What's the best way to host video for SEO purposes?
-
Hello SEOmoz folks,
I'm curious as to whether it will be more beneficial for a website to host a video on the site itself or to host it on YouTube and then embed the code on your site.
The options so far, as it seems, are:
1.) Host the video on YouTube or Vimeo or wherever else, then embed the YouTube code into your own website's HTML.
2.) Host the video on your own website by itself.
3.) Host the video on your own website AND YouTube AND Vimeo.
I'm wondering which option is best. And if hosting your video on your own website is a good way to go, whether to go that route solely or in addition to hosting on YouTube, what is the best way to go about that? Do I have to embed a player AND the video info into the HTML of my website? What player is best for this? Flash, or something else?
And once I get the video on my site one way or the other, how do I write the code to make sure the video thumbnail shows up next to my search results in Google to maximize the SEO potential for the video clip?
Sorry for the long question, but I've been searching everywhere for this and I'd love just a direct answer on it. Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
Dani
-
Don't put product videos on YouTube, Vimeo or anywhere public outside of your domain. Commercial content like that inevitably does poorly on YouTube and the negative user engagement metrics will then just suggest to Google that the content isn't high quality and it wont rank anywhere. Moreover, product videos are only really valuable if they're viewed in the context of the product - where users have a clear funnel for conversion.
I would securely host them with a third party platform and then aim to get rankings and rich snippets. While you can mark YouTube videos as "unlisted" in order to stop them being public, the content then won't rank.
-
Here's the post i've just published on the topic - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo
Please have a read through, as it will add a bit more clarity to the benefits of each option. Your summary is great Kane.
-
Hi Guys,
I'm actually writing a post on this very topic at the moment, which is due to be posted tomorrow on the main SEOmoz blog post. Hopefully that will answer most of the questions you have and we can continue the discussion in the comments if you have any further queries or points.
Cheers,
Phil
-
Sorry, I was referring to regular Vimeo, not Vimeo Pro. I believe you are correct that Vimeo Pro can be set up to act as a file host, and the video can be associated with your site.
Another good article that discusses Vimeo Pro specifically, but worth reading for video hosting concerns in general:
http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/getting-video-results-in-google/
-
I am suddenly confused. I thought Vimeo was recognized as being on the imbedded website (unlike Youtube). You are stating that it is treated the same as Youtube. This sounds like Wistia is the only good choice for SEO.
-
If you're going to have that many videos, I would say hands down to pay the money and go with Wistia.
Having those videos rank in search results for the product name and take people straight to your product page is invaluable.
I should clarify that those Wistia videos appear as if they are hosted on your website - not sure if that was clear.
-
dont host the video on your webserver... that will make stuff waaaaaaay slow!
-
That's a great article, thanks a million for the referral!
The only thing that didn't get mentioned in that answer (and maybe I should have clarified this detail better in my question) - is what is the best tactic for product videos for ecommerce sites?
It seems that commercials are better off when hosted on YouTube or Vimeo or Wistia then embedded in the website. Makes sense.
But I imagine product videos would be different...any insights?
-
I like option one the best. Make sure you optimize the title and description of the video, and link to the video on youtube accordingly. With facebook I like to upload it separately to cover more ground.
-
Phil Nottingham has a great response to a similar question that you should read here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/best-way-to-host-video
Also check out his article on Distilled's site with a great walk through on how to get the video to appear for your site in SERPs: http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/getting-video-results-in-google/
The short answer is that the best option (if you can afford the monthly fee) is to use a service like Wistia. They will assist you with the video sitemaps and any integrations necessary to get the video snippets that you mentioned.
If you don't have the monthly budget, then it's probably best to use Youtube or Vimeo, depending on the type of content. Adding it to your site would be a matter of using the embed code.
The downside to Youtube or Vimeo is that the video isn't recognized as content on your site, so you lose that value. The upside is that you have the opportunity to get in front of Youtube's large audience and get more views than you might have on your own.
I would not host the video yourself. The video will always load faster through one of the established video providers.
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
-
Video Testimonials Vs Text Testimonials
If I place video testimonials as embedded youtube iframes into my webpage - will it improve my visitor retention rate for that page?
Image & Video Optimization | | Lana9401 -
Video page duplicates (that aren't really duplicates)
Hi. My company has a 1000 videos, each of the videos appear on their own page that follows the same template. The title is of course different / videos linked to / etc. Google is reporting them as "duplicate content". What should I do to differentiate these pages enough so that google can recognized that they are different pages?.
