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
-
Confusion About Local SEO
Hi, I hope someone might be able to help me out with this. I am somewhat confused. Basically I have a site that has 2 operating bases in 2 neighboring counties. Say Hampshire and West Sussex. Now I understand the need for schema markup. However, where exactly to put this markup I cant see a definitive answer. even on the official googleblog they seem to shy away from answering this. For the moment I have placed it on the contact us page and obviously there are 2 sets of schema markups for the 2 addresses. Now, the bit I am confused about is that I was reading the Koozai Local SEO white paper and they mention to have the addresses in the footer. This is fine and I can do that, especially as there are a lot of sub pages on the site for different products which we would like to try and rank for. Now, this is the bit I am slightly confused on, should the addresses in the footer be the schema markups? I suspect not but I would like to be sure. Many Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | kirstyseo0 -
G+ Profile and Pages won't let me list categories
Hi Mozzers, I'm working on a client's G+ profile and sub-pages and the competition all have one simple category - 'House Clearance'. When you start typing there is a drop down and this category isn't present for us? Nowhere near.This is what the client does and I can't work out howe to get it in the page? Anyone else had this problem. Thanks Gareth
Image & Video Optimization | | Bush_JSM0 -
Best Way to Replace Lost Links
We found a particular client that was using a 3rd party backlinker to build links (they were outsourced). The backlinks appeared to be low quality, just basic text and no substantial content surrounding it, usually like a forum profile. The backlinker was swapped out. However, we've been suffering from a big loss of links. We anticipated that quite a few of the links the previous crew were managing would be lost, however, we've lost over 1500. Some of that is due to the former SEO company using sitesays.com as part of their strategy. That site has since removed all listings/links because they were hit by recent algorithm changes. Every week GWT has fewer and fewer links coming from that site. We expect this to continue until GWT has removed all links from that site. We are also losing ground (quickly) on local rankings too. We believe this is due to the high number of links lost. What is best practice when building links to counter this issue? Is there anything that can be done to stem the link purge and, if possible, gain ground on rankings again?
Image & Video Optimization | | AaronHenry0 -
Video Placement
HI all- I recently finished our first product video, about a candy called Sixlets. It's meant to be an educational video (as compared to linkbait) but of course I would love to get to seo benefit out of it. I am planning on putting the video on the individual product pages for each color sixlet to make sure people get the information they need. I am also planning on putting it on a page I will create that will house all of our videos. When I put together the video sitemap (via Wistia), I was really thinking of only including the video page, not the product pages, as as not to appear to be spammy. Does this make sense or am I going about this all wrong. Just want to make sure, as I am new to video. Thanks, Ken
Image & Video Optimization | | CandymanKen0 -
How can I make embedded YouTube videos point to my domain in the search results?
We've recently moved to using YouTube for embedded videos on our site. We have a number of videos that are embedded and then a larger number of videos which are part of our YouTube channel. I've been reading recently that it's possible to get Google to list embedded video links pointing to your site rather than to YouTube itself. I am interesting in driving traffic directly from the search results to our pages rather than via YouTube. Could somebody provide a basic step by step guide on how to do this please? Or is this something that is not possible? I've been doing a lot of research online but, sadly, can't work out how to do this.
Image & Video Optimization | | RG_SEO1 -
Any special way to rank a youtube vid in google page 1 for a kw?
I've failed to rank a youtube video before , I don't know why.. but do you guys have something that can help me to rank a youtube video to google page one? backlinks? If yes, then what type of backlinks? Just like backlinking articles and websites? thx for the input guys
Image & Video Optimization | | martino8880 -
Video Transcription
Does anyone have any best practices for video transcription strategy. We download the file at youtube, edit it, remove the time and upload it again, where youtube adds the time according to the edited file I've seen some transcripts under the video section that have not time on that? Does anyone know how that's done? I've also seen keywords added into those? Any recommendations around that. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | Stevej240 -
SEO, backlink help needed.
Does any one know best SEO and backlink service that uses white hat method. I dont have anytime for optimization. Im looking for one way backlinking and on-page and off page optimization. Will appreciate help.
Image & Video Optimization | | tanveers0