We’ve highlighted the SEO value in YouTube before, as the second largest search engine in the world, you are fool not to be featuring your brand, but it appears few people know about a YouTube feature that not only expands your reach but can also improve your SEO.

For every video uploaded you have probably optimised the description and Keywords fields but have you used every tool available?

YouTube has a helpful transcription facility designed to help you reach out to the hearing-impaired audience but which also acts a great SEO tool too. YouTube’s closed captioning service can literally put words to the pictures as they appear in the video.

The machine transcription system effectively works via voice recognition and actually is not one of the most accurate of its ilk but even the experts appear to have been stumped at creating total accuracy in this field. However, the automated processing can be easily overridden and edited, so spending a few extra minutes can make your transcription word perfect and the effort will bring a big boost to your organic search.

Here’s how to use the tool:

1. Upload and save your video to your YouTube channel

Remember to include an engaging headline, relevant keywords and a full description of what your video is about

2. Use YouTube’s Machine Transcription

Once your video uploads select it from your list of videos and click click the edit link. Next click on the Captions and Subtitles tab. You should now be presented with “Available Caption Tracks” with a checkbox beside “English: Machine Transcription”. Click the download button and let the system work it’s magic.

You may be presented with the following message “Machine Transcription is available for the videos in this Channel. To enable Machine Transcription for this video, please ‘Request Processing’. We will try our best to get some results in a few days.”. In which case click the “Request processing” button and allow the system time to try to carry out  the transcription.

3. Edit your transcription

Once you have transcription you can download the same and edit it in any text editor. You can amend any errors and typos and event arrange the correct words with the correct video sections. Be careful to ensure the time coding is kept intact and is accurate to the location of that text in the video. You will see the formatting is fairly logical but this is usually the part that creates problems for people.

4. Upload your captions

Once you are happy with the transcript simply upload it to the video under “Add a Caption Track”. Before you set the video live check the captions are in sync and correct by watching the video through. Click the cc symbol on the bottom right of the video screen to kick the captions in. If there are any errors you can easily correct any errors by repeating the process above. If it works send the video along with the captions live.

Now sit back and watch the traffic roll in. As well as providing vital subtitles to the hard of hearing your captions will now provide a transcript for search engines to trawl. It effectviely provides them with a complete catalogue of every word used in the video including any vital keywords. To add extra value download the completed transciption file and save it to your computer. On this version strip out the timecoding references and then use the text to create a blog article to support a page you might embed the video on.

Have you used YouTube captions to good effect?

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If you read our blog of yesterday you will know that we attended the very successful MumpreneurUK annual Conference and Awards over the weekend.

While we were there, we caught up with co-founder Laura Rigney and asked her what MumpreneurUK is all about, why mumpreneurs are overcoming the current economic crisis and what it takes to be a successful mumpreneur.

Don’t forget to check out the other videos on the 123-reg YouTube channel too.

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Regular readers might remember that we’ve mentioned Microsoft’s impressive new games controller, Kinect, before – and might even recall that we gave one away in last year’s Christmas competition.

If you haven’t run into it previously, Kinect differs from other games controllers in that you don’t actually need to hold anything to use it. Using a clever camera and sensor set up, Kinect follows your movements so you can control games with your whole body.

Not just for consoles

Kinect is an advanced piece of kit. And as it has a standard USB connector on the end, it was only a matter of time before someone worked out how to make it work with a standard computer. (The $3,000 bounty that one firm put up can’t have hurt either.)

So, the creation of open source drivers for the Kinect means that if you’re technically-minded, you can buy the kit for a little over £100, plug it in to your computer, then start playing. And that’s where things get really interesting.

The best Kinect hacks

Since those open source drivers were announced, enthusiastic geeks all over the world have been experimenting with Kinect. The results, at times, have been astonishing.

Remember Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film which featured an outlandish ‘wave your hands and it works’ computer interface you’d swear was years away? Well Kinect actually makes this a reality – just check out this video. The bottom of the film shows what Kinect sees – the top shows how the movements translate onto the screen:

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

That’s not all, of course. A quick poke around on YouTube reveals lots of other interesting, clever and quirky hacks. Take this New Scientist video – it includes an unusual glove puppet and a man wearing a virtual bra (well, we did say ‘quirky’):

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

If that’s not satisfied your curiosity, how about a virtual foot-operated piano, like in the classic Tom Hanks film ‘Big’? Or an air guitar, a light sabre, or some lights that you can control by waving your arms like the conductor of an orchestra?

Once you’ve seen a few of these hacks in action, you start to realise that Kinect could have an impact in all sorts of fields – not just gaming. And all the stuff we’ve mentioned here has happened in the few months since November, when Kinect launched.

