Does embedding a video on your website help or hurt SEO?
There’s no denying that YouTube is an invaluable asset for SEO, as many people prefer to browse YouTube for appealing marketing videos rather than read 1,000 words of content about the same product or service. However, embedding a video on your webpage doesn’t directly improve SEO. Search engine algorithms will acknowledge embedded videos when crawling pages, but this element alone has no affect on Google’s rankings.
Embedded Videos Can Engage Readers
On the other hand, embedded videos can indirectly affect SEO by encouraging visitors to the corresponding page to stay on the page longer. An engaging video means more people are likely to linger, which can indicate to Google that your page has some value.
As I mentioned, people much prefer videos to long-form text, so including a helpful video on pages with SEO-optimized content can indirectly help it.
In some cases, a thumbnail for the video may also appear in the search results, and this could encourage some users to visit your page.
Embedded Videos Are Potentially Valuable
In the end, embedding a video on your webpage won’t actually improve your search engine rankings as an SEO element, but it can make readers more inclined to see you as an authoritative and engaging source. Videos will always be an effective marketing tool, and embedding them on your webpages can only help you in the long run.
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Ben Graves is an online marketing associate at Clickx, performing various SEO tasks for clients in order to help improve their online exposure and traffic, and to help establish them as leaders in their industries. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
