Videos - Host on our Site or YouTube or Both
-
Hi
We are redesigning our site and going to post how to videos on some of our product pages.
For SEO purposes I want to post the videos on our site with a video transcription either self hosting or through Wistia.Can we also post the same videos on YouTube or is that duplicate content and will we get hurt somehow?
Thanks.
-
great information here guys.
Phil some of the info you have put out has been extremely helpful. We a client whose video producer published the video to Vimeo plus ( I know Vimeo Pro is much different) and subsequently has created the 3rd strongest listing for their name. Even though the video has been removed from Vimeo for 2 months it still ranks very high. What I've taken away from this is make sure whoever you're working with is using a business-class video hosting platform and does not publish work to something like Vimeo a service I feel is equal to YouTube in many ways ( aside from their Pro feature which will allow somebody to host a video appropriately.)
Thanks for all the info,
Thomas
-
Thank you very much - all your posts have been very helpful. Thanks.
-
Thanks Dana! Spot on - that's exacly what I would say :).
-
Hi Lesley,
I know this is what Moz does, but to be honest with you - I'm not convinced this is the best move for them. WBF's on YouTube do very little for them so far as I can tell and overall I think concentrating on one channel (either YouTube or self hosted - dependent on goals) will be more effective.
It's just like trying to have your cake and eat it. Sorry Roger!
However, the Moz example isn't really relevant here anyway, since the content is more "blogging" focused and informational, rather than being tied to a specific product.
-
Hey Karen,
My answer would basically be - "You probably don't want to do both, but it really depends on the kind of content you have, what you're trying to achieve and whether there's demand for it on YouTube".
The important thing to remember about YouTube is that it's a social and community platform as much as a hosting service. It really isn't the appropriate place for every kind of video content so you need to take the perspective of "Would this video be relevant for anyone stumbling across it on YouTube without prior knowledge of my brand". You'll find that people don't go to YouTube with brand focused queries very often and nor do they often click back from a video to a third party site. This means the main value you're going to get for the platform will be brand awareness (see here for more details: http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube) but in order to achieve that you need to have content the YouTube audience care about. How to videos may well fit into that category, but only if they're solving generic problems and aren't specifically focused around your specific products.
The additional problem with putting videos on both Wistia (or self hosting) and YouTube is that YouTube can end up outranking your site for branded queries, which means you can potentially drive commercially focused traffic (those who may end up actually buying something!) to YouTube rather than your site and from here it's then very difficult to drive them back to your site (click through rates from YouTube are normally less than 1%); this means that, in essence, you can be unnecessarily adding and additional step in your product conversion funnel for some organic searches.
So - in short, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but to start with you need to really work out what you're trying to achieve with your videos and determine who the audience is for this content specifically. I've written some more extensive articles about this issue in particular, so if you want more info I advise you to go have a read.
http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy
http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo
http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/
I hope that's useful!
Phil
-
The answer to this depends on what you are trying to achieve with the video. Video can serve numerous purposes in online marketing and the best methods to employ differ a bit depending on what you are trying to achieve.
If the aim is for as many people as possible to see the video then you want to include it (or a version of it) on YouTube. YouTube is in itself the second biggest search engine on the internet, so a properly optimised video there has the potential to be seen by a huge audience. This is perfect for video that, for instance, introduce your product or service as a solution to a common problem.
One use of video that we employ is to obtain rich snippets. A video rich snippet can leapfrog your page above others in the SERPs and also bring an improved click through rate. Win! If your video is hosted on YouTube and embedded on your site then this is not going to help you. The reason for that is that the rich snippet will lead to a youtube page, not yours so you want to host it privately.
Privately doesn't have to mean on your own server. In fact, in most cases we avoid that. Services like Wistia and Vimeo have paid options that allow you to upload your video with all the ease of youtube, but control which sites the video cam be embedded on. This protects your video and helps you keep that rich snippet result to yourself.
We often now look at using Wistia/Vimeo for the main video, but doing a second edit for YouTube if the content suits their audience.
As Dana says, Phil Nottingham has put out some very good posts about this, and also how to get the most out of whichever path you go down. There is an outfit called reelseo who have also done some good posts on this.
-
Hi Karen,
For one off videos, the Youtube imbedding fuction is great. However, if you are going to have a series of videos all connected to one another, it is probably better to link to the Youtube website.
Single videos are great content for SEO, but having too many may confuse your viewers.