We can’t wait to see what happens in the months ahead as people start to really push the capabilities of the device. And we wouldn’t be surprised to see Kinect – or its successor – popping up in offices as it proves itself a viable controller for ‘serious’ stuff as well as games.

Have you seen any Kinect hack used for business purposes yet? Let us know

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You’ve probably noticed that this is a particularly sport-filled June. Not only is the football in full-swing, but the annual strawberries-and-creamathon that is Wimbledon has opened its doors too.

Where there’s a big sporting event, you’ll usually find big technology. And Wimbledon has tech in spades. From Hawk-Eye‘s computerised assistance for close line calls to the 41 miles of cable the BBC installs, technology is key to the tournament’s success.

Get Wimbledon on your phone

As you might expect, the organisers of Wimbledon haven’t been slow to jump on the mobile phone bandwagon. Last year they released an application called IBM Seer that allowed people attending the tournament to point their phone’s camera at the match they were watching, and superimpose information onto the screen.

That could be anything from statistics about the players to the location of the nearest bar. Well, you can’t expect a Wimbledon-goer to manage without a glass of Pimms for long, right?

This year’s version takes things further. Apparently, if you’re wandering around the tennis club and hear cheering, you can see video of what’s going on by pointing your phone in the direction of the noise. And you can check queue sizes without leaving your seat.

This video shows the new Wimbledon app in action:

Many people seem to think this sort of augmented reality is the next big thing for mobile phones. And we have to admit, the way it combines what you’re seeing in the real world with information from the internet is pretty cool.

However, we do have two reservations:

• There isn’t much for people who don’t attend the tournament. Yet in our experience, when you’re actually there, watching an exciting sporting event, the last thing you want to do is keep your eyes on a small mobile phone screen.
• It’s going to need a good connection. As football fans will know, the crowds at big events can make it hard to even send and receive text messages, never mind get a connection to watch streaming video. That could make the app a serious source of frustration.

Still, we’ll reserve judgement till we’ve seen it in action.

The IBM Seer app is free. It’s available for iPhones and mobile phones running the Android operating system – you can find it by searching for “IBM Seer” in the iPhone app store or Android Marketplace.

If you’re off to Wimbledon and have a compatible phone, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear how well this works in practice.

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Previously, we looked at how to write good copy for the web. In the latest of our videos, I’ve ventured in front of the camera to give you a quick run-down on writing sales copy. That’s right: how to encourage people to buy from your online shop.

It’s not all about the hard sell: by being honest and offering genuine value to your customers, you can boost sales so you’re happy – and so are they.

Further information:

• We’ve got more advice on writing sales copy and other ways to improve your online shop.
• Copyblogger has a good rundown of the ten timeless persuasive writing techniques.

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Last week we grabbed the camera, balanced it on a chair (really) and filmed a couple more short videos for our series. If you haven’t caught them before, the idea is to give you an introduction to a subject.

In this one, Matt talks about how to build a horizontal navigation bar for your website using lists and CSS instead of tables. Take a look and please leave a comment to let us know what you think. There are some links to more information beneath the video too.

[Edit: Its been brought to my attention I am describing the <li> tag as a "line". <li> in fact means 'list item', oh well.... (Matt)]

The HTML described above:
Create a div area for your navigation and type in your content

<div id = "nav">
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>Store</li>
</ul>
</div>

In your CSS file create the rules for the “nav” div <li> tags

#nav li {
text-decoration: none;
display: inline;
margin: 5pt;
padding: 1pt;
text-align: center;
color; blue;
background-color: green;
}

#nav li a:hover {
background-color: red;
}
Read the rest of this entry »

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For the second in our series of videos, we’ve filmed a quick introduction to the basic elements the Google robot spiders when it arrives at a website.

Essentially, it explains how search engines find and index your website. Once you’ve watched the video, you can delve deeper with some further reading provided below.

Further reading

• Read about search engine ranking factors on SEOmoz
• Check out the searchenginewatch.com beginners’ guide

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Welcome to the first in a new regular series on our blog… video guides! We’ll try to keep them short and to the point, and more often than not, they’ll be an introduction to a topic providing top level information. The idea is to help get you started and give you some links to find more information about the subject.

The first video is our copywriter, John, providing some insight into writing effective web copy. Please take a quick look, and please do use the comments to let us know what you think. It’s the first time we’ve tried this, so it’s a bit of an experiment for us too!

Further reading:

• Jakob Nielsen has plenty of interesting information about how to write for the way people read online.
• Brian Clark’s Copyblogger blog and Bad Language both have lots of hints and tips.
• Information on web writing from About.com.

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