Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Ray, Harvey is definitely pointing you in the right direction. Definitely read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors. It is the premiere annual industry report. *Do bear in mind that the last report (I'm a yearly participant) was published just prior to the launch of the whole Google+ Local system, so it does not reflect that big change. Here are 2 pieces I send my own clients when they are just getting acquainted with Local: The Zen of Local SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314 The Rudiments of Local SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344 Local ranking factors are very diverse...there may be more than 200 factors in Google's local algo. Here are some of the most widely cited factors: Lack of violations on your Google Places/Google+ Local profiles. Nothing kills rankings like violations. Memorize the guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528 Age and authority of your domain (you can't control age but you can build authority) - Local and traditional optimization of your website Consistency, quantity and quality of citations Quantity of Google-based reviews Proximity to city centroid of the target city and proximity to Google's cluster of similar businesses Traditional SEO factors such as quantity and quality of links and co-occurrence. Social factors That's just a start, but it does sum up some of the main things that go into achieving a high local rank in the city in which your business is physically located. Read David Mihm's report, the 2 articles I've linked to and the Google Places Quality Guidelines I've linked to and you will develop a very clear picture of your business' opportunities, its present failings and its room to grow.

Many questions need to be asked to understand the best method of rankings.  Generally, these begin with (but are not necessarily limited to): Is there a common higher level product grouping they all belong to that is highly searched at that higher (broader) level Would you have enough resources, focus, content, inbound links, social signals to develop each site individually as if it were the most important focus? Would enough users visiting any one of the highly focused sites otherwise expect to find other products on that site that you've split out to other sites, to potentially lose valuable cross-selling opportunities if you split them apart? What does the competitive landscape look like as relates to that broader common topic (if any exists), and what does it look like for each unique product type?  (Meaning is there more competition that also groups their similar products, or do most split them apart as well?) Just answering these questions can take you far enough along in the considerations process that you could very well have a clear enough answer to make a sound decision, though they could, themselves, lead to even more questions that would be necessary to answer just these....

You should be fine. I think Google is going to get smarter and smarter at recognizing the same video, but if it's relevant to the page and there is other supporting content, it is adding to the user experience and you'll be ok. Another option to consider on certain videos is to create a 2nd video (in Wistia). Essentially it's the same upload, but a new file with unique title/description etc. YouTube doesn't let you do this, but you'll be fine in Wistia. This could come into play if there is the same video with a sightly different context that needs to be on 2 pages. One question I'm pondering is the situation where a 'how to' video get's the attention of prominent bloggers. Let's say 15 big blogs in your industry all use the embed code (if you make it available) to post the video in a post of their own. This A) should benefit with by receiving a backlink, but B) does this complicate the waters from the Search Engine's perspective? I guess it's still on your video sitemap, and Google should know that you're the original source. We just started on Wistia, after a few years on BrightCove and experience with a bunch of others. Pretty cool platform, plus I hear a new (and much more flexible) player is coming out in December. Exciting!