Best place for tutorial videos on e-commerce site

[DavidLenehan]

Just wondering where I should put my tutorial videos on my e-commerce site. I have two options

1. On the category pages - this makes sense as the videos are related to the products within the category

2. Create a help section of the website that would host all the help videos.

Which would be better for ranking and usability?

Thanks

[PhilNottingham]

It really depends on the kind of content you have and where that will best serve user intent.

Ultimately, the intent on product pages and the intent on help pages is nuanced and slightly different. Is a "tutorial" video going to satisfy the user who lands on a category page, likely looking to potentially make refine a selection and make a purchase? Although I haven't seen your videos, so it's hard to say for sure - I'd guess it's probably not ideal. In such an instance, the user probably wants to know more about the features and benefits of a product/category type, rather than "how to use X".

Ideally you should re-edit and reframe the videos you have (or make new videos) to match the specific pages - so having one variation for the category page that fits the user intent there and then one for the help page section which better matches that user intent. My gut is to say that your current videos will work better in the help section, but I say this without knowledge of the site or videos, so please take that recommendation with a pinch of salt.

I don't recommend following EGOL's suggestion in this thread, because I think it's a slightly old hat "SEO' mentality that puts the search engine factors above the user experience. Just because you won't get penalised for having the same video across multiple pages doesn't mean it's a great idea.

Remember that video is just a media type, like text and image. You (probably) wouldn't think about duplicating blocks of text across multiple pages and for the same reasons, I don't think it's particularly wise to treat video any differently. Make sure you're creating content FOR the pages, rather than creating the content and then trying to work out where it fits afterwards.

While it's possible that a video you create is relevant for multiple use-cases, in 99% of circumstances, said video would better serve each use case by at least being slightly re-edited for each page that it lives on. If you think that actually, the video is perfectly relevant for each page in question and doesn't need to be re-edited, then you should probably ask yourself whether you need two pages or whether you can consolidate the content into two pages. It's much better (from both a search engine and user perspective) to have one very strong, rich page targeted at a specific topic, rather than to have multiple thinner pages.

I hope that's useful!

Phil

[EGOL]

If my videos were about a range of products then I would include them on a category page.

I might also write an article about that range of products and post the video on that page.

[DavidLenehan]

Thanks EGOL. What about category pages? The video tells you about the range rather than an individual product. Also would you post it on a few pages or is this duplication?

[EGOL]

If I have a short video about "how to use Product X" then I place it.....

A) on the sales page for Product X

B) on an article page that tells more than you want to know about using Product X

C) i have a "help" page that links to all of my "how to use Product X" pages

My "how to use a product" pages often rank above my sales pages in the SERPs.  That's OK with me because I have plenty of links and house ads on that page to drive the visitor to where he can purchase.