Should I delete youtube videos when moving to Wistia (or other on-site platform)?

[Sirmontegu]

One of my new clients recently built a site that has a great potential for ranking product pages with video rich snippets. Each product page has a single video, but they are currently hosted on youtube and embedded using Youtube iframes.

Overall the videos aren't a great fit for Youtube, and we have decided to move the product videos to Wistia. (Much thanks to Phil Nottingham for his answers in this post, and his overall insights on video SEO in general). So what is the best way to make sure we get original credit for the video? I'm planning to take down all the product videos from the Youtube account as soon as we switch the embeds on the site. Is that enough?

[GlobeRunner]

I would keep the videos on YouTube. In fact, it's usually recommended that you post them on multiple video sites for additional distribution. Even though you're not necessarily going to link to the YouTube videos from your site, you'll often get people who will view them there. And you can't ignore YouTube since it does have the most traffic.

[pdangermond]

I would keep them on YouTube. Since YouTube is owned by Google, they rank their videos higher on Google higher searches so you don't want to lose that. I agree with Eric. If anything, keep them in both places.

[MoosaHemani]

I guess Eric is right just let them be on youtube and also make sure they are ranking high when someone search for it on youtube.

The percentage of people who convert after watching a video online (big number watch videos on youtube) so this is good for your conversions as well.

Hope this helps!

[PhilNottingham]

Hey Sirmontegu,

Basically, I'd recommend you just mark the YouTube videos as unlisted (which is like putting a noindex tag on your videos) so that user experience isn't damaged for anyone who has already linked to the videos and you'll retain the view count on your channel (good  for social proof) but will also ensure your YouTube videos don't outrank the canonical version on your site, as well as ensuring your more YouTube friendly content is prominent on your channel.

Then all you need to do is ensure you're submitted a video sitemap (with the Wistia toolset) and you should get the videos indexed on your site.

Cheers,

Phil.

[PhilNottingham]

No, don't do this, it's a bad idea.

Just because you have content assets doesn't mean you should put them everywhere (it's the same principle as syndicating a blog post). If the content isn't relevant for an audience on YouTube, which product/sales focused videos typically aren't, then they shouldn't be on there. Content should be created for the YouTube channel, not just put on there because you have it.

Additionally, self hosting your content and putting it on YouTube can have negative technical impacts. You can find that YouTube will outrank your pages, which splits your traffic and view count, thereby damaging your SEO; you're also failing to optimise for YouTube in this way, since you won't be driving any YouTube views through the video embeds.

For product videos, the goal is never to get as many people to see them as possible, but rather to drive as many sales as possible, which means you need to get people to view the content in a context where they can make a purchase (not on YouTube, since there's no "buy" button).

[PhilNottingham]

Not true. Just because a video is on YouTube, it doesn't mean it'll rank better than if it is self hosted.

[PhilNottingham]

Actually, this isn't quite true Moosa...

Very few people convert from watching YouTube videos and the CTR back to a site in order to make purchases is typically less than 1%.

[Sirmontegu]

Thanks so much Phil,

I didn't even realize there was an option for "unlisted". Because these are the ever-difficult-to-get-links-to product pages, I am hoping to try to get a few sites that have already embedded the videos to switch to the custom player.

[Sirmontegu]

I do agree that video helps with conversion, but I also agree that Youtube isn't the right place for these conversion type videos. Even with a high conversion rate, they aren't being watched enough for it to have an effect in this case. (Each video has <50 views over 3 months)

[vmialik]

Second Phil on this one: "You can find that YouTube will outrank your pages, which splits your traffic and view count, thereby damaging your SEO" This is the major issue here.