was the fact that there are over 400 production companies based in the area. When I moved here, I decided that a good strategy would be to become friends with each and every of them!   J One of the ways to employ this strategy, outside of face to face networking was to build local marketing into my online presence.  Even if you live in an area that doesn’t have 400 production studios, you can still benefit from a connection with the one production studio, or advertising agency, large company, etc. that wants to have local access to you!

Let's get even more local...

Google search for "Voice talent Irvine"

Let's narrow our search even more and include my local town of Irvine.  Again, you will notice that my website shows up at the top of the first page.  I recently received a request for a quote off of my website just the other day from a local insurance company wanting me to be the voice for their phone system.  When I called them, they explained that they wanted someone to actually come on site to do their recording.   They hired me for the gig based on the fact that I was local talent - they also saved on travel costs!  A great example of how advertising locally can be important for you.

Google Search Options

Google also is now incorporating more and more specific categories for you to search on the left hand side of the page:  Let's try a video search for videos that contain the key words “narrative voice talent” – notice that this is a more general search term, and not localized. 

I am a big believer that a standard procedure for all voice talent when they complete a job is to request a copy of the final product as well as a testimonial.  These are great additions to your portfolios, as well as valuable marketing items for your business that you can use to advertise on your web site.  I find that many clients are more than happy to supply you with the finished product if they can, as long as they have access to it, or are not under any non disclosure agreements.  A lot of times, if a video is produced for a company website, and it becomes public, you can certainly ask them for permission to link to it.  You can then take all of your demo videos and set up your own You Tube channel, where you can specify tags and a description for each upload.

Google video search for "narrative voice talent"

You'll notice that one of my videos shows up at the top of the search page for "narrative voice talent"  These are key words that are placed in the video description and tag fields for each upload in my youtube account.  Since Google owns youtube,  doesn't it just make sense it to take advantage of this and optimize your descriptions and tags? 

In my next article, we'll will talk about the essential elements that are critical for your website SEO optimization, including keywords, site structure, Web Page Strategies, and more!  Many thanks to my good friend and colleague Dennis Backer for his amazing knowledge and generosity in helping me to improve my own SEO.  Thanks so much for looking and please feel free to add your comments and suggestions below!  

Best Wishes and Much Success,

Anne

About the Author:   Anne Ganguzza has an undeniable passion for all things voice-over and especially enjoys sharing her knowledge with others. This led her to a full time career in voiceover and inspired her to form the local meetup group for voice over artists affectionately known as the Orange County VO Peeps.  She  is a current member of  the Media Communications Association-international (MCA-I.), the LA/Orange County chapter of Media Communications Association-international, and was most recently elected to the Board of Directors for the Media Alliance of Orange County.  She is also a current member of the Society of Accredited Voice Over Artists.

As a voice over artist, her voice is described as professional, believable, warm, and friendly. Her experience includes voices for corporate narration, E-learning, IVR/On Hold Systems, commercials, infomercials, Audio Books, Live Theatre Broadcasts, and Government/Educational promotional videos and advertising.   For more information, please visit Anne on her website at http://www.annespeak.com/