Video Hosting Service or YouTube?
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We are considering using a video hosting service like Vzaar or Wistia for our videos.
What are some of the SEO advantages of using a video hosting service rather than YouTube?
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Phil from Distilled weighed in on this question today in a different thread at www.seomoz.org/q/best-way-to-host-video; his answer might help you as well.
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Have you chosen a service yet? I don't have experience in this area, but SEOmoz does use Wistia and I've heard great things from the other staff members at Moz about Wistia. In an SEOmoz post about favorite tools, Jamie writes:
Wistia is video hosting on steroids. Not only does this video hosting platform support HTML5, which makes your videos viewable on a slew of non-Flash enabled devices, but the platform is inherently designed for SEO. Try searching Google for "Top 10 Web Apps We Love" and you'll likely see the above Wistia-hosted video that's included with this blog post. Their tracking and analytics are also the best we've seen in video hosting. See a sample report here.
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Why not host on both platforms?
I agree that internal hosting can be more custom not direct traffic away from your site once the clip is over.
Is their a way for the you tube videos to point towards your site?
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If I were wanted to get a video to appear in the SERP's then my predisposition would be to use Youtube against the other services and to optimise the data filed that you have control of.
I agree with what people have said about the perception of videos on Youtube vs services such as Vimeo, Wistia etc...
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Yes, good point. I forgot to mention that perception of your material might be different if users see that it's hosted on YouTube. Not saying better or worse - just different. Typically social and entertaining material seems to characterise Youtube more refined and artistic on Vimeo and specific on others (e.g. Howto videos).
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assuming you have the bandwidth i would say host your own and have full controll, both technicaly and for the reasons Dejan presented. i also think that using youtube looks a bit tacky.
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I agree with all of this, however I have yet to deal with a site that would benefit more from self-hosting than having a presence on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. In fact I've convinced clients to move their videos off their own sites, with good results. This may not be right for everyone, but for the majority it seems to be.
As far as direct SEO benefit goes, if your videos are optimized well they can show up directly on the SERPs. They're more likely to get the traffic and links they need for this on YouTube, etc.
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Hosting your own videos means less leak to outside channels and your own branding. Every hosted video platform has a way of getting users away from your site (ad, logo to youtube, related videos...etc). If you introduce your videos on Vimeo, Youtube and such they can provide a valuable stream of traffic and extra exposure much like eBay does for product sellers who also have an eCommerce store of their own. If the video goes truly viral however, the bills for hosted solutions could be hefty with some paid video hosting providers.
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