How to best upload video to the internet
The 2 main options for uploading a video onto the internet are
1/ uploading directly to a website in one of the several common video formats, (flv,h264,wmv, etc..)
2/ uploading to youtube and/or the other video sharing sites. (the video can be subsequently embedded in a website, blog advert, listing or any form of social media)
The advantages of the first approach are more control over the quality and format, no third party branding and complete control over how the video and player look on the page.
The advantages of the second are ease of use, no bandwidth considerations and they can be easily embedded in a multitude of other online locations, a must if you’re intending to spread the video widely. The seo (search engine optimization) benefits of each approach will be discussed later in another article.
With the increase in quality of video encoded by the video sharing sites over the last couple of years, most notably youtube, and the customizable embeddable players offered, I’ve changed from direct upload to my website to using an embed from youtube or similar. If security is an issue, video sharing sites provide options for restricted or password protected viewing.
Where to put video on a webpage
A video can be either embedded directly on a page or accessed via a link on the page. The direct embed will usually generate more views as exemplified by a survey by Treepodia, a leading vendor in ecommerce videos.
A 5-15% view rate can be expected from a simple link to a video while a 10-35% view rate from an embedded video on the same page. The view rate is increased when the video is embedded above the page fold compared to below. The embedded video though clearly more effective does require more page real estate and a judgement needs to be made on the video’s importance.
Upload to video sharing sites
Youtube is by far the most popular site though the others all have their advantages and are well worth uploading to for maximum distribution. Facebook can be particularly useful especially if the video can be tagged. Tubemogul is a free service allowing simultaneous upload to many of the sites and Traffic Geyser is a paid service allowing upload to even more. Tubemogul restricts upload to certain sites if the video is of a certain type such as an overt advertising video. Tubemogul also provides some in depth analytics for the viewership and demographics of your videos. Some video sharing sites allow backlinks to your website (some no-follow and some do-follow) and most allow the video to be embedded. Recent reports via tubemogul suggest that video is a favourite share among Twitter users. Take a look at my article ‘video sharing sites’ for more detailed information.
Add video to your business listings
Google local listings is free and allows video upload which may be a dealbreaker when listed alongside a series of other businesses without video. Connecting with customers via video at the exact time they are ready to buy is extremely powerful. Adding a video to google local and other listings is as easy as copy and pasting the embed code from youtube (or other video sharing platform) to the video section of the listing.
Posting video on relevant blogs and forums
I often find that my videos can get to a few thousands youtube hits with some optimization, but it’s not until the video finds it’s way into other blogs and websites that the number of views really soar. A genuinely useful or newsworthy video may get embedded elsewhere naturally by interested people or you can help the process along by sourcing relevant sites and posting the video yourself.
The page rank of a youtube channel has a big effect on how the video performs in the search engines. In my own tests, videos posted on my established youtube channel (page rank 4) easily out perform videos posted on new channels that I’ve recently set up (page rank 0). This and other factors regarding youtube optimization are discussed in my article ‘youtube optimization’
There used to be concern among some businesses about whether youtube is a suitably professional platform for business video and are worried about their video being shown next to the proverbial ‘monkey on a surfboard’ video. However, youtube has grown in the last few years from a site with largely amateur videos to one with a wide selection of professional content and the most viewed channels now are professionally produced educational, entertainment and music videos.
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