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Onpage Video Strategy

         

deeper

12:57 am on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Hi,
I intend to redesign a site completely and want to integrate two videos on each page:
-an image video with a short introduction of me and my work: every page will get this one image video
-an individual video referring to the subject of each individual page: this should rank in Google.

In a Youtube video a Google guy says, that they don't recommend having two or more vids on one page with one unique URL. Every video sitemap should name one unique URL for one certain video. One reason he mentioned: Google user coming to the page will see the top of the page and have to search for their (in Google searched) video, which is a bad experience.

What would you do?

Creating page-internal #-links/URLs or hiding the image-video completely from Google? Or just doing it and not caring about Google?


Thanks,

deeper

Robert Charlton

7:36 am on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

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deeper - I'm going to shift the order of your comments around a bit in answering your question.

...In a Youtube video a Google guy says, that they don't recommend having two or more vids on one page with one unique URL. Every video sitemap should name one unique URL for one certain video.

I've seen many successful sites/pages that have had more than one video on a page. Usually, though, the videos are on closely related topics, topics that together form a unit which is distinct to that page. You might, for example, have a particular music video followed by a Making of... video describing, say, how the special effects of that video were done. Or two Google Webmaster Help videos covering different aspects of related optimization problems might share a page and an article.

When the topics work well together and the page is well written, then interest holds and flows, and... with this kind of topical continuity, getting the visitor to scroll down is generally not a problem.

{1} want to integrate two videos on each page:
-an image video with a short introduction of me and my work: every page will get this one image video
-an individual video referring to the subject of each individual page: this should rank in Google.

The global image video jumps out at me as a likely problem... and the problem isn't just about Google. It's an issue for your users... which is in fact why it's an issue for Google.

- It's very likely that the videos won't relate to each other in a way where they belong on the same page, particularly if they are separate videos (more on this in a moment).

- It will be a bad experience for a user coming to the page to expect a video on the subject of the individual page and to get instead a short introduction about you and your work, no matter how interesting you are. It's also not likely, with the setup you describe, that the page will rank for the page topic. For your pages to rank, it's important that each page feature what's unique about that page... which is to say that your on-topic video should be first.

- And having the image video on every page is also likely to a bad user experience. It's effectively duplicate content on every page. If visitors navigate around your site, they're going to be bumping into this content over and over. Introductions need to orient visitors in a page within a site, but they should never be repetitive.

In the mind of the visitor, an introductory video about you is, at best, likely to feel like a commercial. Conceivably, you could bury a short video introduction within each topical video as if it were an opening commercial (without the extra click), but I think it would still cost you visitors. On an information site, I doubt you would consider introducing each article with a half-page bio.

Certain popular sites, where the videos or content are sought after, can get away with commercials, sign-ins, etc, but excessive use of either will cause visitors to leave. I've seen situations on otherwise popular client sites where such obstacles have cost the site well over half its visitors.

What I would do is to have the introductory video just on an "about us/author" type page... and then have each of the other videos on their dedicated pages. That way, Google could much better discover what the unique focus of each page most properly should be. Visitors could choose to navigate to the About page to learn more about you, perhaps once they have been motivated to do so by your videos. IMO, it doesn't work the other way around. You could of course also have thumbnail links and a link to your author/about page from your byline.

Or just doing it and not caring about Google?

IMO, you are completely missing the point. The intention of Google's algorithm is to send visitors to pages which most satisfy their queries. This is how Google improves its own visitor satisfaction.

You're seeming to want to do everything that fights your visitors' natural inclinations, and then holding it against Google because that approach won't rank well.

deeper

12:39 pm on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Hi Robert,
thanks a lot for your compehensive answer. May be I should explain my intention a bit more, because I don't realize me to fight against visitors natural inclinations.

On the site I offer different kinds of psychological consulting and therapy (online and face-to-face) which needs a lot of trust. Trust is important for changing visitors into customers.

Additionally the pages are landing pages, each covering a certain facet of my work, ranking more or less at Google.

Therefore on each page there should be at least a personal, trust creating PIC of me. Even normal bloggers often show their portrait photo on each page. Better than just a pic is an introduction video, in my case.

This is the idea behind. Pages have all a lot of good information. The introduction video is important for its own as "trust factor" and a good supplemetation to the text.
My experience says that visitors "on the way" to become customers are motivated to see the video.

The image video will be placed on the right column, which is dedicated to "me and my offers". For example I want to mention there also my book and my seminars. Therefore visitors shouldn't be confused about TWO videos and will just ignore the video when reading other pages. The informational video will get its own place on the left.

Do you still consider this plan as against "visitors natural inclinations"?

However, it's no problem to link my portrait photo to my about page with the video. It's a bit more effort for visitors to get it than just clicking on a video thumbnail, but on the whole it may be the best.

How does this sound?

