Worth embedding YouTube videos not from your own channel?

[Éowyn]

Do you find it worth embedding YouTube videos from channels not your own? Or are you embedding videos only from your own channels onto site pages? I read that you did this in past threads @JOoa0ky @bernard. Do you find it still beneficial these days with the direction of the updates?

I don’t have my own videos for every page that’s why. But it improves time on page while giving a different medium/vantage point for the user.Thanks so much in advance.

 

[bernard]

I used to do it alot, but recently I have moved away from it.

I don't have any hard data on this, but my intuition and experience is that it doesn't matter much anymore. I will sometimes do it if I can't find other good sources to quote or include, then having a video with some explainer is better than nothing. This is mostly for product reviews.

 

[wikibum]

If the video you are embedding adds value to the reader, then you should include it. It never hurt my rankings in the past. I was ranking for a page getting 5k+ searches a month and it had 5+ embedded videos from other channels.

Unless you plan on budgeting for videos for every single page/post - its just easier to embed useful videos on your page.

 

[JOoa0ky]

I still embed and link out to YT videos that aren't my own.

When I used to write more about trending topics, I would embed the viral TikToks that the topics were about. Was pulling in like 10-20k clicks/month at the time for those posts...

However, I have moved onto producing my own videos these days so 98-99% of the embedded videos are now my own.

But yes, if it's helpful to the reader for understanding context by all means go ahead. A lot of sites are weary about using other people's videos so most of the time that just gives you an edge since your content has text + image + video.

Of course, if its your own video that's just the cherry with whipped cream on the top. As of the moment all of my YT videos have a link going back to all of my posts... Going to see how that turns out for me after a year or so.

BTW
If you find an entity/kw/query that doesn't have a lot of competition in images/video... it's your time to shine and bust some balls. If you bombard google with like 20 images and some videos, you can literally sculpt and define what the entity will be.

You don't optimize for google, you teach it to come and sniff your ass.
Let your definition be synonymous with what G thinks it means.

 

[Éowyn]

Thanks everyone for the awesome insight. I’m starting off with embedding a relevant YT video from other channels then slowly phasing it out with my own.

BTW
If you find an entity/kw/query that doesn't have a lot of competition in images/video... it's your time to shine and bust some balls. If you bombard google with like 20 images and some videos, you can literally sculpt and define what the entity will be.

You don't optimize for google, you teach it to come and sniff your ass.
Let your definition be synonymous with what G thinks it means.

I can do this by adding semantically related words and descriptors of the entity into the alt text/title of the 20 picts and video? I’ll try this out!

 

[JOoa0ky]

Thanks everyone for the awesome insight. I’m starting off with embedding a relevant YT video from other channels then slowly phasing it out with my own.


I can do this by adding semantically related words and descriptors of the entity into the alt text/title of the 20 picts and video? I’ll try this out!

Yeah, I spam the shit out of it with the title and alt text. Especially for the "what it looks like" search intents and for the product reviews.

If you were writing about a bagel maker.

I would have...
Bagel maker.jpg
bagel maker - side view.jpg
bagel maker - top view.jpg
bagel maker - bottom view.jpg
bagel maker - zoomed out view.jpg
bagel maker - on the floor.jpg
bagel maker - on kitchen counter.jpg
etc

And then no reason to not have a 360 degree video demonstration (:

Just be more reasonable including the KW in the captions... since that does count towards word count and may be perceived as kw stuffing.

But yeah, give video production a try, it's my first time but progress is on track. Strangely enough the competition is less on there than on G search.

Also right now I have an embedded YT video from another channel which I rank number one for under "videos" search.

My article is answering a 8 word query.
I found a relevant YT video that I embedded which describes signs and symptoms of the condition.

If you search and click on "videos", I'm #1 with the video thumbnail showing. If you click it, it takes you to my article and NOT the original youtube channel. The meta description is also taken from my article and not the video.

Absolutely fascinating.

But at the end of the day... why share the pie? You should make your own videos and eat all the slices.

 

[Kninemark2]

I use my own videos on my articles and link to them.

It’s essential a glorified slideshow of the article they are reading. With AI and Canva it doesn’t take much extra work.

Nothing fancy but people learn in different ways.

 

[bernard]

I use my own videos on my articles and link to them.

It’s essential a glorified slideshow of the article they are reading. With AI and Canva it doesn’t take much extra work.

Nothing fancy but people learn in different ways.

Can you expand on how you do this?

 

[Kninemark2]

Can you expand on how you do this?

Certainly.

The video is just a series of slides sometimes with a voiceover.

I generally do a new slide for every header tag I have in an article. So if there are 12 headings then there are at least 12 slides.

