Is hosting videos on our other, searchable sites competing with our site-hosted videos?

[tennisexpress]

We use TubeMogul to diversify where we display our videos  (in addition to YouTube), but are looking into using a video hosting site so that we can drive traffic back to our own website. Would uploading videos through TubeMogul be essentially like competing with a much more highly-ranked website with the same content?  Worth it?  Are there any disadvantages to using TubeMogul in general?

Thanks!

[MatthewEgan]

Picking your channels is always important.

My recommendation for on-site video is to publish the videos into your existing sitemap on the domain you want to rank for, and file a video sitemap with Google.  Video results are often given priority over text results and so Google will feature your video content because many sites just don't have a video function and they see great results from clicks and so forth when it comes to video.

Having a YouTube channel is also good, but it has to be a part of your strategy to keep it going.  Do you want people to comment on YouTube or on your site?  Do you want people searching to be able to find your site, or your YouTube page?  You want to funnel the traffic where you want it to go, and of course on your own site you can control the Calls to Action and things of that nature.

Here is an excellent SEOmoz blog from Kate Matsudaira that talks about creating a video strategy and some of the options and opportunities for success using video.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creating-online-video-strategy

Hope this helps!