COMMENTS
Actually I believe you would be doing yourself a disservice by following this post. By embedding a YouTube video, you are promoting YouTube, not your site. Search engines know that this is not content sitting on your site and hence rank it as content on youTube.
Since Google's use of Universal Search, videos that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) are a nice short-cut to improve rankings but to take advantage of this, the video must be sitting on your server, under your domain as part of your site, not embedded from a third party like YouTube.
In addition, you are encouraged to use a video sitemap - see upport/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472
For more hints see Google's Webmaster help, especially http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156442
When I opened the email, it briefly showed the video and then said "Invalid Application ID". Reason?
I would be very interested in your response to Charlie's comment as I have heard mixed opinion on this issue. Is it better for SEO to post your videos first on youtube or another site like bliptv and then embed in your blog or is it better to host the video yourself and then distribute to the various video channels? Thanks.
Also, there is a way with youtube videos to ensure you don't get the related videos appearing at the end - how do you remove that function so viewers don't get sidetracked by other videos?
Gina, when you get the embed code from YouTube there is a check box for "showing related videos"
Charlie, I know that there is a debate on the issue you bring up. My POV is it is a mistake to not post and host your videos on YouTube. The exposure from being on YouTube or utilizing their embed code for your own site far outweighs the benefits of self-hosting.
In addition, if your videos are properly branded and tagged you shouldn't worry about it.
Glad to see all the discussion around hosting videos.
There are definitely ways you can maximize the SEO benefits. However, I think there are a couple of reasons why posting on YouTube makes sense for most.
As Gregory mentioned you get increased exposure because of the YouTube network. Additionally, you can optimize your videos on YouTube to increase the impact they have on your SEO (learn more about how to do so here: http://bit.ly/18zLDF).
Another benefit of YouTube is it's ease of use both for content creators and consumers. For marketers who are just starting to venture into the world of video, YouTube removes some significant hurdles like figuring out how you host your own videos. For consumers, the YouTube player and environment is understood and easy to use.
This video was created to help people just starting out in the world of video. For those folks, I think using YouTube is the way to go.
Thank you, Karen, for the helpful tip. Once we have the knowledge, we can then make the educated choices.
You Misunderstand.
I am not saying do not post on YouTube. I agree you will get exposure there and let's not forget that YT is the #2 Search Engine.
I am saying do not embed the YT video on your site. Use another file uploaded to your server and optimize your site for video search.
It is not either/or - Do Both!
Charlie, Thanks for the clarification. It really depends on what the goal is for your videos. If it is pure exposure it makes sense to still embed your YouTube videos on your site. This is because of the stats that most YouTube video views come from related videos. By utilizing sound SEO techniques to drive your audience to your website, you can not only get a view but get additional views from your channel. Especially if you encourage video responses and commenting on Youtube you benefit from the YouTube community.
For my webshow I do both. I publish on over 30 video networks and in some cases choose to embed my YouTube video instead of my Blip.tv embed for that exact reason.
The limitations of YouTube in my opinion lie less on the SEO disadvantages and more on the limitations of the YouTube analytics and selling third party pre-roll advertising.
I believe if you are selling your own advertising or are concerned with user-specific analytics down to the exact frame the user stopped watching then you should self-host. But if you produce enough video, the cost-benefits of self-hosting does not seem to be worth it.
The video bio does so much to familiarize and humanize a business. And I'm a content writer!
This is teh most useful, and simple thing I have learned all week. Thank you I am going to try it and impress my friends.