Over the past 2 months we’ve talked a lot about the impact of videos on SEO, user engagement, and sales. Videos have become one of the most important components of your marketing strategy, Native videos (those that have been uploaded directly to a specific platform, such as Facebook or YouTube) are the ones that get the most exposure on that platform. For example, if you have a video and you upload it to Facebook, that video is native to Facebook. On the other hand, if you upload it to YouTube, and link to it on Facebook, it is not a native video to Facebook. It is a native video to YouTube.
When it comes to your own website, you have 3 choices.
- You can upload it to your website (making it native to your site)
- You can upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and link to it, or
- You can upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and embed it.
What does this mean and which option is best?
Uploading to your own website offers several advantages:
- You don’t need to worry about advertising or related videos being shown
- You don’t need to worry about the hosting platform
But, it can also pose some disadvantages:
- The videos can be slower depending upon your host.
- Google doesn’t place as much SEO juice on self-hosted videos as they do on their own (YouTube) videos.
- You get less exposure to the video on your own site than you do by being on a public platform like YouTube.
There are times when self-hosting your videos might be the best option, but typically, since Google likes videos that are posted on YouTube (and Facebbok likes videos that are posted on Facebook), for SEO purposes, you are better off hosting your videos on YouTube. This then gives you 2 options: linking to the video by sharing the URL, or embedding the video by displaying it via an iframe. Which is better?
Advantages to linking to a video include:
- Linking to videos makes it easier for viewers to copy the URL and share it with their network.
- Clicking your video link redirects users to your YouTube channel, which can help promote your channel and expose readers to your other videos.
Disadvantages to linked videos:
- Unlike embedded videos, video links will likely not appear on search results.
- When a visitor clicks on a video link, they leave your website.
If you want to include videos on a website, the better option is to embed videos.Â
The embed code optimizes the video for online viewing on your website. You get less control over the video when it is embedded, and Google may display ads. But for SEO purposes, as well as better exposure across the internet, embedded videos are the best option for displaying video content on your website. Embedded videos improve the searchability of your content on Google An embedded video could encourage visitors to stay on your site longer, which is significant for the latest updates to the Google search algorithm. When you embed a video, readers will also notice your video thumbnails, which can help improve brand recognition and indirectly promote your channel.
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Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/
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