Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Posting same video on both Vimeo and Youtube
-
A client likes the control of Vimeo Pro for embedding videos on site, but for search purposes would like to create a YouTube channel with the same videos, perhaps with altered titles and descriptions.
This is the same video content in two places - will we run into duplicate content issues?
Thank you,
Stephen
-
Thank you for posting here! We heard your response at Moz and considered the matter settled.
-
I disagree with your assessment and advice here.
Through vimeo pro (which isn't the same as vimeo - confusing, i know) you can get your own site to rank rather than YouTube.com or Vimeo.com, which would likely be the preferable option here. Linking them together then becomes a bad idea - since it makes little sense for users.
Additionally, Google won't rank whichever it thinks is the original, as it has no mechanism to work out whether videos hosted on different platforms are the same thing. In such situations, Google actually rank whichever page is stronger and more relevant - which, for any site with a fairly weak domain - is normally the YouTube.com version.
-
That's not actually true Martin.
YouTube very very rarely drives much traffic back to your site. If you want traffic to your site, you're much better off securely hosting the content and driving traffic from Google with rich snippets - rather than forcing users to go to YouTube and then from there navigate to your site.
-
Hi Stephen,
I'd advise you to think of this approach as akin to posting a blog post on your own site and then also posting it on someone else's site as a guest blog post with an adjusted Title and meta description.
It's not going to get you "penalised" for duplicate content as such, but It's hardly a great strategy in the majority of cases - as it will force you to cannibalise possible traffic and link equity across the locations.
First of all, I'd really question why your client wants to do this. If they think that somehow they have to have content on YouTube as it represents a potential traffic source - I'd definitely be keen to point out (in spite of what others have said in answer to your question) that click through rate from YouTube videos back to websites in links and annotations is extremely low. It's very hard to drive any significant amount of traffic from YouTube except through putting videos out at extreme scale (more details here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube)
Secondly - I'd suggest asking yourself whether the content in question is really appropriate for a YouTube audience anyway? Do the videos hold their value outside of your clients domain? Is there any search volume on YouTube (use the YouTube keyword tool) for the keywords you're going to be targeting?
If you do want to go down the YouTube + securely hosted route for the same content, then I've detailed the exact technical approach required here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo (approach 4) but bear in mind that it's extremely rare to have content stylistically appropriate for both securely hosting on your site with a paid hosting solution (so you get traffic) and seeding on YouTube (so you can build brand awareness through that community). If the videos in question are commercial or product focused, I can basically all but guarantee they won't be worth putting on YouTube and they'll potentially outrank your clients site while diluting the overall traffic to the site itself.
So... in short, it's not a problem if you have the right kind of content - but 9 times out of 10 it's not a particularly smart strategy.
I hope that's useful!
Cheers,
Phil.
-
use vimeo as default and Youtube for top3 videos. Youtube will increase trafic for the site and your site will use vimeo best quality videos
-
I would also have a look at Rich Snippets, that way the one you intend to trying to rank can be displayed in the results as you would like
We have used them for lots of videos for clients and got great success optimisting the results we are looking for
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162163&topic=1088474&ctx=topic
-
You should be completely fine. If for some reason there is a duplicate content issue, Google will just show whichever it thinks is the original video. Giving them different titles and descriptions should also help to differentiate them.
Since you are hoping to take advantage of search for your videos, it will be helpful to link from one of your videos to the other. I'd suggest putting a link on the Vimeo (on the Vimeo site) version pointing to the YouTube version, since that is the one you are hoping to rank.
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
-
Embedding Video for SEO? YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia?
I believe Vimeo has the advantages of being able to embed your video on your website without advertising and the ability to brand the player with your company name. Can't do that with YouTube. However obviously Google give a bit more weight to YouTube videos in search results. But I'm talking about ranking the website, not the video. If the objective is to provide the biggest boost to the website's ranking (not the individual video), is it best to embed the YouTube video or can you post the video on both YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia and embed the Vimeo or Wistia video? My gut feeling is that Google would see the direct linkage between the video on YouTube and the website it's embedded on and potentially that would have (albeit probably small) more benefit in the website's ranking than embedding the Vimeo or Wistia video? HOWEVER, re the SEO claims on this Wistia page true? Would the best strategy be to use Wistia for embedding and then also post the videos on a YouTube channel for maximum exposure? From Wistia: _Vimeo, like YouTube, is a powerful domain for SEO, but when you host your videos on these platforms, you are not doing your website's SEO a favor. When you upload your video to Vimeo or YouTube, the search engines are indexing the original url, not your website's. In contrast, when you embed a Wistia video on your website, your website gains all of the SEO benefits. Vimeo videos are ranked to drive traffic to Vimeo to keep users on their platform. Wistia videos drive traffic to your website—not ours._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jazee1 -
Lazy Loading of Blog Posts and Crawl Depths
Hi Moz Fans, We are looking at our blog and improving the content as much as we can for SEO purposes, but we have hit a bit of a blank in terms of lazy loading implications and issues with crawl depths. We introduced lazy loading onto the blog home page to increase site speed initially and it works well with infinite scroll, but we were wondering whether this would cause any issues regarding SEO. A lot of the resources online seem to be conflicting and some are very outdated, so some clarification on what is best in terms of lazy loading and crawl depths for blogs, would be fantastic! I hope someone can help and give us some up to date insights - If you need anymore information, I'll reply ASAP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Victoria_0 -
Should you delete old blog posts for SEO purposes?
