Best way to host video?
-
Hi,
We are planning to host videos on our site for the first time. It looks like YouTube is a bit too over focused on ads these days for commercial use, can anyone recommend any better video hosting services?
I also realize that hosting somewhere like YouTube has little SEO benefit, am I better off hosting them on our site if possible?
Please share your experiences with the various services and methods of hosting.
Thanks
-
I think meaning that it may not endorse different films after your video has completed playing. You will possibly nevertheless have all the ads shooting up during the video though which is not ideal. like you can see here on the amazon gift card website.
-
Update from April 2012 -but the content in this post stands http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo
-
Interesting, any update for June 2012? Just about to do this.
-
No problem Keri!
-
Thanks for the great answer Phil! It'll serve as a great reference answer. We've had several questions come through along these lines over the past few months.
-
Thanks Robert, Glad you found it useful!
If you want a bit more detail on some video stuff, I have written a couple of longer posts around the topic:
http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/youtube/creating-awesome-videos-for-seo/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-stuff-done-by-video
and Dave Sottimano put together a good guide for YouTube optimisation earlier in the year:
http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/youtube/youtube-seo/
Hopefully they might help your endeavours too.
-
Phil,
This is one of the most concise, well written docs on video streaming and the Internet I have seen. Frankly, I am sending it to several of my staff and I will re-read it several times as well. On the ads, the problem is not that they are there - it is that many clients freak out when they see a competitor show up at the end when they have placed the YouTube feed on their site to run their commercial. Frankly, If not for that, we would do more with it and some clients when informed ahead of time have no problem.
Thanks for a well written answer that went above and beyond.
Robert
-
Great, thanks Phil
-
No, it's actually the other way around. Check out http://www.youtube.com/distilledseo to see what i've done with Distilled's channel.
If you go into your YouTube account settings page http://www.youtube.com/account_manage then scroll down, there is an option to "allow adverts" or "do not allow adverts". choosing the second option will prevent pop-ups and other adsThe pop-ups are essentially PPC ads and only appear for accounts which have high enough views to be offered monetization. YouTube default settings do not have pop-up ads, you have to explicitly allow them.
-
I think that means that it won't recommend other videos after your video has finished playing. You will probably still have all the ads popping up during the video though which is not ideal.
-
Vimeo offer a great service, but be aware that the original focus of vimeo was a creative content, rather than a commercial service and so they don't allow you to upload anything blatantly commercial or marketing focussed unless you pay for the pro package, which is a relatively inexpensive $199 per year. If you have something nicely designed and artistic though (even if it is a bit commercial in nature), you may get away with it.
I wouldn't be so down on YouTube because of the ads. Its very easy to embed YouTube videos on your site, the content is mobile friendly and you can choose whether or not to allow adverts on any of your videos. Plus, YouTube gets indexed very quickly and you can optimise your content for search within the platform to achieve greater overall exposure. YouTube also has very smart variable bit-rate progressive encoding, so the service is excellent if you have very high-definition content but want people to be able to watch it without spending any time buffering on low bandwidth connections. The main downside to YouTube is it's security and that ads for other videos will come up in the embedded player on your site after your video has finished playing.
If you want to maintain a fully branded and corporate feel or secure you video from privacy, services like Wistia, Brightcove and Vzaar are all very good and simple to use, though will charge you for hosting based on bandwidth use. Wistia is particularly good because it submits sitemaps on your behalf which can aid you in getting blended results for your videos.
Alternatively, if you have the time and resources, then you could build your own HTML5 player and host the content on your own servers or through a cloud system like Amazon Web Services. There are some plugins and free apps which claim to assist with this, but i haven't tried any of them out.
The question which will ultimately define the answer to your initial query is "What am I trying to achieve with this video?" If you just want pure exposure, then i would host it on YouTube, embed the content on your site, submit a sitemap and optimise both the YouTube page and the page on your site for the same target keyword. If you want something to simply enrich your own website, but lock down the content to ensure any video views happen on your own site (which is what you want to do if your focus is link-building and referrals) then i would pay out the money for a service like Brightcove or Wistia.
-
I was looking at a youtube account. When video is embedded, options exist to not show display related video options at the end of the video. This seems to imply that you can have youtube videos on a website without ads. Am I seeing something wrong?
-
I am looking for this solution as well. Looking at Wistia right now. Not sure how it compares to the other options.
