Youtube video or not

[Happy-SEO]

We have a website full of introduction video's that are viewable in youtube on the website. Is that good for my SEO rankings? Or should i consider placing my video direct on the website without using youtube?

Thanks!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

What I would do is put your videos on YouTube and optimize them there. I would put videos here due to the searching capabilities, YouTube's daily traffic, and also being able to optimize your channel to your brand.

I would look video hosting options for your website, as well. Here is a great list from GoAnimate.

I personally like Wistia for the following reasons:

• Customization
• Branding
• Calls to action
• Awesome heatmapping & engagement graphs
• Sitemap generation
• Integration with other tools
• Rand also uses it for Whiteboard Friday

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[BradsDeals]

Are you wanting these videos to drive traffic to your site? If so, then YouTube is not going to be the answer as it's pretty terrible as a traffic driver. I would host on site if at all possible. Maybe throw them up on YouTube because why not, but more for brand awareness than for SEO.

[Happy-SEO]

Thanks! First i'm going to optimize my channel for our brand.

[Storitz]

Rebecca is right that YouTube is a bad traffic driver, but is is pretty solid for discovery of evergreen videos.  I'm not quite sure what you mean by "introduction" videos, but if the are product intros or how-tos, then YouTube is great for that.

Plus, hosting videos on your own is going to strangle the load time of your site which will crush your SEO.

[Warren.W]

I'm also looking to improve upon branding for my site barcodefactory using videos to do some branding...I'm very interested in this topic.

We have a Youtube channel for the same purposes of using the traffic to generate some branding attention...just can't beat Youtube's audience over trying to go this alone via your own domain.