As discussed last month, YouTube is making multiple strides to make Video SEO faster and easier. However, some companies are questioning whether placing their videos on YouTube is cannibalizing their own company website.
The theory is, a company places a well made product video on their e-commerce website and through, SEO, that video appears in a search engine results page. If said company has also placed that same product video on YouTube, and the YouTube video also appears on the search engine results page, will the YouTube video dominate the video on the company’s website?
The primary rule to Video SEO is to make your video search-able. If a potential customer can’t find your video via a search engine results page in the first place, then your video and your website are not doing their job. However, if you utilize the proper SEO techniques and potential customers can easily locate your video, is giving them the two options of clicking the link to your website, versus clicking the YouTube link really detrimental?
If you’ve succeeded in the first step of being search-able, then how could it be detrimental to give your potential customers multiple links to your video? Granted, your e-commerce website holds more useful information about your company as well as other products and videos, so ideally, your customer will click on the link to your website. Many people will probably choose to watch your video on YouTube, and when they do, all is not lost!
YouTube requires you to give your video a title, which can be 120 characters long and may include your company’s name. YouTube videos also allow a 1,000 character description in which, you should include a link to your website. While remaining conscious that you want the potential customer to watch your video on YouTube and then visit your website, remember to apply Video SEO techniques in the video title and description, because as always, the first and most important step is to lead the viewer to your video!
SearchPro Systems
2024