Robert Charlton

1:20 pm on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

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However, it's no problem to link my portrait photo to my about page with the video. It's a bit more effort for visitors to get it than just clicking on a video thumbnail, but on the whole it may be the best.

How does this sound?

That's in fact what I had in mind when I mentioned image thumbnail links... so we've got great minds thinking alike here.

Another option would be for you to incorporate relevant introductions in each video, confining them mostly to your approach for the page-specific facets of your work, maybe with just a touch of your overall approach. This way, there'd be a personalized touch, but each video would be topic specific.

I still feel that an overall introduction about you, with your work overview, would be necessary, and should be reserved for a separate introductory page.

By all means make the link to that page prominent... but there's a certain "feel" I've seen in these sites that I'd strain hard to avoid. They seem to be selling when they should be introducing, and it comes across as very canned. The still photos often come across as too formal and don't convey the aspects of personality which you may (or may not) want to project.

It's a difficult line, as I'm aware that you also have to avoid appearing too casual. I think it's especially important to avoid the "canned" feeling.

As important as the photo, btw, is the overall design feeling of the site. Again, avoid cliches.

EditorialGuy

3:07 pm on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I'd just go with a thumbnail for the "About me" video, but for the sake of discussion, does anyone here know if Google supports or ignores <aside></aside> tags?

If Google is able to interpret <aside> correctly, placing the video between <aside></aside> tags outside the article section (which would be defined with <article></article> tags) would tell Google that "this video is secondary content on the page."

deeper

5:09 pm on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

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@Robert:
Yes, it's all about the balance between being professional AND "near"/natural/trustworthy, also a bit esoteric and spiritual. I try to emerge the best of both worlds.

The texts show my professional side, but without being boring and too sober. Well written information.

Pic and introduction video show me more as natural human, personally, but not in my underpants or grimacing. I just tell people about me and my holistic "philosophy" and motto. Why I do the helping methods I offer, my personal view and experience.

Btw, does it make any sense to collect all videos on a certain subdomain or folder?


@EditorialGuy:
You talk about HTML5? I'm rather sure G is able to interpret it right, but does this really solve all facets of the problem? There is still "URL-confusion" then, right?

Dymero

8:45 pm on Feb 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



-an individual video referring to the subject of each individual page: this should rank in Google.


If you want your video paged to rank first on Google of their own accord, don't put it on YouTube, or the YT page will rank instead.

deeper

10:50 am on Feb 18, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Rank instead or additionally?

Dymero

1:40 pm on Feb 18, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Depends on the strength of your site, I suppose. If it's already good enough to rank highly, the video pages will rank additionally to the YT version, but the YT version will tend to rank higher than your own site.

If the site isn't good enough to rank already, you might find the YT version is the only video page that ranks.

Robert Charlton

7:52 pm on Feb 18, 2014 (gmt 0)

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I'd consider YouTube to be a social strategy, with clickable links from your YouTube description to your site, plus your domain name as a subtitle on every video.

deeper

12:55 am on Feb 19, 2014 (gmt 0)

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@Robert:
It sems as if the key for success lies in the right strategy how to use both YT and my own Site. As on YT my KWs have few searches and my KWs are niches I probably will try to rank primary with my own pages, which are already established.

Using YT-ranking at Google... this could work. May be trying both, ranking with both YT and my own page, making TWO vids with slightly different content and meta texts.
Difficult and complex matter.


@Dymero:
I probably will try to rank with my own pages, which already rank with niche KWs and will get videos as a bonus.
But, hm, I don't want them to rank with a video thumb in the serps. Why?

Google user should not think, my pages are primary or only video pages. They are not, they are filled with a lot of good text, the video is not the "one and only".

I'm not sure how tempting a video thumb is for my potential customers. According to the YT-KW-Tool my subjects are not popular as videos. So they won't be in the organic Serps of Google.

I intend to get a pic by authorship. This will do the same job as the video thumb, i.e., improving the CTR. I know it is possible to have several rich snippets for one page, but I'm not sure if "the more the better" is true.

Dymero

7:10 pm on Feb 19, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'd have to look it up, but I remember reading somewhere that having a video thumbnail is good for CTR. People like visual content such as that.

However, the issue with YT is I believe that Google can't crawl the iframe, though I might be wrong. So that's why you'll sometimes see some video hosting sites offering "SEO friendly" embeds that use the object and embed tags.

deeper

8:55 pm on Feb 19, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Video thumbs certainly are good for CTR, but author pic too. It's more or less the same effect, depending on the KWs and your visitors. GENERALLY people like visual content, yes, but I know from caes where the CTR decreased with with the video thumb. It really depends...

YT offers iframe-embedding since at least 2012 and YT belongs to Google, so I suppose they crawl it now. Some years ago they didn't, but now they do probably.

Robert Charlton

2:36 am on Feb 21, 2014 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



also a bit esoteric and spiritual

Be cautious about this one. Many who try this style overdo it and lapse into self-caricature,