Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Video titles and descriptions
-
Hi everyone,
I have a question about embedding videos on a website: if you optimize the title and description for the video in Youtube, will these be taken into account for the ranking of the page where the video is embedded? Or will only the Youtube link for the video show in SERP's, instead of the page itself?
I've read in a post of Phil Nottingham that it's usually not a good idea to embed a Youtube video on your own site, but use Wistia instead, exactly to avoid cannibalisation of your own rankings. Is this correct?
Thanks!
-
I wanted to say that Vijay's answer was fantastic! To add to it - you do want to keep a close eye on if the video adds to the time on site or no once you add it to the page. Some videos may actually do more harm than good with time on site and conversion.
Thanks!
-
Hi There,
If you are trying to get direct SEO value from Youtube video by virtue of embedding it on the website then Phil's moz post already explains why it will get value on youtube listing itself and not on your website.
However, the purpose of the video to be available on the website is more important. Whether the video compliments and supplements the website content, that would determine whether you are able to derive the real SEO value from the embedded link. To put it simply, if people would be interested to watch the video on your website that would increase the time spent on the page and benefit your website's purpose and also its SEO.
I hope that helps.
Thanks,
VJ
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1
Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver". Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly) K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY? QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own) Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools QUESTION TWO: how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword? QUESTION THREE Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed) Screwdrivers Screwdriver Manufacturer Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brenda.Haines1 -
Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage
We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY. While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers. But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches. So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations. This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations. I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself. I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg30 -
Embedding Video for SEO? YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia?
I believe Vimeo has the advantages of being able to embed your video on your website without advertising and the ability to brand the player with your company name. Can't do that with YouTube. However obviously Google give a bit more weight to YouTube videos in search results. But I'm talking about ranking the website, not the video. If the objective is to provide the biggest boost to the website's ranking (not the individual video), is it best to embed the YouTube video or can you post the video on both YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia and embed the Vimeo or Wistia video? My gut feeling is that Google would see the direct linkage between the video on YouTube and the website it's embedded on and potentially that would have (albeit probably small) more benefit in the website's ranking than embedding the Vimeo or Wistia video? HOWEVER, re the SEO claims on this Wistia page true? Would the best strategy be to use Wistia for embedding and then also post the videos on a YouTube channel for maximum exposure? From Wistia: _Vimeo, like YouTube, is a powerful domain for SEO, but when you host your videos on these platforms, you are not doing your website's SEO a favor. When you upload your video to Vimeo or YouTube, the search engines are indexing the original url, not your website's. In contrast, when you embed a Wistia video on your website, your website gains all of the SEO benefits. Vimeo videos are ranked to drive traffic to Vimeo to keep users on their platform. Wistia videos drive traffic to your website—not ours._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jazee1 -
Wrong meta descriptions showing in the SERPS
We recently launched a new site on https, and I'm seeing a few errors in the SERPS with our meta descriptions as our pages are starting to get indexed. We have the correct meta data in our code but it's being output in Google differently. Example: http://imgur.com/ybqxmqg Is this just a glitch on Google's side or is there an obvious issue anyone sees that I'm missing? Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian_Owens_10 -
Putting Dates In Title Tag
Hi, I have a site were I write previews for sports match ups. I notice when I don't put the date in the title I rank much better for specific keywords. I also noticed that most people don't really put in the date when they do the search anyways, especially since google does a good job of showing the most recent pages anyways. The only reason I continue to put the date is because of this whole idea of not having page titles that are duplicate. So many of our games will be Team A vs Team B Preview, and Im worried that the term "preview" will become so repetitive that google may not like it. Any tips or ideas on how to approach this issue best? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tarafaraz1 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Page title and slug as complements to one another?
When creating a page, is it ever worthwhile to ensure that there's minimal duplication in the keywords in the page title vs. the slug? Or is it more like the title is more like a sentence description of the page and the slug is a scannable set of keywords that describes the page, and duplication doesn't really matter.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0