Video's Pros and Cons - YouTube vs My website or both?

[AndreVanKets]

This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise.

We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such.

I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website.

I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience.

it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on.

Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body.

Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description.

When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword)

Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays)

Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated.

Greg

[AndreVanKets]

Thanks, that makes sense YouON. I could create interesting/funny/entertaining videos on YouTube for brand awareness, and more product/tour orientated videos on my site for  pre-selling and SEO

Thanks for the advice everyone

Greg

[APICDA]

I have used video on a few occassions and would suggest Youtube.  Its quick and easy to submit, loads quickly, plays well and does not bog down your site.  Just my two cents!  Good Luck!

[kennyrowe]

I completely agree with YouON.

And I would add that if you know where your audience is (on YouTube), you should be there too. Additionally, YouTube has such a high volume of traffic (especially for searches), that capturing that traffic for some brand awareness (even if the user doesn't end up on your site) can really help your brand.

[junioruf]

Hi Andre,

I would personally create a company profile on youtube and I would add my videos there that anyone can access; I would them embed those videos into the website and if you have a facebook page, I would embed the videos there too. If you want to give web masters the option of embedding the videos on their site; they can still do this with youtube. Or are you looking to charge for them to see your private blog of videos? If so, I would charge people a fee to see those videos, once they pay you can give them a custom logging into the blog. Vimeo would be a good tool for the private blog portion.

I hope this helps.

[YouON]

I'm italian so sorry for my bad english... I think that you may produce a few video (viral, funny or really useful) and publish them on YouTube. YouTube is great to share your brand with people. Inside the video and in the description (also in the tilte) you put your website. On your website, instead, you can publish technical/specific/vertical video which may interest only your targeted visitors.

So YouTube for spread the word about your website and your knowledge and your site for deeper content.

[KJ-Rodgers]

I would check out Wistia. As a pro-member there is a SEO discount. You save about 20 bucks a month for SEO videos. You can keep metrics of watched videos, heatmaps, video sitemaps, options to have the video embedded on your site and video sitemaps. Definitely worth the price.

http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks

http://wistia.com/