Better to host videos locally...or from youtube/other sources?

[cttgroup]

This post is deleted!

[EGOL]

If you host on YouTube you will give access to your vidieos to anyone who visits YouTube.com plus the videos on YouTube are often displayed in the Google SERPs.

So, if you have a message to get out and if you brand your videos they will get much greater exposure on YouTube.

[cttgroup]

Ok thanks for the reply. I know that it will get more exposure if hosted on youtube.... But would Google prefer to see us hosting our videos locally or externally on a site with a better pagerank. Or would there be no SEO gain between doing either other than that if I posted on youtube it will circulate round there?

[RyanKent]

Advantages of hosting videos on YouTube:

• YouTube is owned by Google so you have the maximum SEO benefit for the content itself. If the video is designed to promote your website, you will definitely get the maximum exposure on YouTube.

• Video hosting takes a lot of disk space. If you are using VPS or other hosting with limited storage, then space is an issue.

• Videos use a lot of bandwidth. Same issues as above.

• YouTube highly optimizes videos for viewers in two ways. First, the video is offered in formats ranging from 240 to 1080HD. YouTube creates versions of your video in 240, 360, 480, 720 HD and 1080 HD if you upload a 1080 HD video. This allows users to chose the right balance of quality vs size for their connection speed. If you locally host your video, most likely you will only provide one format which will leave many users unhappy with your choice.

Also, YouTube uses a fantastic Content Delivery Network. If you offer the video on your site and do not have a CDN, the playback will be significantly slower for most users.

The advantage to hosting your video locally is that you will have complete control over your content. If anyone wishes to watch your video, they need to visit your site.

If you have a great video, you can share it on YouTube, grab attention and then mention your site and gain traffic that way. Alternatively, you can host it on your site which forces anyone who wants to see the content to visit you. In order for the latter to work well, the video needs to be compelling, unique and you need to ensure it ranks well so people find it.

[turinseo]

You should  upload your video on YouTube and Vimeo, BUT for security issues remember to backup all videos on your PC, because in the case you are banned by YT you will loose all your contents and it is quite hard set up  back your account. In fact, sometimes  good videos can be banned because your competitors flag your videos as spam since remember to hold a back up of all your videos!

[Koozai]

I've always found it interesting that SEOmoz don't have a channel on YouTube so would be curious on their view for this.

At Koozai we host videos on Wistia and then display those on our site. We did use Vimeo but they can ban anything promotional (even for paid accounts) so we didn't like the risk. YouTube was avoided as then people can advertise on your website via AdWords so we didn't want that.

From an SEO point of view the best thing to do is to use YouTube as it's one of the most popular search engines so you'll get potential to be found on Google and by YouTube searchers.