Add Videos Above or Below the Fold?

[nicole.healthline]

We are considering adding videos to thousands of article pages, and were wondering if it would be better to add video above or below the fold?

They take up quite a bit of space, and push the article content below the fold--would this hurt us?

[PhilNottingham]

It's true that Google can't read the actual content of a video - but they are getting there slowly but surely. First they'll be able to match audio wave forms, then pick out frames as essentially a selection of image sequences.

What Google can do however, is work out when there is a video on page, what size the frame is, how long the content is and how it's encoded/embedded. For additional information - like you say, transcripts, Schema and video sitemaps can be used.

Therefore, to a certain extent, you can get away with putting duplicate video content across your site and showing different meta elements in the video sitemap - but only if you don't host with YouTube. Google  can work out, using the aforementioned methods, whether or not YouTube videos are direct duplicates and prevent you from uploading them.

Nonetheless - videos are always "good" content, by virtue of being a rich media type.

[nicole.healthline]

Thanks to everyone for the response

Based on everyone's responses, I'm assuming you all think that videos count as google's definition of 'content': http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html

I am concerned though that Google can't actually read the content of a video--what if you added quite a few videos accross a site without adding transcripts or schema.org?

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Michelle,

So, my answer here is essentially - "Test some stuff out and see what works." There is no algorithmic preference for the exact placement of video on a page and so the decision should be based on user experience, the kind of videos that you are embedding and the focus of the pages in question.

If you have lots of nice unique product-promoting videos, then my temptation would be to suggest putting them prominently on the page, ideally above the fold, but certainly somewhere eye-catching that drives potential customers to click through and watch.

However, if your videos are essentially going up to support existing articles and enhance the overall quality of the page from Googlebot's perspective, but don't add a great deal to the user experience - then you want to make sure the videos are not too prominently placed.

While putting videos below the fold is one option in this instance, something else you can do to reduce the space they take up is reduce the player frame-size, so they fit in a sidebar, or somewhere away from the main body of content.

Ultimately you need to play to your strengths and the typical audience use cases you deal with. If your videos are really good and convert well - emphasize them, if your videos are somewhat low quality and are just there to offer SEO benefit, then don't emphasize them so much.

Phil

[irvingw]

Put it wherever it makes most sense to your users, it does not matter for SEO. Are you self hosting the videos or embedding links? Self-hosting will give you the most SEO power with a potential to have the vidoe thumbnail in the Google search results.

Make use of:

1. schema.org video object

2. video sitemap

3. opengraph video tags

[intSchools]

If it is your own original content and more 'valuable' to the end user than the article content then I would put it above the fold.

If it is not then I would keep it below the fold.