Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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._
-
That's a great article but although he breaks the goals into three nice little categories, the reality is that many businesses may want equal emphasis on all three goals (brand awareness, consideration & advocacy, conversion) so it still leaves things pretty 'gray' in my opinion.
So let me give a specific example to focus this thread a bit more narrowly. Let's say the business is brand new so there's no brand recognition and the website has just been launched. And let's say its a photography business where the business' work portfolio is KEY in really all three areas at this point (branding, consideration, and conversion). It seems the article is recommending that if you're new, and your video content is important for consideration & conversion, then you should FIRST privately embed it on your website (via Wistia). After your site starts to rank well (which could take a LONG time), THEN create a Business YouTube Channel. Although YouTube has such high domain authority, I would think you would still risk having your YouTube videos rank higher than your website. But can you not embed lots of branding into your Youtube videos, right? Like links to your website within the video. So if your business is based around producing images (photography and video) maybe it would be the best strategy to do both approaches simultaneously and not delay the YouTube Channel building.
-
I would follow the Whiteboard Friday methodology, since clearly Moz has thought about this strategy (I hope). They post the Wistia video on their site and then post a YouTube video.
You'll only ever see YouTube and Vimeo videos in the search results with the video snippet, you won't see a Wistia video snippet. If you want people to link to your website, then having it embedded with Wistia only is the way to go and don't post it on YouTube. But if you're looking for the most video views and exposure you should do both.
There have been a few changes since this post, but this post by Phil Nottingham has the best breakdown on the options.
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
-
Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?
Hi folks. I would like to discuss pagination. I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically). I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc. I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution. My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important. I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue. So, what's the solution? Do I even need one? As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content. I would love your thoughts on all of this. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Video titles and descriptions
Hi everyone, I have a question about embedding videos on a website: if you optimize the title and description for the video in Youtube, will these be taken into account for the ranking of the page where the video is embedded? Or will only the Youtube link for the video show in SERP's, instead of the page itself? I've read in a post of Phil Nottingham that it's usually not a good idea to embed a Youtube video on your own site, but use Wistia instead, exactly to avoid cannibalisation of your own rankings. Is this correct? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Domain name suffix impact on SEO
Hello there, We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view. We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com We are based in London and sell world wide via our website. We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com I would appreciate your views... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
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 -
Does font size affect SEO?
In the eyes of Google, would the font text size of say a news article affect SEO? For example, a slightly larger font being easier to read by those with bad eyes? Accessibility? If so, what size would be ideal? 10, 12, 14? Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Link Age as SEO factor?
Hi Guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
I have a client who ranks well within a competitive sector of the travel industry. They are planning CMS move which will involve changing from .cfm to .aspx We will be doing the standard redirects etc However Matt's statement here on 301 redirects got me thinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA&t=0m24s He says that basically you loose a bit of page rank when you do a 301 redirect. Now, we will be potentially redirecting 1000s of links and my thinking is 'a lot of a little, adds up to a lot' In other words, 1000s of redirects may have a big enough impact to loose some rankings in a very competitive and aggressive space. So recommended that we contact the sites who has the link highest value and ask them to manually change the links from cfm to aspx. This will then mean that there are no loss value as with a 301 redirect. -But now I have another dilemma which I'm unsure about. So the main question:
Is link age factor in rankings ? If I update any links, this will make said link new to Google, so if link age is a factor, would this also lessen the value passed initially?0