Including videos on an eCommerce website.
-
Hi,
We're about to start integrating video content on our eCommerece site in order to bolster the quantity and diversity of useful content that each page presents a potential customer. We’re talking product reviews, information relating to the differences between different products and company information. From an SEO perspective it has been suggested that Google will like this however I have a question regarding the actual method of integration.Usually I would just insert some embed code linking to the correct video on our YouTube channel however I’m really conscious that a search engine will just see the embed code, notice the page loads slightly slower and not really gain anything useful from the video file.
I’m assuming that this isn’t the case but I have several questions:
- Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page. Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable?
- Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site?
- Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page? If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO?
These are probably all pretty basic questions for which I do apologise but I want to make sure that before spending a sizable amount of time on this that we start off with a correct integration!
Many thanks
-
Yes. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy gives some detail on the possible issues.
You'll basically lessens the value you can get from both self hosting and putting the content on YouTube if you do both. For your situation, I'd advise against putting the content on YouTube at all, as it wont make sense outside of the context of the page with your product on.
-
Thank-you so much for your response, Oleg.
I have read through both guides and, on the basis that we have a dedicated server with TONS of unused bandwidth / CPU resources / Disk Space I think it might be an idea to self-host... Even if nothing else it would be nice not to have YouTube harassing our customers with adverts / related videos!
That having been said it would be nice to have the self-help guides on both our site and YouTube. This would mean that we could potentially gain visitors via our Youtube channel but that people who were already on the site would see our self hosting version and so would be less likely to leave after watching the video.
Would you anticipate any duplication issues if we were to post our content on both our own site and YouTube?
-
I highly recommend you read this and this.
- Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page. Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable?
Self-hosted is preferred but keep server costs in mind. If not, youtube is usually the way to go.
- Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site?
Ideally yes. A part of video SEO is it's context.
- Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page? If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO?
Videos can reduce bounce-backs, increase backlinks (people tend to link to them more), show a rich snippet in SERPs, improve conversions (if done right). Google can't watch and categorize the video but does it instead on the page's content, surrounding text, and backlinks.
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
-
Can redirect URL website also shown on the google ranking? and higher than the original website?
can redirect URL website also shown on the google ranking? and higher than the original website? For example, I create URL B which redirect to website A, and do good SEO on URL B, can URL B rank higher than my original website A?
Technical SEO | | HealthmateForever0 -
Sitemap international websites
Hey Mozzers,Here is the case that I would appreciate your reply for: I will build a sitemap for .com domain which has multiple domains for other countries (like Italy, Germany etc.). The question is can I put the hreflang annotations in sitemap1 only and have a sitemap 2 with all URLs for EN/default version of the website .COM. Then put 2 sitemaps in a sitemap index. The issue is that there are pages that go away quickly (like in 1-2 days), they are localised, but I prefer not to give annotations for them, I want to keep clear lang annotations in sitemap 1. In this way, I will replace only sitemap 2 and keep sitemap 1 intact. Would it work? Or I better put everything in one sitemap?The second question is whether you recommend to do the same exercise for all subdomains and other domains? I have read much on the topic, but not sure whether it worth the effort.The third question is if I have www.example.it and it.example.com, should I include both in my sitemap with hreflang annotations (the sitemap on www.example.com) and put there it for subdomain and it-it for the .it domain (to specify lang and lang + country).Thanks a lot for your time and have a great day,Ani
Technical SEO | | SBTech0 -
How to delete video rich snippets?
Hi mozzaholics, At first I was very happy to have video snippets appear in Google (200 pages), but now after 6 months I see a drop of almost -30% in traffic, whilst the average rank stayed the same, compared to the star snippets I have for other pages. So I want to remove the video snippets and have the old rich snippets back. I tried removing the videositemap and google's the structured data tool doesn't show video snippets. Does anybody know what else I can do to remove the video snippets? Is there anybody who succeeded deleting them? Please share your wisdom. Ivo
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI1 -
Duplicate website with http & https
I have a website that only in a specific state in the USA we had to add a certificate for it to appear with https. my question is how to prevent from the website to be penalized on duplicate content with the http version on that specific state. please advise. thanks!
Technical SEO | | taly0 -
Server 500: website deindexed?
Hi mozzers, Since August 22nd, (not a site I manage) has had a Server error 500 and all the pages got deindexed? This is obviously a server issue but why it got deindexed is it because it's been a while since it had this server issue? On the pages I checked the pages loads correctly so I am a bit confused here! His webmaster account show 1500 server errors! Can someone tell me what is going on and how to fix it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Does Google see the connection between our 2 websites?
We have a main website and we created a satellite site to support the original one with backlinks. Can I add both sites to the same Google Analytics profile? My programmer said that there is no reason to use a new GA profile for the satellite site, since Google will see the connection between the 2 websites via scripts, Google Plus buttons and other programmed solutions. So, is there a reason to use a new GA account for the satellite site (and later the new satellite sites) as well?
Technical SEO | | Romaine0 -
Links to Website Author
I'm a website developer, and in the past I have usually added a tiny backlink to the footer of my clients' websites like this: Website Design by MyCompanyName I understand that Google sees this as a low-quality backlink. However, I was wondering if such links can hurt my rankings. Does Penguin sees these links as spam? If so, should I add a rel="nofollow" to the links? Is there anything else I should change? I do not want to remove these links completely because they are good for marketing my business. I just want to minimize any negative SEO impact of the links. I appreciate your input. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SiteWizard_LLC0 -
Has google panelized us ? If so, why ? How do I know if our website is panelized ?
We were ranked on first page among top 5 position a year ago for most of our pages. On one fine day, google decided to drop us from the results although google keeps indexing our pages. Google index our pages regularly but doesn't show them in its results. All google traffic we receive is for our own site name and its variations. I wanted to know - how do we know if google has panelized us. Why has google panelized us ? If they have panelized us, what can we do to get out of it ? Also I wanted to know if any tool will help me identify such thing. We have not done any link building. Our site page rank is 4 (it was 5 few months ago). All we did was on page optimization. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | seoidea0