Hey all, When I run crawl diagnostics I get around 500 medium-priority issues. The majority of these (95%) come from issues with blog pages (duplicate titles, missing meta desc, etc.). Many of these pages are posts listing contest winners and/or generic announcements (like, "we'll be out of the office tomorrow"). I have gone through and started to fix these, but as I was doing so I had the thought: what is the point of updating pages that are completely worthless to new members (like a page listing winners in 2011, in which case I just slap a date into the title)? My question is: Should I just bite the bullet and fix all of these or should delete the ones that are no longer relevant? Thanks in advance, Roman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing1 -
Blog On Subdomain - Do backlinks to the blog posts on Subdomain count as links for main site?
I want to put blog on my site. The IT department is asking that I use a subdomain (myblog.mysite.com) instead of a subfolder (mysite.com/myblog). I am worried b/c it was my understanding that any links I get to my blog posts (if on subdomain) will not count toward the main site (search engines would view almost as other website). The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks. That is why I prefer the subfolder location for the Blog. Can anyone tell me if I am thinking about this right? Another solution I am being offered is to use a reverse proxy. Thoughts? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecerbone0 -
Pros and cons of video onsite or youtube
what are the pros and cons of placing videos on the native website as opposed to pushing the you tube channel? If I move the youtube and vimeo to the native website will i loose all the link juice? is there an easy way to have transcript of the audio as html in the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bakergraphix_yahoo.com0 -
OMG. RAND IS ATTACKED! (in a blog post)
I posted a link to Rand's recent Moz Blog in another forum. One of the users posted a link to this article as a counter point. Thoughts? [title edited by staff for clarity]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads2 -
How much impact do Youtube transcripts have?
We're considering transcribing our videos. It's a significant enough expense that we have to be sure of the impact. 1. How much effect do the transcripts have on Youtube SEO rankings? 2. Should we also post the transcripts beneath the video, or is uploading them sufficient? If we didn't post the transcripts, we'd just write custom keyword rich text for each video. We could post both keyword text and transcript text, but that may be too wordy. Does anyone have experience on how much Youtube transcripts impact rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
Schema.org on Youtube iframe embed?
So I've tried scouring the internet on the proper way to markup youtube videos. I know there's the VideoObject propery but that seems to be more made for the old school embed code that looks like this: <embed width="100%" id="video-player-flash" height="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/watch_as3-vflpp9opi.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" bgcolor="#000000" flashvars="el=embedded&fexp=904001%2C914057%2C918000%2C910206%2C907217%2C907335%2C921602%2C919306%2C922600%2C919316%2C920704%2C912804%2C913542%2C919324%2C912706&is_html5_mobile_device=false&tabsb=1&hl=en_US&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dial800.com%2Fblog%2Fvideos%2Fdial800-product-overview-video&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi4.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fgk1aD9UCKYA%2Fhqdefault.jpg&tspto=12000&probably_logged_in=1&tsp_buffer=10&video_id=gk1aD9UCKYA&tsp_dvrloop=50&sendtmp=1&enablejsapi=1&sk=WZy3rFIXzzhTB_BpmE1p1tTsbxMib1vIC&rel=1&playlist_module=http%3A%2F%2Fs.ytimg.com%2Fyt%2Fswfbin%2Fplaylist_module-vfl3lol2H.swf&jsapicallback=ytPlayerOnYouTubePlayerReady&playerapiid=player1&framer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dial800.com%2Fblog%2Fvideos%2Fdial800-product-overview-video"> Do I need to use that code or is it possible to mark it up using just the clean iframe src that youtube provides now?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SirSud0