3 Reasons Why You Should Never Upload Videos To YouTube
The title of this post is actually a bit misleading. What it really means is that there are 3 things you really need to think about before you ever upload a video to or use YouTube to host your videos.
Of course with every ying there’s a yang and YouTube is no different. So there are also 3 compelling reasons why you would want to upload your videos to and use YouTube for hosting.
What are these 3 pros and 3 cons of YouTube? I cover them in this short video.
Share This
Hi Dave,
Great advice on why and why not to upload to YouTube.
My first big question is, If we don’t host our videos on YouTube how do we know Google will index our self-hosted (AmazonS3) videos?
My second big question is, How do we get traffic to self-hosted videos?
Hi Mark,
I just watched Dave’s video and noticed your questions. I can at least tell you that you can get your videos indexed in Google when they are self hosted by using a video site map. They are not as hard to create as they used to be and if you use WordPress there are plugins that will create them for you.
Once you have the video site map, submit it to Google with your webmaster tools and ping the page. That will at least get your videos indexed.
Getting traffic is a much longer conversation and maybe Dave can point you in the right direction.
Hope that helps,
Brian
Hi Mark,
Here is a quick how-to on video sitemaps http://bit.ly/mgCjV5. Hope it helps!
Dave – great points on both sides! Thanks!
-Michelle
Hello Answer Contributors,
You don’t know how much I appreciate the answers you’ve provided for my questions.
I honestly didn’t have a clue about video sitemaps or how to do them. Hearing that a simple plugin here and a quick ping there will get the job done is a big relief.
Thank you!
Do you have name for the Plugin?
Hi Mark
Brian is right about sitemaps for video. That’s the only effective way to let Google know that you have videos on your site.
Google doesn’t “see/read” video like it sees content. That’s why you need keywords and descriptions attached with your video content, whether it’s on a web page on your site or on YouTube or any video submission site.
As for Traffic…
Traffic is traffic no matter where you’re sending it. You can buy it, borrow it, attract it, or leverage it from others who already have and control traffic.
But you don’t want to just send traffic to a page with just a video without having the page optimized for the people you want to attract.
It helps to have your videos on a WordPress platform as there are lots of plug-ins on the market that are designed to help video posts/pages get ranked. In addition, Google loves WordPress.
A few tips for traffic generation:
Get backlinks to your page/site/video page by submitting content to other quality sites on the web and include a link pointing back to your page.
For example, this can be achieved with articles. Submit articles, related to your video page, to top article directories and in the resource (bio) box, provide a call to action for readers to visit your site to watch your video with more information, then include the link to that page.
You can also contribute useful information on top ranked / popular forums and blogs related to your niche and have a link or reference back to your site.
You can submit documents and PDF’s to ‘doc sites’ (like docstoc.com) that include useful content and link(s) back to your site. Make sure you optimize these submissions and your content with keyword-rich titles and descriptions to attract your target audience to these sites (just as you would on your own site).
You can also create press releases and news stories and submit them to PR sites online. See PRWeb.com
Or use a site like WebFire.com that has tools that make all of the above easy from one all-inclusive place (not affiliated with this site).
Hope that helps,
Dave Lovelace
Dave Lovelace, I am still a newbie and have 2 question. My website is on Godaddy. Is there anyway to get the benefits of video site map that they don’t supply? Are we only talking about self generated videos, not vids I am embedding on my website created by someone else?
Hey Dave,
Great points.
I have my videos on my own site AND have snippets on YouTube!
Krizia
Dave,
Great points. I appreciate you giving both sides of the story rather than being dogmatic. Right now I’m using Youtube to get “eyes” and also putting my website address in the video and in the text. Hopefully, with good content, I will develop a following. Thanks.
Good question from Mark!
My workflow now uploads my videos to youtube, vimeo and using VideoRebel and S3, hosting on my site. I was surprised to realize how I lose all rights to my work by uploading to youtube.
Dan
Great points, Dave. Certainly got me thinking about my Youtube strategy.
Hi Dave. Always look forward to your newsletter.
However, I have to disagree with your first reason why to never use YouTube for video hosting regarding businesses who see your site with YouTube videos.
You’re assuming that businesses looking to do business with websites are marketing savvy.
I believe that most businesses (and most non-business consumers) don’t have a clue about video hosting options. All they know is YouTube.
It would be extremely rare if a potential customer/visitor to someone’s site with YouTube video content would think “Hmmm, using YouTube. Don’t know if I want to do business with them”.
In fact, I believe most visitors (whether business visitors or other) would be impressed that the site is using video at all. And if the quality of the video and/or it’s message is good enough, whether or not it’s hosted on YouTube or not would be a moot point.
In addition, there are tools available to make YouTube videos appear very professional on your site… to the degree that the YouTube stamp is hardly noticed.
Just my 2 cents.
Dave Lovelace
Hi Dave,
Some valid points but I think uploading your videos to youtube has alot of benefits then negatives as you can ask visitors to go back to your site for more information and if your lucky enough to have your video monetize then its a win win.
Video is the video and it demands the viewers attention as you need to look at the screen to see and you hold that person captive just like yours did today lol.
Great post, see you around
I do the same as Dan. Much more professional, the cost has been pennies for the Zencoder.
For some videos, however, I *do* use YouTube, and I have those videos monetized. Some get a lot of traffic. I average $20 a month with only a couple dozen quickly-made videos.
Thanks. Give me more to think about regarding my youtube uploads.
