YouTube Video VS Self Hosted Video?

[mlmguru]

I have a site where I have a lot of video on pages, I was wondering if displaying these video by embedding them through youtube is a bad idea. The youtube videos are my own, meaning they coming from my channel, but would it be better to host the video myself and play it that way instead of through youtube? I know when a visitor double clicks the video it takes them away from my site and to youtube which can be a bad thing since they are leaving my site, but is this bad for seo also? Any thoughts?

[orvn]

Youtube = backlinks, more people seeing your video, listing on SERPs when people search for videos.
Personal hosting = expensive and time consuming.

To minimize people leaving your site, add dialog boxes to your youtube videos linking them to other parts of your site.
Also write appealing video summaries and enable ratings.

Go for Youtube.

[mlmguru]

Originally Posted by orvn

Youtube = backlinks, more people seeing your video, listing on SERPs when people search for videos.
Personal hosting = expensive and time consuming.

To minimize people leaving your site, add dialog boxes to your youtube videos linking them to other parts of your site.
Also write appealing video summaries and enable ratings.

Go for Youtube.

Well, I'm not really talking about what you are saying, I understand adding video to youtube is a good idea, but should I embed those videos on my website pages, does this affect my SEO because it has an outbound link back to youtube?

[orvn]

Yup, that's what I was referring to, sorry, I was a little ambiguous there.

While you do have an outbound link to youtube, along with many other suggested videos, you can just as easily create powerful inbound links from Youtube by linking the original page in the description.

Also, you can use the dialog boxes to create links within your Youtube video to other parts of your site (to minimize a user clicking on suggested videos that are not yours). Just make sure they're appealing.

It will only affect your SEO positively, although you will undoubtedly lose some people to Youtube. It can't be helped, only minimized.

And again, hosting videos on your own server is expensive and causes heavy load. It's also much more complicated to set up with way less features.

[mlmguru]

What if I have a way to embed from another source, not youtube, that my company provides, which doesn't have an outbound link, will this benefit my onsite seo? Lets forget about youtube for a minute. I'm trying to optimize my site, not get youtube views. That is a whole different topic.

[orvn]

Ah, now you bring up something that's a little trickier to answer.

The links that you'd have from Youtube would probably pass more juice on than some 3rd party video site. However, you wouldn't be losing a certain amount of visitors to the 3rd party site.

I don't know if I can answer that, like I said, it's tricky and could be either/or, based on my knowledge of SEO.

Let's see if someone else here can help!

[paulgl]

Youtube is not a backlink.

The vast majority of video searches are done on youtube.

Youtube videos are ranked by views and ratings. Not backlinks.

You should have a youtube channel. Get people to that.

You can't really SEO a video in the true sense of the word.

You should use yahoo or facebook compatible elements.
This is in the code like title, etc.

You are really selling yourself short if you do videos, and
don't do youtube.

Paul

[orvn]

Wow, I guess I was totally wrong, my apologies, it's the first time- I promise.

@Paulgl: many people add links back to their original page in the Youtube description and in the new dialogue feature button, why aren't these inbound links valid?
Is it because the page is indexed by Google differently because it is, in essence, owned by Google and runs their server technology?

[mikecorso]

Followup to my earlier post; I just noticed in my account that I'm approved for uploading videos greater than 15 minutes in length so I'll skip that step about dividing the video. Yes! Now, I just have to figure out how to add my opening slate at the head of my screenflow videos.

Mike Corso
Cool Site of the Day
Boost Your Website Visibility

[mikecorso]

Actually, my earlier post was a good one but it didn't get posted because I had a link in it!! DAMN. Anyway, it was about my video PROCESS. Any chance to recover it?

Mike Corso
Cool Site of the Day

[Peter1970]

Definitely you should bank on Youtube videos appearing in universal results as that will bring you traffic and brand recognition. This doesn't mean you have to embed those videos, post one version there.