undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Image & Video Optimization
  4. Videos - Host on our Site or YouTube or Both

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.

Videos - Host on our Site or YouTube or Both

Image & Video Optimization
8
11
1.8k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • klbklb90015
    klbklb90015 last edited by Aug 21, 2013, 8:51 PM

    Hi

    We are redesigning our site and going to post how to videos on some of our product pages.
    For SEO purposes I want to post the videos on our site with a video transcription either self hosting or through Wistia.

    Can we also post the same videos on YouTube or is that duplicate content and will we get hurt somehow?

    Thanks.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • BlueprintMarketing
      BlueprintMarketing last edited by Nov 2, 2013, 5:11 AM Nov 2, 2013, 5:11 AM

      great information here guys.

      Phil some of the info you have put out has been extremely helpful. We a client whose video producer published the video to Vimeo plus ( I know Vimeo Pro is much different) and subsequently has created the 3rd strongest listing for their name. Even though the video has been removed from Vimeo for 2 months it still ranks very high. What I've taken away from this is make sure whoever you're working with is using a business-class video hosting platform and does not publish work to something like Vimeo a service I feel is equal to YouTube in many ways ( aside from their Pro feature which will allow somebody to host a video appropriately.)

      Thanks for all the info,

      Thomas

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,2 months
      • klbklb90015
        klbklb90015 @PhilNottingham last edited by Aug 29, 2013, 10:25 PM Aug 29, 2013, 10:25 PM

        Thank you very much - all your posts have been very helpful. Thanks.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • topic:timeago_earlier,8 days
        • PhilNottingham
          PhilNottingham @danatanseo last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 7:01 AM Aug 22, 2013, 7:01 AM

          Thanks Dana! Spot on - that's exacly what I would say :).

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • PhilNottingham
            PhilNottingham @LesleyPaone last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 7:00 AM Aug 22, 2013, 6:58 AM

            Hi Lesley,

            I know this is what Moz does, but to be honest with you - I'm not convinced this is the best move for them. WBF's on YouTube do very little for them so far as I can tell and overall I think concentrating on one channel (either YouTube or self hosted - dependent on goals) will be more effective.

            It's just like trying to have your cake and eat it. Sorry Roger!

            However, the Moz example isn't really relevant here anyway, since the content is more "blogging" focused and informational, rather than being tied to a specific product.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • PhilNottingham
              PhilNottingham last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 6:54 AM Aug 22, 2013, 6:54 AM

              Hey Karen,

              My answer would basically be - "You probably don't want to do both, but it really depends on the kind of content you have, what you're trying to achieve and whether there's demand for it on YouTube".

              The important thing to remember about YouTube is that it's a social and community platform as much as a hosting service. It really isn't the appropriate place for every kind of video content so you need to take the perspective of "Would this video be relevant for anyone stumbling across it on YouTube without prior knowledge of my brand". You'll find that people don't go to YouTube with brand focused queries very often and nor do they often click back from a video to a third party site. This means the main value you're going to get for the platform will be brand awareness (see here for more details: http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube) but in order to achieve that you need to have content the YouTube audience care about. How to videos may well fit into that category, but only if they're solving generic problems and aren't specifically focused around your specific products.

              The additional problem with putting videos on both Wistia (or self hosting) and YouTube is that YouTube can end up outranking your site for branded queries, which means you can potentially drive commercially focused traffic (those who may end up actually buying something!) to YouTube rather than your site and from here it's then very difficult to drive them back to your site (click through rates from YouTube are normally less than 1%); this means that, in essence, you can be unnecessarily adding and additional step in your product conversion funnel for some organic  searches.

              So - in short, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but to start with you need to really work out what you're trying to achieve with your videos and determine who the audience is for this content specifically. I've written some more extensive articles about this issue in particular, so if you want more info I advise you to go have a read.

              http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

              http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

              http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/

              I hope that's useful!

              Phil

              klbklb90015 1 Reply Last reply Aug 29, 2013, 10:25 PM Reply Quote 3
              • matbennett
                matbennett last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 5:12 AM Aug 22, 2013, 5:12 AM

                The answer to this depends on what you are trying to achieve with the video.  Video can serve numerous purposes in online marketing and the best methods to employ differ a bit depending on what you are trying to achieve.

                If the aim is for as many people as possible to see the video then you want to include it (or a version of it) on YouTube. YouTube is in itself the second biggest search engine on the internet, so a properly optimised video there has the potential to be seen by a huge audience.  This is perfect for video that, for instance, introduce your product or service as a solution to a common problem.

                One use of video that we employ is to obtain rich snippets.  A video rich snippet can leapfrog your page above others in the SERPs and also bring an improved click through rate. Win!  If your video is hosted on YouTube and embedded on your site then this is not going to help you.  The reason for that is that the rich snippet will lead to a youtube page, not yours so you want to host it privately.

                Privately doesn't have to mean on your own server. In fact, in most cases we avoid that.  Services like Wistia and Vimeo have paid options that allow you to upload your video with all the ease of youtube, but control which sites the video cam be embedded on. This protects your video and helps you keep that rich snippet result to yourself.

                We often now look at using Wistia/Vimeo for the main video, but doing a second edit for YouTube if the content suits their audience.

                As Dana says, Phil Nottingham has put out some very good posts about this, and also how to get the most out of whichever path you go down.  There is an outfit called reelseo who have also done some good posts on this.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • InMarketingWeTrust
                  InMarketingWeTrust Subscriber last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 1:59 AM Aug 22, 2013, 1:59 AM

                  Hi Karen,

                  For one off videos, the Youtube imbedding fuction is great. However, if you are going to have a series of videos all connected to one another, it is probably better to link to the Youtube website.

