Videos for city landing pages

[Former Member]

There has been a lot of talk lately with videos and how Google absolutely eats them up!

I thought I would start this thread to document a mini experiment. I will be uploading (3) unique, locally focused "call to action" videos on (3) of our city landing pages.

I'll check in soon when I get to my computer with the current ranking of these pages. From there, I'll add them to the pages in the coming weeks and we'll see how effective they really are.

Any suggestions or tips for embedding or placing them in an SE friendly way much appreciated.

 

[Linda Buquet]

LUV experiments like this. Thanks for sharing Ross!

 

[Scott Rawlins]

I am also eager to see what results you get. Should be interesting.

 

[Former Member]

I'll be uploading the (3) landing page videos in the next day or so. I want to first show each city landing page's starting positions for various keywords.

Just to avoid local competitors, etc. I've color coded and blocked out each keyword. Each color corresponds to a specific city and its unique video. Each color block shows the starting Google rankings for several keyword variants (city+service, service in city name state, etc.) Each keyword number# is directed to a that specific city's landing page.

I'm not extremely experienced with this so I'm not quite sure if I should keep my site hidden and avoid linking to it on this forum or not, maybe someone can help me with that. If people think it will not present a problem in the forum or with my competitors I'll gladly share so you can view the actual videos.

Attached is the screenshot of our starting rankings:

---------- Post Merged at 08:42 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:36 AM ----------

A question I ran across: should I self host or go through Youtube for best SEO results?

What do you guys think?

 

[Blake Denman]

Here are a few tips:

• Be sure to have a text transcript on the page for spiders to crawl
• Use schema - VideoObject - schema.org
• Before uploading to YouTube, name the video the keyword you are trying to rank for
• Read this article: 10 Tips For Using YouTube To Kill At Local SEO
• Wash, rinse, repeat
• Be awesome

I've uploaded a some videos directly to the site and added schema to them. Like the YouTube results you see in SERPs, Google can produce the video snippet directly to the page/post that the video is on.

Hope I was able to give you a nugget or two. Looking forward to seeing the results!

 

[Former Member]

Videos have been uploaded today. We'll see how things change in the coming weeks...

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Definitely keep us posted. I haven't seen any ranking increases myself when doing this but I never made it a point to be directly on top of the results either.

Very interested to see how this plays out!

 

[Former Member]

So I ended up taking the videos down and reading some more before I uploaded. Today I finally put the videos up.

I've decided to take it very slowly and try different approaches so the experiment is as accurate as possible.

1. The first "tactic" I'm trying is to keep the video as unique as possible in Google's eyes. I will only share the video using our Youtube embed code on our social sites. I won't be plastering it up on every video site possible (like I've done in the past). I've also changed the video settings to keep it from being crawled all over the web and leave it unique to each landing page.

I've read a lot about sharing the videos as much as possible, etc... but I'm just going with my instinct here and trying to keep it unique at first and see how the experiment goes.

2. Each landing page previously had a REVIEWS rich snippet. I don't think Google shows a reviews snippet WITH a video snippet, so I've removed the reviews schema from all three pages. If anyone knows otherwise, I'll add them back in... but for now, I want to see if the video snippets show for the pages and whether they produce more clicks.

I will say that the review schema was pretty successful in that the stars often made it appear as if we were located in the 7 pack for outside towns (even though the listing was in organic of course).


So, we'll see where this goes. My plan is to move slowly and record changes. If anyone has any ideas to try in the future let me know.

 

[Jamie Steigerwald]

You may consider hosting one of the videos with Video Hosting for Business. Typically YouTube videos will rank higher for YouTube then your page. Here are some more articles on the subject that may help:

An SEO's Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding - Moz

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-video-seo/

 

[JoshuaMackens]

He's just measuring the page ranking increase/decrease from embedding a video.

The study will still work.

Great tip/suggestion though. I've thought about that myself.

 

[Former Member]

You may consider hosting one of the videos with Video Hosting for Business. Typically YouTube videos will rank higher for YouTube then your page. Here are some more articles on the subject that may help:

An SEO's Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding - Moz

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-video-seo/

I am using video SEO by Yoast in order to get the video schema on my site.

It's interesting you mention Wistia. Yoast actually recommends his users to not use YouTube. He says that although it works right now, he believes Google will no longer take YouTube for rich snippets because they would rather promote their content through their sister company instead of through my actual website.

I think I will switch over to Wistia down the road just to experiment.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Sorry have not been able to keep up with posts. Wanted to be sure you saw this post of mine.

Hardcore Video SEO Resources with a Local Search Emphasis

 

[Jamie Steigerwald]

The larges advantage Wistia has is the ability to have the video appear self hosted and that embeds on other sites point back to your site. Check out the "Video SEO" section on their website.

 

[Former Member]

That's exactly what I'm looking for.. I am currently using YT with all the videos set at "unlisted" but I think Ill try Wistia for the next phase.

 

[Former Member]

Quick update approx one week after uploading:

KW #1

Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 6.25
March 14th Avg. Google Ranking = 5.5

KW #2

Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 5.4
March 14th Avg. Google Ranking = 1.8

KW #3

Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 8.25
March 14th ​Avg. Google Ranking = 7.75

 

[jasonkd]

Subscribing to this. I'm interested in the results

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

[Former Member]

Roughly one week since the last update. Still sitting on the original videos, using only YouTube with videos all set at "unlisted".

I will be changing the videos later this week over to Wistia, using the backlinked embedding option to share in various places.


Here's the latest ranking's (each KW contains up to 5 variants):

KW #1

Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 6.25
March 14th Avg. Google Ranking = 5.5
March 20th Avg. Google Ranking = 5

KW #2

Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 5.4
March 14th Avg. Google Ranking = 1.8
March 20th Avg. Google Ranking = 1.8

KW #3
Feb 27th Avg. Google Ranking = 8.25
March 14th ​Avg. Google Ranking = 7.75
March 20th Avg. Google Ranking = 7.5

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Did you show all of the keyword results or just 3 that increased?

 

[Former Member]

Did you show all of the keyword results or just 3 that increased?

The numbers I listed are the averages of all the rankings I'm testing. You can see each of the individual rankings color coded in the screenshot I've attached.

Just felt like doing the extra math for everyone to simplify

 

[Former Member]

Also, all of the keywords have increased in ranking so far