Videos - Host on our Site or YouTube or Both

[klbklb90015]

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.

[BlueprintMarketing]

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

[klbklb90015]

Thank you very much - all your posts have been very helpful. Thanks.

[PhilNottingham]

Thanks Dana! Spot on - that's exacly what I would say :).

[PhilNottingham]

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.

[PhilNottingham]

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

[matbennett]

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.

[InMarketingWeTrust]

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.

[Ron_McCabe]

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

[danatanseo]

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!

[LesleyPaone]

I would host on both. It seems to be what SEO Moz does, so I am sure that is the best strategy.

Check here