Posting same video on both Vimeo and Youtube

[PerfectPitchConcepts]

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

[PerfectPitchConcepts]

Thank you for posting here! We heard your response at Moz and considered the matter settled.

[PhilNottingham]

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.

[PhilNottingham]

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.

[PhilNottingham]

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.

[SeoMartin1]

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

[Johnny4B]

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

[JCurrier]

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.