-
If you use Vimeo, you may still want to put videos on Youtube. This will get you increased exposure through Youtube when viewers look at competitors videos.
-
Another vote for Vimeo, its fast to load videos and really easy to use.
-
Both Vimeo and Viddler are good options. Each have pro/cons depending on your needs. Most times I lean towards Vimeo, I think their user experience is easier and their organization of content is nicer.
-
We use Vimeo for many of our clients with local business due to the ads that follow on YouTube. To our local business clients, when they have a video piece on the site and it ends and the option is there to pick a video from their competitor......well, it is not a good option usually.
If we are not as concerned with the ads that trail using the YouTube feed, we will go ahead with the it but let the client make the choice.Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO for Videos and Infographics
Hi Mozers, When optimizing videos and infographics does it helps to put the word "video" or "infographic" in the browser title and H1? Any guidance is much appreciated! Yael
Image & Video Optimization | | yaelslater0 -
Benefits of a video sitemap
Hello, Is one of the biggest benefits of a video sitemap that in the search results you will see your video with a link to the website where it is found rather than a link to YouTube? i.e. if the video is hosted on YouTube and embedded in your website, the link in the search results will be to the web page described in the video sitemap? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | AL123al0 -
Integrate video - only thumbnail?
Hi! If I integrate a video to my website (vimeo or youtube) the pagespeed slows down. Now I integrate my video in wordpress with special plugins. These plugins shows only the thumbnail, only if the user clicks on these thumbnail, the video is loading. So is my pagespeed perfect ... .. buuut now my question: Google loves tables, images, video ... Sees google these thumbnail still as a video or now only as a image? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | Operi0 -
Any Free Video Analytics Tools?
Hi, we are looking for some free video analytics tools. We want to be able to provide our clients or prospective client some stats on how much reach (views, distribution, sites appearing on, etc.) their videos have. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Image & Video Optimization | | JohnWeb120 -
Video SEO, should I do what Roger does?
As per http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo I want to rank with a rich snippet and improve my domain's overall ranking. So I am going to ignore YouTube and use Vimeo Pro (using old embed code). I will also submit a video XML sitemap and implement schema markup. Gotcha. Now let's check this strategy with what SEOmoz is doing. Let's take 5 Steps to Facebook Advertising - Whiteboard Friday it was uploaded onto the SEOmoz blog on 29 March 2013. Then on 4 April 2013 it was uploaded onto YouTube. As at 7 April 2013 (PST) I am not seeing the latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday Evolution of the Local Algorithm - Whiteboard Friday posted on YouTube. SEOmoz blog has a person written transcription, YouTube has an automatic transcript. There is a link to the SEOmoz comments below the YouTube Video. Cricky! They've gone all YouTube. Stop the boat. Or should I? My assumption is that SEOmoz is big enough so that it is willing to risk losing a few links to their YouTube webpages. Indeed they delay posting the video on YouTube for a week after it has been posted on the SEOmoz blog. What's more it ensures that there is a very good transcript on their blog. Top that off with comments (and I assume video sitemap and schema) and it is happy it will gain more from the traffic generated from the YouTube community than the potential loss of links to its domain, forgoing potential domain authority increases and resulting traffic. So Roger, I'm a little boat not a SEOmoz battleship cruiser, should I do what you do and wait for a week before I put my videos on YouTube? Or avoid the dangerous currents of YouTube stealing my domain authority and ignore YouTube all together?
Image & Video Optimization | | BruceMcG0 -
Video and SERP
Hi, 3 weeks ago I uploaded a video to my page using wistia. Does anyone know how long google needs to get the video _snippet _in SERP? Thanks!!! video-snippet.jpg
Image & Video Optimization | | petrospan0 -
What's the best practice for submitting to YouTube?
Hi all, I'm looking to start having video on my website and have chosen YouTube to host. But what I am asking is "what is the best practice for submitting a video to YouTube". I would have thought that having a transcript would be good, as this will explain what is in the video, a good title to indicate the subject and then just a few keywords/tags for what I believe the audience would be searching for to find my video. Is this the best practice? Or am I totally wrong? Any help would be appreciated
Image & Video Optimization | | SeanLade0 -
What are the best practices for Google Places for a manufacturer?
A manufacturing client has distributors around the world. Can I add these distributors to my client's Google Places account through the bulk upload feature? Is there a better way to ensure that people searching in the company's various territories see a Google Places entry for the appropriate distributor?
Image & Video Optimization | | joshfialkoff-778630