AuthorRank and YouTube?
-
My client asks me a valid question:
"Can we tie Authorship to YouTube?"
My response was: "Great Question. Authorship shows a thumbnail of your headshot in the SERPs. Regarding universal search results, YouTube videos are displayed with a thumbnail of the video.
What may be of benefit here is attributing authorship to a video in order to build AuthorRank. I think what could be done to signal Google would be to link with the rel=author attribute to your Google + profile from the description .. [profile_url]?rel=author.
The only hangup is determining if the rel=author attribute is applied in the YouTube description link or not, and If Google recognizes the attribute because Youtube pushes the link through a redirect before connecting with the Google + profile."
Can anyone speak further to this?
-
It would make sense that the same idea behind Authorship for the written word would eventually be applied to video content.
-
Great question.
I don't have the direct answer for you but here are my thoughts.
I know that you can now add your Google+ link to the links tab of the new YouTube Channels. They show up in the Cover Art area now. If YouTube was to use it I would assume it would have to be placed there. This technically won't be the rel=author you are talking about but it would verify the users content this way by providing a link back to the Google+ Page. Sort of like rel=me maybe? (speculation)
As far as AgentRank (AuthorRank) I don't think there was anything in the patents in 2005 or the update in 2011 that talked about YouTube videos being a signal for it though I could see the potential there. It mostly talked about shares and likes; who shared and liked, how fast they shared and liked,etc but I don't remember anything about views or subscribers. I can definitely see the relevancy, however.
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 -
YouTube hosting question
The "How it works" video that is embedded on my sites homepage is currently linked to an individual YouTube account not our company account. I would like to change the ownership so that the company profile can enjoy the added views (currently 13K +). Is there a way to move the video to a different account without losing the views it has already accumulated? Also, a related technical question - our R&D team says the video is slowing down the site. It links to YouTube but there is nothing in the source of our page about YouTube. Any suggestions for embedding it more effectively?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Backlink from my YouTube Channel, helpful for SEO?
A website will include a link to a youtube video associated with my channel. Does my website also get SEO credit, even though that website isn't linking directly to my site, but rather to a video on my youtube channel. The youtube video is also uploaded to my website, but this website wants to link to the video directly on youtube. Website is "www.hawaiijobengine.com" and youtube channel is "hawaiijobegnine.com" - how does Google know these 2 are same owner? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Embed hosted videos or Youtube videos on site
Youtube is our major source of traffic. We also have many of the same videos on our own site, self-hosted. They use the same video player as our paid video course, which allows the user to increase or decrease speed. We're debating whether to replace these self-hosted videos with youtube embeds. Pros: Increase Youtube viewcounts More engagement with videos (videos suggested at end of youtube videos are almost all our own) Cons Possible outbound traffic to youtube. We can't showcase our video player's speed change function I'm not sure how embed views are taken into account by Youtube, and how big a factor outbound traffic is. Would you suggest swapping out our self-hosted videos for embeds? We want to maintain our Youtube channel's edge, and convince people to sign up for our course.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
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 -
What is better for SEO - local video file or youtube video?
Should I use a video player and upload the videos for my website or should I put my videos at youtube and use youtube player?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Naghirniac0 -
Youtube optimization - have you noticed anything new?
My videos are still doing really well in universal search, but I've noticed a drop in the actual youtube serps. It used to be that videos with lots of views, comments & likes had priority in the youtube results. Now it looks as if the number of videos you have uploaded, even if they have few views, ranks above the individual numbers on a video. I'm thinking that I shouldn't create a channel for a client who might only have 3 - 5 videos uploaded per year. What say you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juliemarg0