Video link on our site or to YouTube?

[jtracking]

Hi everyone and thanks for your ideas.

We have two informative videos on our site giving information and dressing tips for seniors or the elderly with mobility issues and/or are handicapped.

We're replacing the vidoes with newer ones this week and I would like to also place these videos on youtube.com but am wondering what anyone things would be the wiser: to place a link on our website to our youtube videos or simply link to a video page on our site.

We do/will have a page on our site for the video but is linking to our youtube video better?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[weslinda]

Since you want the Youtube exposure as well, simply embed the youtube video on your page and call it a day. That way you aren't paying for the data transfer of the video. And your server won't slowdown.

No need to link out to a new window.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by jtracking

Hi everyone and thanks for your ideas.

We have two informative videos on our site giving information and dressing tips for seniors or the elderly with mobility issues and/or are handicapped.

We're replacing the vidoes with newer ones this week and I would like to also place these videos on youtube.com but am wondering what anyone things would be the wiser: to place a link on our website to our youtube videos or simply link to a video page on our site.

We do/will have a page on our site for the video but is linking to our youtube video better?

Any ideas?

Yes get professional marketing advice.

Your target market is senior citizens with mobility restrictions and for the life of me, I doubt that .0001% of your target market is sitting watching videos on Youtube.

I would stick to offering the links from your pages to your video page.

Youtube is for a few generations younger.

[craigmn3]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Yes get professional marketing advice.

Your target market is senior citizens with mobility restrictions and for the life of me, I doubt that .0001% of your target market is sitting watching videos on Youtube.

I would stick to offering the links from your pages to your video page.

Youtube is for a few generations younger.

Au Contaire. Many of the home care givers who are taking care of the elderly and dressing them are exactly the age to clammor on to youtube. I would definatly suggest going that way. Home care people have alot of user group websites, and something like your video can become Viral among them bringing you inbound links.

[BigOakSEO]

What is the harm in posting the video on your site with some keyword-rich text so it attracts searches and then putting it up on Youtube so it can market itself through that site?

It seems doing both is the best solution.

[MarcGrobman]

I agree that hosting it on your own site as content bait for search engines is your best bet. AND it sounds like it wouldn't hurt to post it on youtube (with a link to your site) so that you can attract youtube audience. The only reason I'd link to the youtube version is if there is any chance that you will increase you youtube exposure by making it more popular there. But it doesn't sound like the case -- I doubt that video will be making page 1 of youtube! (or will it?)

[leftinc]

I agree with the idea of including the video on both places - your site and on YouTube.

I would also recommend spreading the video around to other videos sites in addition to YouTube. Each one seems to attract a slightly different audience, so you never know what is going to get the most attention.

For our www.foxxysports.com videos, we go to several sites:

metacafe.com
grouper.com
break.com
myspace.com
veoh.com
livevideo.com

and several others. We find that we get lost on YouTube, but on the smaller sites, it is easier to stand out and even be a featured video.

Good luck!

[Calius]

The best for your purposes given what you wrote, would be to post a link on your site and then let people watch through YouTube. (I am a professional in the video online space.) Why do you want to display the video on YouTube? Traffic? How will you know that people will see it if just posted to YouTube? YouTube may not be the best bet for a link because you get dumped into their pool of videos and you have all those other screen-space hanging around. Why display that? This could be especially true for the elderly. Try linking up with www.muzility.com because there you can have a personal channel developed that will house all of the videos you want to put up now and in the future. The viewing page is far cleaner and it has a much larger screen space than YouTube. You decide but that's my opinion.

Peace,
Calius

[Calius]

I also agree with leftinc.

[jtracking]

Thanks for everyones advice.

I sort of liked the idea of embedding the youtube video on our site to save bandwidth and space but in the end I think I'd have to agree that linking to a keyword rich page that houses the videos AND also posting them (2 to 4 videos) on the vast array of sites offering video hosting would be the best possible option.

Thanks for your advice and correct me if I'm wrong.

[edhan]

Having video on your own site will be the preferred choice. But then at the same time, you can have those videos up in YouTube, Video Google or even Video Yahoo for greater exposure. I do not see any harm of spreading your video to other sites. The downside for hosting video on your site will be the bandwidth. As your video grows, you will require more bandwidth otherwise it will be so slow that no one wants to watch from your site.

[weslinda]

The issue of hosting and bandwidth was my main point. The key with having the videos hosted by YouTube is that you can embed them in a keyword rich page on your site, and have them on YouTube, and post on other video sites and not have to use your own server for hosting and bandwidth.