Usually more as I put a cover and end on.

I have branded colours and slides already set up in Canva so it’s just choosing one.

I then ask Chatgpt to provide a summary of the section and to rewrite it so that it’s suitable for a PowerPoint presentation.

I then copy the original heading into the slide and copy the summary on as well. I use Canva for the slides which makes important and exporting easier. You can actually do this through excel as well.

When the deck is done I export it out as a video.

if it warrants the time and money I will then take all the summaries and headlines and place it back into chatgpt. Then i ask it to write a script that uses the headlines and summaries. This means that the video is different to the article which I like. You could have the article read instead.

I will then use elevenlabs to read the script and download the audio.

Using a basic video editor I add the audio to the video file and done.

Then I upload to my channel. Optimise it for keywords and entities and embeds it in my article.

It doesn’t take long when you get in the swing of it.

 

[bernard]

Certainly.

The video is just a series of slides sometimes with a voiceover.

I generally do a new slide for every header tag I have in an article. So if there are 12 headings then there are at least 12 slides.

Usually more as I put a cover and end on.

I have branded colours and slides already set up in Canva so it’s just choosing one.

I then ask Chatgpt to provide a summary of the section and to rewrite it so that it’s suitable for a PowerPoint presentation.

I then copy the original heading into the slide and copy the summary on as well. I use Canva for the slides which makes important and exporting easier. You can actually do this through excel as well.

When the deck is done I export it out as a video.

if it warrants the time and money I will then take all the summaries and headlines and place it back into chatgpt. Then i ask it to write a script that uses the headlines and summaries. This means that the video is different to the article which I like. You could have the article read instead.

I will then use elevenlabs to read the script and download the audio.

Using a basic video editor I add the audio to the video file and done.

Then I upload to my channel. Optimise it for keywords and entities and embeds it in my article.

It doesn’t take long when you get in the swing of it.

Very cool thanks, but do I understand correctly that you don't use images or stock video or animation etc?

 

[Kninemark2]

Very cool thanks, but do I understand correctly that you don't use images or stock video or animation etc?

No stock video but I do use some animation and images.

Openning tile is your normal YouTube clickbait style thing. After that it depends on what the article is.

I will generally use some animations in the background.

Nearly every video has an animation for the headline and the main text I almost exclusively use typewriter on.

I still want the video to be “interesting”.

image wise the article dictates this. If the article is image heavy like a how to style article then I will include more images. These are just the same ones from the article.

If it’s not an image dependent article then often I will just go with the hero image and one other image.

a simple slide might be just a bold headline. Then underneath a table with the image on the left and the main body text to the right.

The next slide just reverses the text image order and so on.

 

[bernard]

No stock video but I do use some animation and images.

Openning tile is your normal YouTube clickbait style thing. After that it depends on what the article is.

I will generally use some animations in the background.

Nearly every video has an animation for the headline and the main text I almost exclusively use typewriter on.

I still want the video to be “interesting”.

image wise the article dictates this. If the article is image heavy like a how to style article then I will include more images. These are just the same ones from the article.

If it’s not an image dependent article then often I will just go with the hero image and one other image.

a simple slide might be just a bold headline. Then underneath a table with the image on the left and the main body text to the right.

The next slide just reverses the text image order and so on.

Interesting, this really is more of an animated powerpoint with sound, right?

I wonder how much of the value of this is in the sound. Some people just don't want to read a lot of text.

I'll definitely experiment with this. I bet we'll begin to see some decent animation AI services soon.

 

[Éowyn]

Golden. Didn’t think to tackle images and video that way. With ranking in three tabs in mind now, there’s def 10 more things to do on the list.

 

[Rooster]

I typically embedd relevant videos in my articles where it fits. If the post ends up doing really well, I'll make my own video on it to replace it.

That way I don't waste time making a video if it's a miss, yet can still take advantage of potential views/subscribers on my YouTube channel.

 

[tziahs]

I tend to include any and every type of info I find relevant and reliable, particularly for pillar articles.

Let's say I have a blog about gardening and I want to create a pillar article about growing Peruvian succulents indoors. I would make it as comprehensive as possible and try to include references to scientific studies, photos, infographics, tables, charts, graphs, and YES, even YouTube videos.

Why? Because my blog should provide information to the visitor. And that includes text, citations, references, photos, infographics, and videos. People love to get info displayed in a variety of mediums, and video is very attractive.

My visitors should be able to learn almost everything there is about growing Peruvian succulents indoors from my website. And that includes videos too.

Having pillar articles with A LOT of information (3,000 to 5,000 words, multiple photos, stats, graphs, and videos) on a very specific topic will help your website a lot. Then, you can link secondary blogs to it (600 to 1,000 words).