By the way, is WETOKU out of business?
Dave, Love your background choice in this video.
Seems to make your message more powerful.
Heck, I know I lose my rights. But my image is in those videos.
And they can alter the text …
I can see where it’s more of a problem if you don’t brand yourself.
Thanks Dave … I see we’re back to getting your latest videos on
a Friday. You made my weekend as usual.
And I learned another lesson … If you set a schedule for videos,
have them out on that day. If they’re good enough, people will
come to expect them and look forward.
Look at the youtube phenomenon, Jenna Marbles. She regularly
gets 9 Million views on her videos. She’s armed with an outdated
mac, Imovie, the built-in microphone, some quick edits, but she’s
also a young, attractive, 25 year old blond and I have more mileage
on one shoe !
I must say that you have some good points here. I was once accustomed to using my own video embedding with my own tools until I realized one day that placing my video on YouTube would bring in “some” traffic. Wow, was I dead wrong, because it brought a ton of traffic to my websites and I was able to pretty much learn to optimize all my YouTube videos to get some major views and bring in site conversions to my affiliate advertisement.
Just started using WordPress and see the massive potential there, too. So, I will continue using YouTube in a big way, and with HTML 5, now you can see the videos whether people are using an iPad or iPhone. This is a major perk for all your hard work.
I can create a video in a few minutes, get in onto YouTube, and continue promoting it via YouTube. I have videos with over 100,000 views. Of course that many people do not come to your website with one video, but I do get some major visitors each time I post videos, and will continue doing so.
Major Tip: Make sure to have more than one YouTube account, because if an account happens to get shut down because you mentioned the words “make money” somewhere, then you have the ability to continue with shop after you upload your videos once more. And yes, this will affect your websites hosting your embedded video. This is why I have my own video on my websites and bring in the traffic using YouTube video. It’s called “Smart Marketing” and the ability to use common sense. You should, too!
Be smart and be successful.
Joseph
Dave, not only do I value your opinions, I’ve passed along your website to anyone I know doing anything in online promotion.
I think you do some damage to your reputation when you mislead for any reason. Your statement about today’s headline, “The headline above is actually a bit misleading.” is my reason for writing.
You might get more eyeballs on your email, but those of us who are already subscribing to your newsletter would likely open and read it anyway. Why be intentionally misleading, even if you admit it right off, for any reason?
Your online reputation is like a nicely painted and clean car. A little scratch here and there becomes obvious and a focal point of the car.
But keep up your otherwise great work.
Hi Dave, great work, I love your videos.
I can appreciate your reasons for not uploading videos to youtube, but after all, it’s the 2nd most visted site.
I feel you need a compelling offer to capture a tiny portion of those eyeballs and redirect them back to your site.
Have a great weekend!
Michelle
Does anyone know if putting a video on YouTube jeopardises chances of Google indexing the same video that’s self-hosted on a website?
I have the same video on both Youtube and my self-hosted website. I created an XML video sitemap for the latter, submitted it to Google Webmaster, was given the tick by them. However, when I do a search of Google Videos, my YouTube video comes out on top, but the self-hosted video is nowhere to be found. To see it, I have to go to the 51st (last) page of the search results where I see the following message.
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 503 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
I go to the “omitted” results. And there it finally is!
If this is the case, that Google doesn’t like “duplicate” results, I’ll change the length of one video, use a different file name and avoid using the exact same meta tags.
Thanks for any help. My self-hosted video has been AWOL from Google’s video results for a year! I’m trying to untangle the reasons why.
Actually, I did do what I said I’d do above, but my self-hosted video is still being sandboxed (niche involved is innocuous, nothing to do with “make money” etc.) Sorry about that, this goes back a year.
Upshot – Google has sandboxed my video in it’s video search function. I’ll need to do some experimentation to find the “signal”.
Hi Guys,
There is no reason you can’t have the best of both worlds…
ie: put some vds up on You-Tube….being mindful of and optimizing the issues mentioned previously and then have privately hosted vids on yor website- optimised for that media. Marketing is very much about optimising for each individual media, sub-media, etc, etc
Thanks for commenting on this Dave! There is actually one point I would like to make about using Youtube that was not mentioned here. Youtube can actually do harm to a client given the amount of trolls that attack with negative comments.
I had a client to whom this happened, and it was a 4 month long ordeal involving the stealing of our video, flagging for copyright violation, and re-editing by a troll who didn’t like what the video presented. Once Google got a hold of his video, it was his that came up in a search engine, not ours (even thought we had tagged the heck out of it!)
In essence, it had the opposite effect that we wanted. I would advise *anyone* who has clients of this downside. Trolls are really quite rampant on Youtube. Restrict comments if you are concerned. Certainly this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it does happen.
Very good points! I always learn a lot from your videos. Thanks.
Where I work, videos hosted at Amazon are blocked; not those on
YouTube. It may be a default setting on the anti-virus software
that is in use here. It would be interesting to hear if this
has been a problem elsewhere.
I do both, host on youtube for promotional and marketing…then host on my own (using Dave’s videorebel tool). But Youtube is the main reason I’m in business. People find me there, then link back to my website (even without me telling them). About 50% of my traffic comes via youtube, because of posting my weekly blog videos there.
Often videos are uploaded onto Youtube for the purposes of embedding on a website, this is one thing that makes my memory of Web 1.0 nostelgic even though I was only a child at that time. Does anyone else have Web 1.0 nostelgia?