Including videos on an eCommerce website.

[ChrisHolgate]

Hi,
We're about to start integrating video content on our eCommerece site in order to bolster the quantity and diversity of useful content that each page presents a potential customer.  We’re talking product reviews, information relating to the differences between different products and company information.  From an SEO perspective it has been suggested that Google will like this however I have a question regarding the actual method of integration.

Usually I would just insert some embed code linking to the correct video on our YouTube channel however I’m really conscious that a search engine will just see the embed code, notice the page loads slightly slower and not really gain anything useful from the video file.

I’m assuming that this isn’t the case but I have several questions:

-          Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page.  Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable?

-          Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site?

-          Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page?   If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO?

These are probably all pretty basic questions for which I do apologise but I want to make sure that before spending a sizable amount of time on this that we start off with a correct integration!

Many thanks

[OlegKorneitchouk]

I highly recommend you read this and this.

-          Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page.  Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable?

Self-hosted is preferred but keep server costs in mind. If not, youtube is usually the way to go.

-          Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site?

Ideally yes. A part of video SEO is it's context.

-          Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page?   If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO?

Videos can reduce bounce-backs, increase backlinks (people tend to link to them more), show a rich snippet in SERPs, improve conversions (if done right). Google can't watch and categorize the video but does it instead on the page's content, surrounding text, and backlinks.

[ChrisHolgate]

Thank-you so much for your response, Oleg.

I have read through both guides and, on the basis that we have a dedicated server with TONS of unused bandwidth / CPU resources / Disk Space I think it might be an idea to self-host... Even if nothing else it would be nice not to have YouTube harassing our customers with adverts / related videos!

That having been said it would be nice to have the self-help guides on both our site and YouTube.  This would mean that we could potentially gain visitors via our Youtube channel but that people who were already on the site would see our self hosting version and so would be less likely to leave after watching the video.

Would you anticipate any duplication issues if we were to post our content on both our own site and YouTube?

[PhilNottingham]

Yes. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy gives some detail on the possible issues.

You'll basically lessens the value you can get from both self hosting and putting the content on YouTube if you do both. For your situation, I'd advise against putting the content on YouTube at all, as it wont make sense outside of the context of the page with your product on.