URL redirect to a YouTube Channel?

[Tektronix]

Hey all,

We recently ran a video content contest on a micro site and we generated some links for the URL. In December we are planning on doing a redirect of the domain to our YouTube channel where all of the videos hosted.  My question is how much SEO benefit will there be by redirecting to our YouTube channel vs redirecting to a single video from the contest. Does the strength of the channel as whole affect the videos in that channels ability to rank on YouTube and in SERPs?

The other option is to just redirect the URL to our product page on our main website, but to me that doesn't seem like it would provide the best user experience

If anyone has experience with this kind of an issue I'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

[AnthonyMangia]

Why give that link juice to YouTube?  Lord knows, they've got plenty of it.

Take advantage of the links you received and make them benefit your main website.  Create a landing page on your main site featuring some of the best submissions embedded on the page, and include a link to your channel if visitors want to see even more videos.  Then, 301 redirect the microsite to the landing page on your main website in order to get the link juice to pass through to your primary domain.

The only reason you'd want to redirect your microsite directly to the YouTube channel is if you don't have a main website and your YouTube channel is your main presence online.  Even then, though, I'd generally opt in the direction of leaving the microsite up and embedding some featured videos on it.  You can certainly make a page on YouTube rank decently well for a keyword, but given the lack of control you have over on-page elements, it's much more difficult than optimizing a website that you own.

[Tektronix]

I like your idea of building a landing page specifically for the redirect. Didn't even think about that. I was just concerned that people following old links would be disappointed by landing on a product page or whatever. Totally makes perfect sense though. Thanks for the tip!