Youtube, Video SEO, & my site
-
For our business we are building a collection of videos ranging including product info, how-to's, and some funny content. My understanding is that if you embed these onto my site from youtube you don't get any credit for these videos on the web site even if submitting a video sitemap.
My thinking is to post these videos to youtube and to host them on our own site and submit a video sitemap including the videos on our site. We would change the name, description, etc. on youtube vs. what's o our web site.
Question is - is this the best strategy? Do I get penalized for duplicate content? They are important for both the social aspects of youtube and the content vaue of our web site.
-
That sounds like a nice idea and will work nicely for users - you'll just need to consider whether you would rather the YouTube videos or the pages on your site rank for the targeted keywords and optimise everything accordingly. There aren't any duplicate content risks there.
-
What I meant by "getting credit" is that we are producing these videos and I would like them to be seen as part of the content of my site. On the site, these videos would typically be on a "tips" page with some surrounding text, etc. On youtube, they obviously are a video placed on my youtube channel. The goal on the web site is to build a rich collection of tips and information that would be of value to our customers. On youtube, the videos alone would be of value and could be socialized, etc, with a site overlay.
-
Hey,
So, the situation is relatively convoluted and there isn't an absolute right answer to what best practice will be, but hopefully I can offer you some useful advice.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "credit" regarding YouTube videos but I assume you mean rich snippets? In this case, it is indeed true that Google don't often give out video rich snippets for embedded YouTube videos, but instead normally just provide a video result that links to the main YouTube domain - however, within the last couple of weeks they have visibly begun to occasionally offer some more rich snippets for embedded YT videos, but only for high authority blogs and where the blog provides a great deal of supporting content.
That said, you should still summit a video sitemap for any embed YT videos you put up, as you are giving google good metadata about your site that helps them to crawl it better. While you may not get the rich snippet, that does not nullify the value of the sitemap.
I'm not quite sure whether in your proposal you plan to host the versions of the videos on your own site with a third party or with YouTube? If it's the latter and you're simply proposing that the metadata on your page focus's on different terms than the YT video itself, then I would advice against it. In this instance, you almost certainly won't get a rich snippet, as in Googles eyes the embedded video will be broadlyl irrelevant to the focus of the rest of the page. However, having versions on your site hosted with a third party i.e wistia (or self hosted) and then uploading the content to YouTube, essentially as a duplicate, but targeting a different term - this can work. Whether its a good idea or not really depends on the content itself and the audience base the site has.
Another point to recommend is that you should never put promotional or commercially focused content on YouTube - always host that yourself or with a secure third party solution. The user engagement metrics on YouTube are critical in determining whether you will rank both on YT and on Google and if the videos appear algorithmically uninteresting - then your rankings will suffer. Only put content on YouTube that users who find the videos through searching on YouTube will want to watch. How-tos and funny content are great, but stay clear of product information or blatant advertising (unless you are doing PPC YouTube advertising).
Hope that's useful, let me know if you have further questions.
Phil.
Written on my iPad, on a train, so sorry for any typos!
-
I highly doubt you'll get popped for duplicate content because content is going to be on "your" site and the other content is going to be on "youtubes" site. if you are looking to get traffic from YouTube and that's your marketing strategy, that's fine. If not, then sign up for Vimeo Pro: http://vimeo.com/pro
SeoMoz uses Wisita, but I think it's too much.
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
-
Will amp be effective in 2022?
Will AMP be effective in 2022? I am thinking of using AMP on my website since Core Web Vitals has become a ranking factor. For mobile devices, I guess AMP would be a good option to align with the Core Web Vital update.
Algorithm Updates | | Yash20020 -
Does Coverage impact on SEO
Does the coverage issues on google search console ( Google Webmaster) has an impact on SEO ( CTR or impressions). How much of a difference or impact will fixing these have on Search results and average
Algorithm Updates | | Rishardg0 -
How should the Heading Tags be used in Blogs to gain the Best results in SEO?
There are various Heading Tags from H1 to H6. In what order and priority should they be used in order to get best reach and ranking in google. Is every Tag a must in a blog?
Algorithm Updates | | sne79790 -
SEO Benchmarks for Healthcare Vertical
Hey All, I have a healthcare client that is particularly interested in benchmarking their organic traffic and other organic KPIs against the industry as a whole. Does anyone know of any great resources that show SEO benchmarks broken out by vertical? Thank you! Rachael
Algorithm Updates | | FullMedia901 -
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
When Google is going to penalise webpages with autoplaying videos?
Hi, One of the most disgusting experiences while browsing web pages is the auto playing anonymous and highly non relevant ad videos at some corner of the page which buffer mostly and automatically plays. There are familiar websites which been following this activity. I don't think Google has ever rolled out an update to penalise these. Any idea why? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
SinglePlatform's Restaurant Menu Across Web Properties vs "SEO-Optimized"
Surprised I wasn't able to find an existing answer given that SinglePlatform apparently serves 500,000 SMBs with menus that appear on over 150 publisher websites. Given Panda's razor-sharp intolerance for duplicate content, am I safe to assume that any claim of SinglePlatform's menu on a local restaurant being beneficial to your SEO is now spurious? If so, what's best way to handle this as a potential SEO liability while still having one of their nicely formatted restaurant menus on your site? For reference: http://www.openforum.com/articles/using-singleplatform-to-build-a-digital-presence Update May 7, 2012 Connected directly with the folks at SinglePlatform, and the answer here is a lot simpler than my over-thinking of it. The menu usually sits within an iFrame or widget so that's that. But the ability to truthfully show an up-to-date menu for any given establishment is a legit way to address the healthy amount of local search intent that seems to be directed at exactly that. Overall a pretty slick platform, looking forward to seeing how they grow into the SMB, local & mobile in the coming months, I think the space is ripe to benefit from products/services that take advantage of these sorts of economies of scale.
Algorithm Updates | | mgalica0 -
Negative SEO?
I have a large content site that's 8-9 yrs old, a PR4, DA of 66, and has many thousands of backlinks. It has ranked well for it's primary keywords for quite some time. This morning I noticed rankings dropped significantly. My #2 keyword went from 1 to 150. I started trying to figure out what was up and when I signed into GWT I had the notice from Google on 2/25 that they noticed un-natural linking tactics. Hmm....weird...I dont use un-natural linking methods. So I pulled open a couple back link analyzing tools and when looking at Majestic SEO I noticed that about mid February I had a spike of about 2500-3000 links coming from roughly 350 unique domains. Hmm..weird..We hadn't been doing any major content marketing or link building during that time or for probably a month to month and half before that. Upon analyzing some of those links it appears that a vast majority of them are from some type of blog network. Not sure which but you know the kind I'm talking about. ALN or something similar. What appears to have happened is someone pointed a bunch of spammy links at my site and this has caused Google to penalize me. I know this isn't suppose to be possible but just recently on a forum I visit I noticed a thread where someone was able to successfully do this to his competitor who has held the number one spot for over a year. He used the same technique of a couple hundred blog network links with varied anchor text and his competitor dropped about a hundred spots. So curious if anyone else has seen this or has any advice on my next step. I have filed a re-inclusion request and outlined what I think happened. I am also attempting to figure out which blog network it is so that I can request they remove those links but if I can't I'm not sure what I should do next.
Algorithm Updates | | jmacek070