 

[Bothan Spy]

I'd much rather make my own videos (eventually) but any video that helps reinforce the point of whatever I'm writing about is a good thing, IMO.

 

[PickleRick]

No issue at all and has worked fine for me. Just make sure to not embed your organic competitor's videos.

 

[Éowyn]

No issue at all and has worked fine for me. Just make sure to not embed your organic competitor's videos.

That’s true. I’ll double check this though. Don’t wanna give competitors the boost that ranks them higher! I ended up putting embeds that are not from my own at the bottom of the page too as a “see more” section so it doesn’t clash with the site’s branding.

 

[Éowyn]

I see all my "Video outside viewbox" pages have been completely de-ranked. Like they don't show up at all in the top 100 for the target keyword (90% of them were #1 before last update).

I gathered from a couple searches that this is because the video (youtube embed) is outside the top part of the article (I usually put them somewhere close to the bottom).

Anyone found a fix for it? Hurting one of my sites bad as I have a YT-vid in almost all articles, should I just remove them completely?

People on seoroundtable.com mentioned hundreds of their pages were deindexed in the October update that had youtube embeds. Then they were reindexed after removing the YouTube embeds and sometimes schema.

I don’t even know guys. @DunderMannen @Trump was there a reason for this and did you changed this during the update? Also, where did you see the notification? ->

Video outside viewbox

I looked in GSC video tabs sections, but couldn’t find any notifications. I have video embeds at the end of posts. There maybe would have been that “outside viewbox” message somewhere? If the pages get deindexed these embeds are prob a waste of time. Gonna make social banners instead .

 

[Trump]

People on seoroundtable.com mentioned hundreds of their pages were deindexed in the October update that had youtube embeds. Then they were reindexed after removing the YouTube embeds and sometimes schema.

I don’t even know guys. @DunderMannen @Trump was there a reason for this and did you changed this during the update? Also, where did you see the notification? ->


I looked in GSC video tabs sections, but couldn’t find any notifications. I have video embeds at the end of posts. There maybe would have been that “outside viewbox” message somewhere? If the pages get deindexed these embeds are prob a waste of time. Gonna make social banners instead .

I found it in GSC > Indexing > Video pages

I had videos both at the top, mid and bottom of the articles. I removed the videos and my rankings came back. Still testing though, and I still have websites that lost a lot of rankings that have no videos.

My belief now is that Google messed something up when reading code on websites. The implementation of Youtube-videos being one of them.

Two days ago I removed videos on 5-6 articles that had disappeared from SERP. The next day they were on the first page again.

 

[DunderMannen]

I found it in GSC > Indexing > Video pages

I had videos both at the top, mid and bottom of the articles. I removed the videos and my rankings came back. Still testing though, and I still have websites that lost a lot of rankings that have no videos.

My belief now is that Google messed something up when reading code on websites. The implementation of Youtube-videos being one of them.

Two days ago I removed videos on 5-6 articles that had disappeared from SERP. The next day they were on the first page again.

Ok, removing the vids it is... I could understand it if it was ranking drops, but this is 100% a bug because of Goog selecting another page (in my case like category pages) and ranking those at #8-35 instead of the actual article which is nowhere to be found...

 

[Éowyn]

selecting another page (in my case like category pages)

Wild.

Thanks for your insight. @Trump @DunderMannen

I’m keeping my socials and website separate for now. There are many moving parts in October, but removing youtube embeds from the site yielded better results for me. Interesting that the GSC message didn’t pop up.

 

[Silverback Links]

For me I would say as long as the video is relevant and adds to your page, by helping get your message across then why not? As long as you are not helping promote any potential competitor's and their YouTube channel.
Long term obviously if you are able to create your own videos that's always going to be better for you and your site, building your own presence on YouTube building your own channel and viewer base.

 

[googlealchemist]

Is this embeds causing deindexing still a thing as of now or did that get sorted? I'd never guess that in a million years as it seems...well, really stupid and counterproductive to user experience.

 

[Éowyn]

really stupid and counterproductive to user experience.

Yo, I have zero trust in Google.

0000

They can't even get my dates right since Nov. And get only one date on the page. 0.0
When I looked into it, this was an issue that occurred some years ago too.

My prob isn't when do they get video sorted. It's that one month, the videos are flagged as a problem, and the next month it's not flagged with every other update. Then I'm over here adding, removing, adding, removing, adding, removing for the sake of this "SEO user experience" Kool Aid.

No, no, no. That's not the vibe. It's just gonna chill on whatever socials. Making them better suited for those video platforms is prob a better ROI.

Anyways, if anyone has an update on embeds causing indexing issues, it's super appreciated.