There is a debate that has been going on in the video SEO space for a while. It has to do with where the best place is to post your videos for maximum optimization and visibility.
We’ve been told by many SEO’s that their favorite video posting service is Wistia (over Vimeo). There are a number of compelling reasons why posting on Wistia is a great idea:
- You won’t have any ads or competitor videos showing up on your video or appearing after your video plays
- The video’s home in the eyes of search engines is YOUR website, which is much better for SEO
- Your website’s page containing that video will show up in the search results, sending your traffic to your site and not YouTube
- Wistia offers great video analytics and more controls than YouTube
With all these positives, what’s the down side? Well, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. If your video is not on YouTube, you have zero chance of that video being found during one of those searches. And even though videos hosted on YouTube will generate traffic for YouTube and not your website, shouldn’t you look for ways to harness the awesome power of their audience size?
We debated this in our Digital Mastermind Group the evening before I heard Rand Fishkin of Moz speak for the first time. At the HubSpot conference right after, he actually answered the question with the most brilliant solution: use both! So, why not? When you post to YouTube, use one unique title and description for your video, and when you post to Wistia, use a different one. If you want to be even more White Hat, just do two slightly different versions of the same video – one for YouTube and one for Wistia. Be sure to monitor the results and traffic of the two, to really understand how your videos are working on each platform, and that they are helping your business to reach its goals.
