Should I delete youtube videos when moving to Wistia (or other on-site platform)?
-
One of my new clients recently built a site that has a great potential for ranking product pages with video rich snippets. Each product page has a single video, but they are currently hosted on youtube and embedded using Youtube iframes.
Overall the videos aren't a great fit for Youtube, and we have decided to move the product videos to Wistia. (Much thanks to Phil Nottingham for his answers in this post, and his overall insights on video SEO in general). So what is the best way to make sure we get original credit for the video? I'm planning to take down all the product videos from the Youtube account as soon as we switch the embeds on the site. Is that enough?
-
Second Phil on this one: "You can find that YouTube will outrank your pages, which splits your traffic and view count, thereby damaging your SEO" This is the major issue here.
-
I do agree that video helps with conversion, but I also agree that Youtube isn't the right place for these conversion type videos. Even with a high conversion rate, they aren't being watched enough for it to have an effect in this case. (Each video has <50 views over 3 months)
-
Thanks so much Phil,
I didn't even realize there was an option for "unlisted". Because these are the ever-difficult-to-get-links-to product pages, I am hoping to try to get a few sites that have already embedded the videos to switch to the custom player.
-
Actually, this isn't quite true Moosa...
Very few people convert from watching YouTube videos and the CTR back to a site in order to make purchases is typically less than 1%.
-
Not true. Just because a video is on YouTube, it doesn't mean it'll rank better than if it is self hosted.
-
No, don't do this, it's a bad idea.
Just because you have content assets doesn't mean you should put them everywhere (it's the same principle as syndicating a blog post). If the content isn't relevant for an audience on YouTube, which product/sales focused videos typically aren't, then they shouldn't be on there. Content should be created for the YouTube channel, not just put on there because you have it.
Additionally, self hosting your content and putting it on YouTube can have negative technical impacts. You can find that YouTube will outrank your pages, which splits your traffic and view count, thereby damaging your SEO; you're also failing to optimise for YouTube in this way, since you won't be driving any YouTube views through the video embeds.
For product videos, the goal is never to get as many people to see them as possible, but rather to drive as many sales as possible, which means you need to get people to view the content in a context where they can make a purchase (not on YouTube, since there's no "buy" button).
-
Hey Sirmontegu,
Basically, I'd recommend you just mark the YouTube videos as unlisted (which is like putting a noindex tag on your videos) so that user experience isn't damaged for anyone who has already linked to the videos and you'll retain the view count on your channel (good for social proof) but will also ensure your YouTube videos don't outrank the canonical version on your site, as well as ensuring your more YouTube friendly content is prominent on your channel.
Then all you need to do is ensure you're submitted a video sitemap (with the Wistia toolset) and you should get the videos indexed on your site.
Cheers,
Phil.
-
I guess Eric is right just let them be on youtube and also make sure they are ranking high when someone search for it on youtube.
The percentage of people who convert after watching a video online (big number watch videos on youtube) so this is good for your conversions as well.
Hope this helps!
-
I would keep them on YouTube. Since YouTube is owned by Google, they rank their videos higher on Google higher searches so you don't want to lose that. I agree with Eric. If anything, keep them in both places.
-
I would keep the videos on YouTube. In fact, it's usually recommended that you post them on multiple video sites for additional distribution. Even though you're not necessarily going to link to the YouTube videos from your site, you'll often get people who will view them there. And you can't ignore YouTube since it does have the most traffic.
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 google never shows Coursera or Udemy videos in the SERP?
I work for a website pretty much like Coursera, and google never brings up our videos in the SERP. It has been indexed and Search Console URL Inspection tool identifies it as a video object. is it a technical issue or just google doesn't like to show us in the SERP? Is there any way to fix this?
Image & Video Optimization | | semrtaz0 -
Videos on Home Page
Hello, My company is currently in the process of editing our website's homepage. My creative team wants to add several videos to an already big home page. I would like a more simple and less interactive home page. There has to be close to a half dozen videos already on the page. I know that Google bots have trouble crawling some items like java. I also know that page speed is a huge factor and the mobile first index is quickly approaching. Is it ok to have all of these videos on home page? Could this due harm to the page. All the videos are hosted on Vimeo and typically expand from some sort of icon. Page load time has been an issue and this will probably be our last update before google's mobile first index. I just want to make sure I am giving the correct advice by saying there is no problem with 6+ videos on a home page. Any advice would be great! Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | aua0 -
Video SEO, should I do what Roger does?
As per http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo I want to rank with a rich snippet and improve my domain's overall ranking. So I am going to ignore YouTube and use Vimeo Pro (using old embed code). I will also submit a video XML sitemap and implement schema markup. Gotcha. Now let's check this strategy with what SEOmoz is doing. Let's take 5 Steps to Facebook Advertising - Whiteboard Friday it was uploaded onto the SEOmoz blog on 29 March 2013. Then on 4 April 2013 it was uploaded onto YouTube. As at 7 April 2013 (PST) I am not seeing the latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday Evolution of the Local Algorithm - Whiteboard Friday posted on YouTube. SEOmoz blog has a person written transcription, YouTube has an automatic transcript. There is a link to the SEOmoz comments below the YouTube Video. Cricky! They've gone all YouTube. Stop the boat. Or should I? My assumption is that SEOmoz is big enough so that it is willing to risk losing a few links to their YouTube webpages. Indeed they delay posting the video on YouTube for a week after it has been posted on the SEOmoz blog. What's more it ensures that there is a very good transcript on their blog. Top that off with comments (and I assume video sitemap and schema) and it is happy it will gain more from the traffic generated from the YouTube community than the potential loss of links to its domain, forgoing potential domain authority increases and resulting traffic. So Roger, I'm a little boat not a SEOmoz battleship cruiser, should I do what you do and wait for a week before I put my videos on YouTube? Or avoid the dangerous currents of YouTube stealing my domain authority and ignore YouTube all together?
Image & Video Optimization | | BruceMcG0 -
What's the best method for posting the same video with different phone and address on YouTube?
For a franchise network, what's the best method for posting the same video that is tagged with different phone numbers and address per each location on YouTube? Will this get removed as duplicate content eventually? Or if I use the geo-tagging feature, will this help?
Image & Video Optimization | | BasementSystems760 -
Multiple use of a YouTube video on site
Hi I want to add the same video (that is hosted on YouTube) onto a website on more than one page. Is it ok to use the same same video link in each instance? Are there any benefits in doing this? Are there any detrimental effects from an SEO perspective? Thank you
Image & Video Optimization | | PH2920 -
Video Links under meta description
Has anyone seen Google adding links to the site's videos right under the meta description for the result? I tried finding more information on it and couldn't find any. Anyone here know how to get a video link displayed with your search result?
Image & Video Optimization | | J.Marie0 -
Do I need incoming links to my mobile site, if I want to rank for mobile search?
Does a mobile site need backlinks to rank? Or are onsite factors the one and only here? And what are the most important "onsite" factors for mobile seo?
Image & Video Optimization | | jameda0 -
Using 1 main site for many branch office locations
I have 1 main site with many many city/state pages within the site. I would like to use this site as the 'website' on the google local places pages for all my branch office locations, however I am worried that if my domain authority isn't high enough for the site, google will think I am spamming 'google places'. Are there any best practices I can follow to do this? Ideally I would like my blended search to show www.site.com/boston not as www.site.com
Image & Video Optimization | | ilyaelbert0