Image & Video Optimization | | adamorn0 -
How to embed a video in our product image
Hi We use bigcommerce and want to add a video to each product . We want to add a video link in the corner of the product image and have the video play when this tab is clicked. Can anyone tell us how to do this Regards
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Youtube vs Vimeo for better SEO
Hi i am starting to make some videos for my company like a tutorials for our products and i have some questions! What low budget service to choose for video hosting to have the best results for seo? I start with youtube because is google friendly but the ads are very big problem for me! Then i had start to thing about Vimeo but I am worried if my videos gone lost from search results! What you thing about it?
Image & Video Optimization | | petrospan0 -
Videos not displaying within YouTube search results (query starting with '@' symbol)
We recently uploaded a video to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah0CgZ22NNU) only to realize that it wasn't being displayed within YouTube's internal search results when searched for by the brand name. Our partner's brand name is @WashULaw. If you were to search for @WashULaw on YouTube, you'll notice it returns a 'No Search Results' page (http://screencast.com/t/ZP3SGM5sr). However, when you search for keywords without the @ symbol (i.e. washulaw, wash u law, etc) within YouTube, our video is discovered. However, if you enter the @ symbol within their search bar and choose one of the auto-suggest keywords, you'll notice the query returns video matches (http://screencast.com/t/wkghMhRY). Looking at the view counts of these videos, they appear to be over 100K each. Our video has been indexed by YouTube (http://screencast.com/t/6xV3kW2DHQ6R) and Google (http://screencast.com/t/r4jloA0BpPf). We've even added @WashuLaw as a tag. My question, does anyone have an idea as to why our video isn't displaying when someone searches for our brand @WashULaw with the @ symbol within YouTube's search? ZP3SGM5sr
Image & Video Optimization | | 2uinc0 -
Youtube Channel, Video SEO
I am providing some SEO consulting for a friend's company. They are an Investment Research and Portfolio Management firm. They started a blog about a year ago with most of their posts being short Youtube videos between 3 to 10 minutes in length, providing their take on what is going on in with the markets at the moment. Additionally, they've created a youtube channel which has a little over 1,500 subscribers. The videos do fairly decent getting between 1,500 to 20,000 views (the later happens when a big financial blog links to them) but they are not taking full advantage of this great content in my opinion i.e hosting videos with a 3rd party like Wistia. I think they should begin using Wistia or Vimeo Pro to maximize the SEO benefits as well as gather analytics about views. Then after they've milked them all they can put them on their youtube channel and target them for different keywords. My question is, should they go back and switch out the videos on the old posts with videos hosted by a 3rd party, submit sitemaps, etc. or should they just leave them the way they are and only host new videos with a 3rd party? I think they should switch out the old youtube videos but am not sure if this could cause any negative repercussions.
Image & Video Optimization | | TVI0 -
How Do I Know My Videos Are Indexed?
Hey Mozzers, Ive followed a few tutorials around the web and created a video sitemap and submitted it to GWT. The results were that 7 videos submitted and only 1 indexed. I cant view this information any deeply. However, if I go to videos.googlecom and conduct a site:domain.com, I can actually see that all 7 of my videos appear as results. If I then go back to universal search and search for the exact match title of the video along with site:domain.com, the page appear perfectly but without the Video thumbnail. Are my videos indexed? If yes, why are my thumbnails not showing? Thanks in advance.
Image & Video Optimization | | LukeyJamo0 -
CTR of Video Rich Snippet vs. Normal SERP
Hi there, We were ranking no. 1 for one of our key terms for a long time, however a competitor of ours by the looks of it purchased a load of private blog network links and managed to shift above us. The page we rank for on that term has a video with the markup to trigger a video box rich snippet (which i've noticed never seems to be given on position 1 but can be for 2 and below) - so that is now what our entry in the SERPs is. Since then we have actually dropped down to 3rd, with the web page now being in 2nd not having any new links / content in a very long time. Therefore I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about whether the video box could actually reduce CTR which could have resulted in us dropping down to 3rd ? The meta description text seems to be reduced to 100 characters with the vid box, so we're not getting our full message across where the others in the results are. My natural assumption would be that the video box would gain a higher CTR, but i'm thinking this may not be the case for us. Does anyone know of any data relating to the video box in the SERPS ? Many thanks, Stuart MtsbA.jpg
Image & Video Optimization | | stukerr0