Do Videos Help My Organic Placement?

Do videos help your website to place better on Google? Hmm, that is a good question and one that has several answers and this is mine. Yes… but.

First off I would not install Flash videos unless you have to. My preferred way of showing videos is to load them to YouTube.com (a Google property), and then embed the iframe tag into the website page. There are several reasons why I recommend this course of action.

  1. At YouTube, you can add tags, a keyword dense subscription that Google will spider and spider preferentially as YouTube is a Google property. By building a channel on YouTube you can actually get organic placement boosts by keywords and add to your own site authority with links from YouTube to your site.
  2. Others can link to your YouTube videos, embed them in blogs, and use them while you get the credit. Traffic can funnel to your website directly or to your website via your YouTube channel page.
  3. If the videos you have are not yours but you are authorized to use them, you cannot go the YouTube route and then your best scenario is to place them in a quick loading Flash player. You won’t get SEO juice from them, but you will improve website stickiness.

Video however is not the SEO placement magic tool that it was once thought to be as when Google bought YouTube and started pushing video several years ago. At that time, many SEO gurus claimed that adding videos would move your website up in organic placement. That however has simply not happened. Videos are just another great way to engage customers, get your message out, and if you are using YouTube potentially get some link juice and web authority back to your website.