-
Karen,
I have some qualifiers on hosing your video on the site. As long as your web host if fast enough you will get a bump in Google's algorithm as they ding you for the slow performance off of Youtube. If you hst the videos you might also want to use a content delivery network to speed this up further. Finally you should submit a site map for your video to optimize how you are indexed.
I would also host on Youtube simply because this is yet another way to be found. I believe this also creates an inbound link as well(I am not 100% sure on this).
Ron
-
Phil Nottingham is the top expert, in my opinion, on this subject. He has written extensively on this topic both here and at Distilled.net. I would very highly recommend searching here for "phil nottingham video SEO" and then repeat the same search in Google. He's brilliant, and believe me has probably already answered every question you could possibly have about where to host your videos, and better yet, why.
The first thing I think Phil would say would be: First determine what purpose you want the videos to serve, then determine the most appropriate place to host them.
He would say a lot more, and much better (particularly with the accent!) than I do. Here's a video from Phil & Will at Distilled (that's fun to say) to get you started: http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled
Enjoy!
-
I would host on both. It seems to be what SEO Moz does, so I am sure that is the best strategy.
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
-
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 Video Transcript misinterpreting audio as a swear word and putting in transcript
Hi I've just noticed a video uploaded to a clients youtube channel is misinterpreting a spoken word as a swear word, the F word :), will this have negative connotations ? could it result in video being considered 'adult content' ?? Any idea how to get this changed, should i report/flag it or will that likely make matters worse ? Or YT tech support email (chance would be a fine thing) ? Also how do you set a video as the channel trailer ? (i cant find any option to do this) Cheers Dan
Image & Video Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
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 -
What is the best youtube SEO strategy?
Ok- I have ten different you tube videos, i have done some article marketing, blog commenting, press releases, bookmarking, web 2.0. My videos are in highly competitive niches and i have some success with my videos for short time period. But it had been very difficult journey so far. Can someone give me the sound strategy for back links for youtube videos?
Image & Video Optimization | | Sajiali0 -
What is the best way to include video transcripts on your pages?
I just posted a question as a comment on this blog post (http://www.audiotranscription.org/6-reasons-you-need-to-have-your-sites-videos-transcribed/comment-page-1/#comment-4311) and realized I probably should have asked the question here because it is really SEO-related. We are in the process of transcribing all of our videos. Can you someone recommend how best to post the transcript file on our product pages? For example, here's a product page that has a video review on it: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/behringer-x32-digital-mixing-system. Would it be best to post a link to the transcript file or insert the iframe transcript file from DotSub.com (in that case wouldn't DotSub.com be getting credit for our original content?) or, should we just let our captions on the YouTube stream from there (which is what's happening right now)? Will Google still crawl the transcript if the only place it's available is on YouTube? If so, doesn't YouTube get credited for that content, and not our site? Even if we do post a trascript on the page, if it appeared at YouTube first, wouldn't YouTube get credit for the original version? We want credit for that content...just not sure how to get it? I understand that moving to Wistia.com would probably solve most of these issues. What I'm trying to figure out is how best to handle new transcripts for existing videos over at YouTube?
Image & Video Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
Video SEO - Why are my videos not being indexed?
Hello All, I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking. Here is an example of a page with a video on. If you click the play button you will see But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here. Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)? Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help? Or is there some other issue at work here? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
Getting indexed into Google video search
I have a website that has videos hosted from youtube.com embedded onto it. I created and uploaded the videos to youtube and want them on my website. My question is which would be a better option, hosting the video on my website or embed them from youtube? I currently have them embedded onto youtube but when I do a Google video search I cannot find my company's website anywhere. My videos are shown on the results but they are linked to youtube and not my website. Is there a way to get the search results to show listing of the videos posted on my website?
Image & Video Optimization | | Shawn1240 -
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites?
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites we should manually submit to? I have around 20 or so but I was wondering if someone could give me a list to cross reference. I have quite a few local business that I work with and I want to make sure I'm hitting all of the main local listings. I also spend time searching for niche listing sites too for each client, so if you have any suggestions on easier ways to find these as well, I'm game. If you have created a list and its out in the wild somewhere I will be happy to link to it from my site. I'm always open to giving some LL to helpful people. Who's up for building a tool that will search through X number of local directories and report back to you if you are listed or not. (Not getlisted.org) You can select a checklist of sites that you want to check. (; Thanks Aaron
Image & Video Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0