Should I remove our videos from DotSub.com to try & boost our Wistia videos?

[danatanseo]

Okay all you video SEO lovers, I had a thought today that I thought would make an interesting question.

I have been using the tools at DotSub.com to transcribe our videos. The tools are great, and even better, free. We have about 80 videos on DotSub and all of these videos are also on our YouTube channel. Once I've completed the transcription, I've been exporting the .srt file and uploading them to YouTube to replace the God-awful machine transcriptions (sorry Google, but they are baaaadddd).

Anyway, sometimes our DotSub video will outrank the same YouTube video, sometimes not. The 80 videos on DotSub have amassed about 10,000 views and a couple of translations...which is nice, I guess?

Recently, we've begun experimenting with Wistia. Here is a search term for which our YouTube and DotSub video results pretty much flood page 1:  "studiolive webinar"

All of the DotSub videos also exist as Wistia videos on our Website and blog. For obvious reasons, we would rather have our Wistia videos rank in those three positions which right now are dominated by the DotSub versions.

Should I remove the content from DotSub in order to try to get the Wistia videos to rank instead? Or should I leave them all there? I should probably add that we do have Wistia videos that are outranking both Dotsub and Youtube versions of the exact same videos...so I know that's possible. I'm just wondering if by leaving all of these videos up at DotSub if we are cannibalizing our potential at ranking for videos that link back to our site?

What do you think?

[BlueprintMarketing]

hi Dana,

I would have to say that having your videos up on similar public systems like YouTube Dot.stub along with mimeo it unless you're running professional and not allowing it for public use.

Unfortunately, that will give all ranking of your video to whatever public hosting provider you have chosen. Because knew it most likely not want to compete with them I would take them down however before doing so I would console with Phil at distilled he knows his stuff especially about videos and I'm sure he'd be happy to help.

http://www.distilled.net/about/people/phil-nottingham/

Wistia Is a fantastic tool will allow you to rank very high and but you don't want to compete for your own videos and the fact that you have the ability to take them down makes it an easy choice. I would take them down.

http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/video-seo-tactics-to-get-ranked/

I believe this to be an excellent guide for your choice.

http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/getting-video-results-in-google/

Wistia also offers a fantastic transcription service with 24 hour turnaround

I hope I have been of help,

Thomas

[danatanseo]

Thanks Thomas!

Okay, so I have one vote to take them down.  

Interested to hear from others who have an opinion on whether they should stay or should they go?

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Dana,

I agree I think you should get as many people as possible to weigh in on this. It's an important issue and I would be very happy to see more people away and is well with their opinions or what they've learned in the field I think this is a very important topic to a lot of people and should get quite a bit of attention. Hope you're doing well

Sincerely,

Thomas

[PhilNottingham]

Hey Dana,

Basically - I think you need to test this and test it again to find the solution :).

The DotSub content is essentially behaving in exactly the same way as the YouTube versions of your video - that is ranking well but driving traffic to a siloed page with just the video on and no way to drive further conversions. Given that the tutorial style of the content isn't very sales focused, I wouldn't be too concerned about that, but since you're splitting traffic between DotSub and YouTube - you're not doing all in your power to optimise your YouTube channel. Should you move just to Wistia and YouTube? - I think that really depends what you're trying to achieve with the videos. Currently I don't feel like they're amazing direct sales tools, so I wonder how much ranking your own domain for the terms in questions matters a great deal to the bottom financial line? The only way to really know that will be to test it rigorously.

You'll certainly be cannibalising direct traffic unless you choose just one channel, but really I think the question boils down far more to "what will be the best use of these videos?"

Cheers,

Phil.

[Christy-Correll]

Did this answer your question, Dana?

[danatanseo]

Hi Christy,

I think the jury's still out. The original intention was to syndicate our videos across as many channels as possible. Given that we aren't going to hire an agency to do it, the submission process comes down to me, and honestly, I still haven't finished submitting all 140+ of our videos just to DotSub.com alone, let alone the other possibilities on this list.

I am thinking maybe I didn't ask the question the right way around and perhaps I should start a new question like "What are the benefits, if any, of syndicating your video content across as many free video channels as possible if your goal in creating videos is solely brand awareness?"

In other words, our videos weren't created to gain links. They were created to gain eyeballs and awareness. That being the case, wouldn't it be better to upload as many as possible to as many placed as possible, especially if it doesn't cost us anything more than the time it takes me to do the submissions?

Thoughts?

[PhilNottingham]

Hey Dana,

I'd answer this question... with a question, which is "where are your audience?".

Syndication across platforms is only going to be valuable in so much as it reaches more of your target audience and so I'd suggest starting with working out who they are and where they hangout.

My perception is that you're going to hit the point of diminishing returns pretty quickly after you cover off YouTube, Vimeo and potentially Daily Motion (if you're accepted), but for your niche, there may well be other sites which have a concentrated pocket of your target audience.

I'd ignore the list of sites you linked to altogether, as I think it's completely wrong. They seem to have confused "highest traffic" with PageRank and then lump hosting platforms (which don't display user submitted content on their sites) into the mix.

Cheers,

Phil