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I fully take your point, though i've actually never come across a scenario where I've thought Animoto etc would be a better solution than doing less content - but doing it properly.

Personally, I don't think the baby clothing line video is fit for purpose - I can't even read what the writing says and I actually think just an image slideshow would work much much better here than the video form factor they've chosen.

However, I am conscious that I'm a bit of a fundamentalist about this and I concede that there may be occasions when due to very limited budget and creativity - these kind of stock solutions are appropriate.........I've just never come across one yet.

So, the thumbnail implementation seems fine, but there are errors in other parts of the schema mark-up, which may be why your video isn't getting indexed.

Additionally, you may find that you can't get an embedded YouTube video indexed, since the way Google treat YouTube videos is different from other platforms and you often won't get a rich snippet for you page - additionally, the YouTube.com version of your video may end up outranking you and claiming the video snippet.

So, firstly I recommend not using YouTube for this - then you need to ensure you're implementing the rest of the Schema.org markup correctly.

Hope that's useful!

Hi Vadim,

not to pick on you at all, because I think you've given a great answer - but I want to generally object to the suggestion of using things like Animoto and Wideo etc... because the kind of content you get in return, while it's scalable and low cost, it's also really low quality and incredibly generic.

IMO, if your video doesn't speak to the USP of your product or your brand in some fundamental way, It's not worth doing. I know that's a hardline to take, especially with SEOs who often, sadly all want to do everything as cheaply as possible and don't care too much about quality -- but I really think you're always better off following your second suggestion and finding a talented freelancer or student who can build out something customized and uniquely valuable for you. The cost shouldn't be prohibitively greater and you'll get way more for your money in the long run.

I absolutely recommend finding a good local videographer to work with, rather than using any sort of "out of the box" solutions, since in order for your product videos to actually be any good, you'll need to ensure you communicate some of  your unique understanding of the product within the content itself - and this requires you to work with someone fairly closely.

Sites like mandy.com, shootingpeople.org, searchlight.com, skillset.org, productionhub.com, filmandtvpro.com will all allow you to input a brief and find people to work with who may suit your needs.

If you have a large number of products to go through, the cheapest and most scalable way to do this will be to hire a good camera operator for a day or two to get loads of stock content for all of your products, including interviews with any staff who can explain about all the products etc (dependent on what you're actually selling) and then, you can hire an editor to make sense of this footage and turn it into the videos required. Then, further down the line, if you want to do more videos or different styles of videos (see: http://moz.com/blog/the-kind-of-video-you-should-create-for-your-business-whiteboard-friday) you will probably be able to do this by just adding some additional shots to the library of footage you've already built up.

You're most welcome!

Hi Tamara,

Admittedly, I have not seen this before - but It seems to me that the numerical strings probably correspond to videos that don't have Titles - potentially either videos that have been deleted - or perhaps videos that just haven't had titles specified when being uploaded.

In short, it's a slight error in YouTube analytics, but the cause isn't entirely clear. As the URLs that the video codes should respond to bring up a 404 error, I'd suggest that perhaps these were old videos that have been deleted, though that it only a guess.

How can you remove it? To be honest, I'm not sure. I suggest you speak to YouTube support.

I'd say make that decision entirely based on goals and the content type - not the restrictions of the platform.

Hi Dan,

In short - no, it won't be considered "duplicate content" if a video is visible on YouTube and is also embedded on a website using another platform - but it can cause other problems. The main one is cannibalisation of your specific goal... if you content is hosted on your site and on YouTube... you can find that YouTube will outrank your site for certain keywords if it gets much traction. Additionally, such an implementation isn't very good for YouTube optimisation, because in order to get a video ranking well on YouTube - you want to be able to drive as many views and embeds with it as possible. So, in short, it's just not very strategic and many cannibalise the effectiveness of everything you're trying to achieve.

Another point to make is that I have never actually come across a series of videos that I think is appropriate for both platforms - so ask yourself whether a YouTube presence is actually going to be valuable with these videos and whether or not a better option would be to just re-edit the content to ensure you have slightly different videos for each platform - specifically targeted to the goal in question.

Additional, no - You can't get backlinks from YouTube videos. If the YouTube Api is used around a different player, this is not that different in practice, from just embedding the YouTube videos... it will still count as a link to YouTube/embedded version of that video.

I actually have the exact same problem with Distilled :(.

Sadly - there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it at the moment, for reasons I genuinely cannot comprehend. I'm assuming the YouTube teams and the G+ teams basically aren't talking to each other at the moment, because - surely you should be able to merge accounts once G+ and YouTube became integrated.

Alas...If I hear anything, I'll let you know - but right now I've got the same problem. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

In short - no, this isn't seen as duplicate content at all.

However, you are right in what you say that an embed is more like a link back to the YouTube.com version of your video.

If this is a sort of "blogging" video, expect the YouTube version to rank higher than your post.

More information about Video SEO..... where do I begin?

http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/

http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled

http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-leverage-investment-in-video-to-build-more-links

The first thing to say Karl is that, sadly, every bit of software in this space currently sucks.

