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
-
Choosing a video hoster for a website
Hi guys, I would love to hear your opinion about which video hoster is recommendable for embedding videos on a website and why? So far, I can't decide between Youtube, Vimeo and Wistia. Youtube: + large community, snippets in Google - advertisements Vimeo: + appealing look - small audience Wistia: + easy to customize, statistics - no community, no snippets in Google Thanks in advance for any input! Benjamin
Image & Video Optimization | | ghostwriter0 -
Integrate video - only thumbnail?
Hi! If I integrate a video to my website (vimeo or youtube) the pagespeed slows down. Now I integrate my video in wordpress with special plugins. These plugins shows only the thumbnail, only if the user clicks on these thumbnail, the video is loading. So is my pagespeed perfect ... .. buuut now my question: Google loves tables, images, video ... Sees google these thumbnail still as a video or now only as a image? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | Operi0 -
Why Do Some Organic Search Terms Not Rank a YouTube Video?
I have a video that is number 1 in the video search terms that is very well optimised and quality backlinked. Yet it does not rank in the organic results. Anyone any idea why, or what to do to achieve this? Many thanks in advance
Image & Video Optimization | | WSIDW0 -
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 -
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 embed a link back to our site in our video embed codes?
Our site has over 100 great videos. We are currently streaming them all from our YouTube channel. I noticed SEOMoz is using http://www.wistia.com and that when I copy and paste a video from SEOMoz that code has a link back to the SEOMoz site in it, which of course is awesome for SEO. My question has several parts: Is this possible to do with an embed code from YouTube? Specifically directed towards SEOMoz: Which of the 3 types of player did you choose, HTML5, Flash or javascript? Why? Is Wistia just creating a video feed, or are they actually hosting your video content too? Our goal is two-fold: 1. We want people who embed our videos to be also embeddding a link back to our site and 2. We want our videos to be found in SERPs and have those direct people to our site instead of our YouTUbe channel. I'd welcome any comments regarding video SEO in this thread. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
Youtube or Own Server
I've trying to make one specific page of my personal blog more relevant, and today i recorder a video to improve my content. What is more relevante, host my video and embed with HTML5 (and offer an option for user go to youtube) or embed a video from my youtube channel directly? Have a chance for my video appers on Google SERP? How do i need to encode him to take best position? Thank's for everyone time, and have i nice day 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | lucassc0 -
VIDEO SUBMISSION
Hi - If I remember rightly someone from the SeoMoz team has mentioned a video submission site called Wisteria? Is this right? If so what is the URL and what are the benfits over TubeMogul from an SEO perspective / ease of use etc ? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | PH2920