                  Single videos are great content for SEO, but having too many may confuse your viewers.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Ron_McCabe
                    Ron_McCabe last edited by Aug 22, 2013, 1:00 AM Aug 22, 2013, 1:00 AM

                    Karen,

                    I have some qualifiers on hosing your video on the site.  As long as your web host if fast enough you will get a bump in Google's algorithm as they ding you for the slow performance off of Youtube.  If you hst the videos you might also want to use a content delivery network to speed this up further.  Finally you should submit a site map for your video to optimize how you are indexed.

                    I would also host on Youtube simply because this is yet another way to be found. I believe this also creates an inbound link as well(I am not 100% sure on this).

                    Ron

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • danatanseo
                      danatanseo last edited by Aug 21, 2013, 10:39 PM Aug 21, 2013, 10:39 PM

                      Phil Nottingham is the top expert, in my opinion, on this subject. He has written extensively on this topic both here and at Distilled.net. I would very highly recommend searching here for "phil nottingham video SEO" and then repeat the same search in Google. He's brilliant, and believe me has probably already answered every question you could possibly have about where to host your videos, and better yet, why.

                      The first thing I think Phil would say would be: First determine what purpose you want the videos to serve, then determine the most appropriate place to host them.

                      He would say a lot more, and much better (particularly with the accent!) than I do. Here's a video from Phil & Will at Distilled (that's fun to say) to get you started:  http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled

                      Enjoy!

                      PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Aug 22, 2013, 7:01 AM Reply Quote 3
                      • LesleyPaone
                        LesleyPaone last edited by Aug 21, 2013, 9:43 PM Aug 21, 2013, 9:43 PM

                        I would host on both. It seems to be what SEO Moz does, so I am sure that is the best strategy.

                        Check here

                        PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Aug 22, 2013, 6:58 AM Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • ismgadmin

                          Does google index html5 tracks (captions) for videos?

                          If we add the <track> tag next to a html5 video, with a Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT) file for video subtitles / captions will google visit that and index it?

                          Image & Video Optimization | Oct 1, 2019, 3:54 PM | ismgadmin
                          0
                        • WayneRooney

                          Embed video. YouTube or Vimeo ? Whats best for the pagespeed ?

                          Hello, We want to add video to our website.
                          We are not sure if to embed it from YouTube or Vimeo. Do you guys know whats best that will not hurt the pagespeed of the site ? Thank you

                          Image & Video Optimization | Dec 9, 2014, 5:10 PM | WayneRooney
                          0
                        • TMI.com

                          Can you get rich snippets for Youtube hosted videos?

                          My website has several videos, mostly product reviews and tutorials. I'd like for these videos to show in the SERPs with rich snippets, but I am hosting them through Youtube. What is your experience with Youtube hosted videos? Do they generate rich snippets? Or will Google always rank the Youtube video over your web page?

                          Image & Video Optimization | Jun 12, 2014, 1:41 PM | TMI.com
                          1
                        • bedbugsupply

                          My wistia videos are not being index by Google. Does anyone know what can be happening?

                          I have the wistia site map on my robots.txt file and I also manually submit the site map to google. It shows that my videos were submitted successfully but they are not being indexed.  Thanks

                          Image & Video Optimization | Mar 16, 2015, 10:35 AM | bedbugsupply
                          0
                        • seowhiskey

                          Best Video Sitemap plugin for wordpress? And do I need both a video sitemap and a normal one?

                          Hi all, I currently use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin on my wordpress site. But we've recently began adding (self-hosted) videos that we've been careful to markup with the relevant schema. However, there's a couple of things I don't understand and am hoping someone could help: Do we need a separate video sitemap that either works alongside Google XML Sitemaps or replaces it? If we do need a video sitemap, what's the best video site map to get? (we are using the Thesis theme so can't use the Yoast one unfortunately as they don't play nice together...) Thanks for your help! Andrew

                          Image & Video Optimization | May 1, 2013, 9:32 AM | seowhiskey
                          0
                        • casper434

                          Local Citation Sites

                          After searching through many local citation site I find that most only apply to the US. Are there any really good ones in Canada?

                          Image & Video Optimization | Dec 2, 2012, 10:59 PM | casper434
                          0
                        • Tektronix

                          URL redirect to a YouTube Channel?

                          Hey all, We recently ran a video content contest on a micro site and we generated some links for the URL. In December we are planning on doing a redirect of the domain to our YouTube channel where all of the videos hosted.  My question is how much SEO benefit will there be by redirecting to our YouTube channel vs redirecting to a single video from the contest. Does the strength of the channel as whole affect the videos in that channels ability to rank on YouTube and in SERPs? The other option is to just redirect the URL to our product page on our main website, but to me that doesn't seem like it would provide the best user experience 🙂 If anyone has experience with this kind of an issue I'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

                          Image & Video Optimization | Aug 30, 2011, 12:54 PM | Tektronix
                          0
                        • AdamThompson

                          Looking for beta testers for new free video SEO/marketing tool

                          We're getting ready to release a free tool to the SEO community that we hope will help marketers better create and optimize/market great video content. Hint: the tool has features built in to help you analyze video rankings in universal search results. 🙂 We'd like to get feedback from a few beta users first, though. If you'd be willing to give us your honest feedback in return for getting to use the tool early (and getting to suggest features you'd like), please PM me. Thanks in advance!

                          Image & Video Optimization | Jun 14, 2013, 12:59 PM | AdamThompson
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.