I've looked into this extensively, for similar reasons as you and unfortunately am yet to find a solution which doesn't irritate me in one major way.

That said, of the ones we've trialed at Distilled so far - our favourite (and my recommendation for you) is join.me https://join.me/

It's a bit fiddly as to have audio as well as video, you need participants to download the desktop app - but it's pretty lightweight, fast and less glitchy than gotomeeting.

Cheers,

Phil.

Except that it sucks for this use case because you can't do a restricted hangout-on-air, where it's not open to the public - so end up just doing a hangout with loads of people and then it gets very messy.

It doesn't matter at all when you upload a video to YouTube.

Unlike social platforms such as reddit, hacker news etc - there isn't some sort of algorithmic drop off if a YouTube video doesn't get immediate traction. Videos can sit dormat for weeks before then going viral when an influencer picks them up.

The uploading time isn't important, but your wider promotional strategy will be and time may be a factor in that e.g. when do you send out a press release? When should you tweet about it?

Thanks Dana! Spot on - that's exacly what I would say :).

Hi Lesley,

I know this is what Moz does, but to be honest with you - I'm not convinced this is the best move for them. WBF's on YouTube do very little for them so far as I can tell and overall I think concentrating on one channel (either YouTube or self hosted - dependent on goals) will be more effective.

It's just like trying to have your cake and eat it. Sorry Roger!

However, the Moz example isn't really relevant here anyway, since the content is more "blogging" focused and informational, rather than being tied to a specific product.

Hey Karen,

My answer would basically be - "You probably don't want to do both, but it really depends on the kind of content you have, what you're trying to achieve and whether there's demand for it on YouTube".

The important thing to remember about YouTube is that it's a social and community platform as much as a hosting service. It really isn't the appropriate place for every kind of video content so you need to take the perspective of "Would this video be relevant for anyone stumbling across it on YouTube without prior knowledge of my brand". You'll find that people don't go to YouTube with brand focused queries very often and nor do they often click back from a video to a third party site. This means the main value you're going to get for the platform will be brand awareness (see here for more details: http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube) but in order to achieve that you need to have content the YouTube audience care about. How to videos may well fit into that category, but only if they're solving generic problems and aren't specifically focused around your specific products.

The additional problem with putting videos on both Wistia (or self hosting) and YouTube is that YouTube can end up outranking your site for branded queries, which means you can potentially drive commercially focused traffic (those who may end up actually buying something!) to YouTube rather than your site and from here it's then very difficult to drive them back to your site (click through rates from YouTube are normally less than 1%); this means that, in essence, you can be unnecessarily adding and additional step in your product conversion funnel for some organic  searches.

So - in short, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but to start with you need to really work out what you're trying to achieve with your videos and determine who the audience is for this content specifically. I've written some more extensive articles about this issue in particular, so if you want more info I advise you to go have a read.

http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/

I hope that's useful!

Phil

Yes. I completely agree. Think kind of text is crappy, pointless and I don't even think it'll do much to help your rankings (Google can sniff out "SEO optimised" copy from a mile-off).

The approach I take for this kind of things is to get an actually decent writer to craft the copy, without considering keyword optimisation whatsoever and just trying to make it as useful as possible for the user.

Assuming the writer doesn't use obscure language for the sake of it, this text will show enough relevancy for appropriate keywords and topics that the text will be better "optimised" than anything created for "SEO".

Honestly.... None of them. They're all terrible and will result in a second rate video that could have been created by anyone.

You'll be much better off finding yourself a freelance editor or talented student who can created completely bespoke and customised content for you. While I appreciate budgets can be tight, you really will get what you pay for and I'd advise doing less higher quality content, rather than more lower quality stuff.

Hi Sheldon,

I've written about this extensively, but there are definite concerns about YouTube outranking your content and it can happen irrespective of the number of views garnered. Raw views are not a ranking factor on YouTube - so virality is not the only instance of a YouTube video outranking the page it's embedded on. Imagine, for example, how Google should calculate which page should rank if the page is embedded across multiple sites all optimised for the same keyword.

Now..I'm not saying YouTube is never the appropriate hosting solution - far from it - but I am saying that the reasons you would choose self hosting preclude YouTube from being a viable alternative. YouTube should only be used where content is consciously created for the platform, in order to take advantage of the social visibility it offers.

For more information  - first watch this video: http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled

then read the following posts:

http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube

http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

I hope that helps clarify things.

Hi Sheldon,

I'm afraid I completely disagree with your advice here. When i say "self hosting" this doesn't necessarily mean you have to host the content on your server - using a CDN will do the same job from an SEO perspective and not come with any of the bandwidth concerns.

However, if you don't want to self host, the alternative - as I mentioned - is to use a paid third party solution such as Vzaar, Wistia, Vimeo Pro, Brightcove, Ooyala etc... not YouTube

YouTube is essentially a social platform and can outrank you for your content if you're trying to drive traffic. Additionally, if you content isn't relevant for a YouTube audience - it'll do very poorly on the platform since the user engagements metrics will suggest that the content is substandard.