It's the best of both worlds.

[Karen_M-C]

Putting your video on your site as well as spreading it on video sharing sites is the best idea. When you upload it, be very specific with your tagging and description to make it easier to find, (don't forget to make your company name or site URL a tag too).

Another advantage of video sharing sites is that you create a profile page, where you give your company extra exposure and your site earns another link.

Here's a very useful listing of video sharing sites I used to upload our commercial:
http://ovguide.com/generalvideo.html

[TrafficProducer]

Embed them, and also have a link to your video on your page that offers better quality.

Note that if you Embed them this may get the user to leave your website, that is start looking on YouTube, in this case.

More Videos to Watch and Video Publishing Links.

[JohneeMac]

A small point, when linking out to popular sites such as YouTube i always make the link open a new window / tab, simply because they might get caught up in the popular site and not return to your own.

[jtracking]

Yes OK I have to agree that the best bet would actually be to embed the video on my site to save bandwidth etc and not bog down our site PLUS if they watch the video on our site even if it IS embedded it doesn't necessarily mean the user will leave our site.

I like the idea of being able to make proper tags etc. that will help searchers find our video and the ability to have more links to our site.

GREAT IDEAS EVERYONE - THANKS!

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by craigmn3

Au Contaire. Many of the home care givers who are taking care of the elderly and dressing them are exactly the age to clammor on to youtube. I would definatly suggest going that way. Home care people have alot of user group websites, and something like your video can become Viral among them bringing you inbound links.

Except the age group who does the work is not turning to Youtube for on the job tips...they go there to escape.

Again poor marketing advice trying to push something now hip and cool onto something with absolutely nothing to do with now hip and cool

Relevance is an issue in obtaining search rankings....Youtube and the care of the elderly are in no way shape or form >>>>RELATED!!

Another issue the OP should consider when hosting their content on a 3rd party site is the 3rd party site can be bogged down which would then delay the time it takes your site to load and which can have an impact on search rankings albeit a low impact.

The other side of the coin is visitors to slow loading websites click the big X in the upper right hand corner.

You are in business to make a profit and like all businesses offline or online there is an expense to doing business.

Good luck no matter which path you choose.

[weslinda]

Elderly doesn't equal dead, and you'd be suprised at how many of the + 50 crowd is using the web and social content.

It's so prevelant that they have their own Social world at www.eons.com, their own search engine at www.cranky.com and they are doing quite well.

While YouTube should not be the main focus of the marketing, it certainly isn't going to hurt them in any way or form. Distributing across all video production sites simply allows them to have great exposure.

YouTube offers a way to reduce his cost for video hosting and offer a little extra exposure. Won't kill him.

Regarding YouTube being slow, it is much more likely that his own server might load the video slowly than YouTube simply based on their size and volume.

I think that much of the advice here, especially those discussing to push the video through various sites are very good pieces of advice.

Too many times, people try and pigeonhole a web site such as YouTube into a certain age group or demographic and that isn't always the case.

[jtracking]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Except the age group who does the work is not turning to Youtube for on the job tips...they go there to escape.

Again poor marketing advice trying to push something now hip and cool onto something with absolutely nothing to do with now hip and cool

Relevance is an issue in obtaining search rankings....Youtube and the care of the elderly are in no way shape or form >>>>RELATED!!

Another issue the OP should consider when hosting their content on a 3rd party site is the 3rd party site can be bogged down which would then delay the time it takes your site to load and which can have an impact on search rankings albeit a low impact.

The other side of the coin is visitors to slow loading websites click the big X in the upper right hand corner.

You are in business to make a profit and like all businesses offline or online there is an expense to doing business.

The funny thing is though that today when i created my youtube account and did some searches on alzhiemers, seniors, elderly etc I found quite a few people and communities that surely would be interested. I already have two friends...so ofcourse youtube isn't the most ideal place to advertise and such but it surely doesn't hurt! : )

[jesse1]

I would embed the videos in your site, and link to them from the homepage with a thumbnail picture of the vidoe

[Andy SEO]

I recently faced the same dilemma when posting a series of videos on one of my sites. What I decided to do was post a shortened version of the videos on YouTube making it clear in the video that the uncut version was on my site.

This gave a viewer a reason to come to my site to view the full version of the video. My videos were animations of a Baby Newbie talking about all the crap on the net so it was easy to make an edited version.

Making a shorter version of your video may not be an option depending on how it's structured, but it may be worth thinking about for future videos.

Andy
http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com