Duplicate YouTube Script Content - Penalty?
-
I've been tasked with writing scripts for upward of 100 YouTube videos describing my company's products. In more than a few cases, the products are so similar as to be almost identical; unfortunately, they aren't and will require their own videos.
If I create a "template" script, I would save hours and hours of tedium. For example:
Video 1:
(VOICEOVER) Buy the ABC widget today!
Video 2:
(VOICEOVER) Buy the XYZ widget today!
So, my question is: Would I be looking at a duplicate content issue? Jeff McRichie's terrific Whiteboard Friday about YouTube Ranking Factors mentioned that YouTube has an auto-transcription feature that might expose my self-plagiarism, and I don't want to get dinged.
BTW, this isn't a matter of my being too lazy to write individualized content; it's more that 1) the products are almost identical, and 2) I have just about a week to write, produce, and act(!) in all of them.
-
So..here's the thing...
Your template script will be absolutely fine - as long as you don't put those videos on YouTube, where it could be seen as low quality content and will therefore be devalued.
However - luckily for you, best practice would actually be to not put this content on YouTube at all, and rather to self host the content (or use a secure third party hosting platform) and then submit a video XML sitemap in order to get rich snippets for your videos.
YouTube is an absolutely terrible place to put Product videos as the traffic you get on YouTube is typically low quality (nobody goes to YouTube to buy things) which will mean your videos don't rank will in YouTube, yet you still risk having customers searching for your products go to youtube.com rather than your landing page if the youtube.com url ranks in the Google organic search results for your product.
Conversely, if you securely host the content - Google will only drive customers to your site (and not to YouTube) and the algorithm won't be able to work out that you have lots of near duplicate video content.
So, in short - yes it is a problem if you put it on YouTube for the reasons mentioned - but it's not a problem if you self host. Plus, you should self host this kind of content anyway.
For more information on these principles - have a look here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo and here:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-a-video-seo-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
-
What would be Best Content Starategy For My Dental Website?
Greetings to all Moz Fellows! Our organization specializes in digital dentistry, and we aim to establish a thriving blog focused on this subject to attract a wide range of clients from all across the United States. We would greatly appreciate any advice on the most effective strategies for achieving this goal.
Content Development | | SEOBrandBoca
@MOZ-LUCY1230 -
Need creative content idea suggestion for travel business
Hi everyone It's glad for me to be a part of moz community. I'm really enjoyed. I would love to ask if anyone is creative content expert here can share some suggestions on how to produce high quality content for travel business. As the travel industry we are focusing on is selling tours in southern asia markets such as vietnam, laos & cambodia Currently i already come up with some ideas here Trip Interview Articles - with commissioned writers & paid bloggers Trip Experience/Report Articles - outsourcing to elance writers who have visited the destinations Any unique idea better than these which can set us apart from competitors and having high ROI on SEO? Thank you
Content Development | | dklongpro0 -
Same Press Release Content ?
I recently distribute my first ever PR to PRlog site. Now i am planning to move the PR to other PR sites, should i use the same content which i already submitted or again the same thing spun article will do ?
Content Development | | chandubaba0 -
Need a PHP script or WordPress Plugin for mass deletion subscribers in wordpress , got any?
There are many Spam Comments with the links leading to malicious website and subscribers do the same ! How to remove them - the spam count is huge !
Content Development | | Esaky0 -
Duplicate content problem
Hi, i have a serious problem. I work in joomla and sometimes it can be annoying. When you set up a category, you need to give it a name and maybe this is a huge error on my part as i did not really think about the names beforehand. The situation i have now is, all my sections are in front page mode, but because you have to name the categories in order to write articles, i am now left with a load of blog sections such as http://www.in2town.co.uk/benidorm/benidorm-news Now i have a main section called Benidorm news so i have duplicate sections, i want to know if i can redirect the http://www.in2town.co.uk/benidorm/benidorm-news to go to the main benidorm section or if there is a better way of doing it. i have left this blod layout the way it is to show you, but the others i just have it where it shows the title and then goes to the article. I work in k2 and would be grateful if anyone can let me know the solution to this as semoz is showing that i have many duplicate titles and content many thanks
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Is there a tool for measuring content freshness?
i.e. crawling a site to identify last date of new or changed content? Thanks.
Content Development | | PeterTroast0 -
Does Google penalize for duplicate blog posts?
Occasionally, I get asked by another blogger if they can repost (in full) one of our blog posts on their blog as a guest post. I've always been under the impression that Google penalizes this type of behavior, but I haven't seen any evidence. Is this true?
Content Development | | Event360300 -
Different pages with very similar H1's - will I get a penalty?
I currently have text articles about various topics on my site - for this example say I have written about "Negative Reinforcement". This article is live over a month now and getting listed on the first google page with an added keyword which the article is specifically related to. Now I want to create an infographic related to the same topic "Negative Reinforcement" - but I want to call the page this infographic will go on "Negative Reinforcement Infographic" while the article is currently called just "Negative Reinforcement". Neither page will have duplicate content from each other. The article is 2,000+ words so I don't want to throw more into it by adding on the infographic and I want to specifically create the infographic as linkbait and on a stand alone page. I am curious if adding another page with such a similar title and H1 have any negative effect ("dilute" the strength of the other article), for example will google take having two different pages with such a similar heading as potential keyword stuffing and penalise the site?
Content Development | | GavinC0