If your company has professional videos that you’ve spent thousands of dollars on, you should absolutely publish the videos on YouTube to take advantage of YouTube’s search results…. just make sure that you optimize your YouTube videos when you do. That said, you shouldn’t be embedding YouTube videos on your corporate site… for quite a few reasons:
- YouTube is tracking the usage of those videos for targeted advertising. Why would you want to share your visitors’ intent with Google so they can push advertising for your competitors?
- Unless you forget, you’re probably leaving relevant videos of your competitors on your YouTube player! Imagine visiting your site, watching your video, then your competitor’s video is displayed as a relevant alternative. Ouch!
- Believe it or not, YouTube is actually quite slow and videos often don’t start at all sometimes as the video is buffering. Hey… it’s free, right? Well… not for a business that’s trying to close a customer it isn’t. There’s absolutely a cost to speed on the Internet.
- YouTube’s Video Player isn’t very customizable… notice this video below where I have a few options to choose from… watch on YouTube, click on the link to open in YouTube, Watch Later on YouTube, Share, or press play. It’s all branded for YouTube instead of your brand. Why not just a player that’s distraction-free and works?
I should probably advise you to avoid hosting videos on your own site as well. Your typical web host doesn’t have the infrastructure to power streaming to thousands of visitors. In fact, there’s a good chance that you’ll break through some download thresholds and be charged more. You definitely want a video host… just not YouTube.
Wait a second, you say… Doug… you always embed YouTube videos on your site. Well, folks, this is a publication… not a business site. I actually love embedding videos from YouTube so that the creators get additional views and opportunities for folks to find and subscribe to them. When I have some professional videos done for my business, I’ll absolutely be hosting them on Swarmify.
There’s, of course, another exception… you’re a YouTuber!
Swarmify SmartVideo: Fast Video Hosting
Swarmify offers a robust and fast video hosting solution for your corporate website. Here’s an overview video:
Swarmify offers some incredible features:
- CDN – They have a global content delivery network (CDN), meaning that there’s very little latency between the individual requesting the video and the location of it being distributed.
- Buffer-Free Playback – SmartVideo makes use of Swarmify’s patent-pending delivery solution, drastically reducing stall-outs by 8x.
- Continuous Optimization Video Streaming – Throughout playback, SmartVideo continuously monitors the video experience of each individual user and prevents failures before they occur.
- Device Encoding – Visitors get video optimized for their devices to deliver the best experience. Worry-free and automatically updated for new devices.
- Clean, Distraction-Free Player – Make more sales, and reduce bounce rates by keeping visitors focused on your brand. Giant logos and related videos are designed to take away your customers.
- WordPress Plugin – No need to mess around with scripts and embeds, SmartVideo has a plugin to get you up and running easily.
- Pricing – You shouldn’t be punished for serving high-quality content on your site. That’s why SmartVideo billing isn’t based on bandwidth, only video views.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of speed:
YouTube Video Embed
SmartVideo
If that’s not enough, SmartVideo automatically fetches your videos from YouTube, encodes them, and stores them. After that, the YouTube player is completely replaced and your videos are hosted on our global delivery network and served via our accelerated playback technology.
Related Martech Zone Content
