Every vendor on the planet is jumping on the video bandwagon, and they’ve been pounding at my door over at Park Auto Mall. We already use AutoTrader and Cars.com, but they’re constantly trying to up-sell us for videos.
If you want to gain a little knowledge, read this:
The last straw was yesterday when the regional manager from cars.com came in because she felt her reps didn’t do a good job the day before. After a few minutes of chatting, she told me “you know, having Youtube videos will increase your website’s ranking on the search engines…..”
After letting her finish, I told her that wasn’t true. If the links from YouTube were clean (which they are not), it would be beneficial. But, the links we are allowed to place in the comment section of your YouTube video will posses the “nofollow” tag.
What Is The Nofollow Tag?
I found the best definition of the nofollow tag on Wikipedia:
nofollow is a HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. – Wikipedia
Now some might argue that the nofollow tag will help “a little bit”. Take a minute to watch this video from Matt Cutts, who is an Engineer at Google and he is the head of the spam team.
The only clean backlink I can find from YouTube is the link allowed on my YouTube Chanel Page. By looking at the code, there isn’t a nofollow tag present. This could possibly be a sole backlink, but I highly doubt it. Perhaps YouTube instructs each Chanel page via htaccess not to follow it? If that’s the case, we will never know.
If you right click and view source, you can find out of a link is no follow. This is a screen shot from our YouTube Source showing the nofollow
If it is a clean link it will automatically get discounted anyway because it will be considered a link exchange, unless you are not linking to your YouTube Channel. If you’re not linking to your YouTube Channel in any way, shape or form you will not have any authority because of the lack of backlinks.
Ever notice there aren’t many spammers on YouTube?
Sure, you will get email spam from YouTube Members. But you will not see many spammy, crappy videos on YouTube unless you dig deep. Why do you think that is? I’ll tell you why, it’s because the links are nofollow! Even spammers will not waste their time.
YouTube can be a great source of branding for your car dealership, and that’s about it. Our Youtube videos were viewed over 8,000 times since the launch a couple of months ago. I can assure you, these videos do not come from Google searches. Out of the 8,000 views, only 49 of them came from a Google Search.
This Screen Shot from my YouTube Insight Shows That It's Not Google Searches That's Getting My Video Views. It's simply our hard work and proper use of keyword tags (Click To Enlarge)
If you are a car dealer and your videos are getting found on Google search, that just means that your area lacks SEO for whichever terms they’re showing up on. Go ahead, find a video show up on a good Google search and leave a comment below. I challenge you!
If you want to have a successful YouTube Channel it takes some effort, but it can be fun as well. Although YouTube in the 3rd most popular website on the planet (below Google & Facebook), people will not go to YouTube and search for a car to buy. That is why I love YouTube for branding purposes. People will find us by accident and learn more about us.
I also love the embed feature for Youtube. I sling our videos everywhere including testimonial videos on our website, Car of the week videos on our Blog and our Facebook Fan Page.
So there, I said it. YouTube has no SEO Value To Your Website! It can help you get more traffic, but it won’t comes from searches. It will come from Google clicks.
I love a good debate, so if you agree or disagree you will be rewarded with a nice backlink using keyword love from this blog if you leave a comment.
I am going to end this post with this one sentence:
There is no such thing as video SEO!!
Wow I am surprised to see a car guy suggest using something for the “branding” value despite the SEO value not being there. I referenced your post on Twitter but could not locate a Twitter account for you to include you in the mention. Here it is, let me know if you are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/blogproautomo/status/20909043339
Ryan, my Twitter is twitter.com/showroomlogic
Makes total sense Mike. Google’s or any search engines job is to bring back the user the most relevant content it is asking for. So if you’re looking for a car, it would make sense to have the car be it’s own website.
I agree with Mike that Youtube is strictly for branding and possibly contests. Backlinks are the key.
Give the consumer what they want.
Actually, there is such a thing as video SEO. A properly search-engine optimized video on your site can give you rankings in the “regular” web — to mention video — results, especially on Google. Furthermore, evidence (i.e. tests and studies run by a slew of SEO’s) indicate that Google likes to see “interactive devices” on websites, most commonly videos (but don’t confuse that with simply embedding YouTube videos on your site)
I’m with you though that putting up videos on YouTube, in and of itself, will do very little if anything to help a website — other than YouTube’s of course. However, I’m seeing more and more evidence that no-follow links can and often do have a positive impact on rankings. Matt Cutts says that no-follow links are dropped from Google’s link graph. That doesn’t mean they aren’t relevant to some other part of Google’s algorithm.
There is certainly a mysticism about SEO though. What works for me or you will not necessarily work for anyone else. Many SEO’s run tests on just one or few websites, then derive conclusions about what does and does not work. You might find that what is true in the world of SEO for my site is opposite of what is true for your site.
The best advice may be to simply stay away from blackhat, but otherwise do what works for you, SEO gurus (including Matt Cutts) be darned!
Thanks Stu..Great Comment
Hi all,
I think one overlooked point about the youtube links is that they drive traffic. Someone is Canada might see your video and click the link. Even though they never buy from you, each visitor to you site does up you in the rankings. So even though the links are nofollow I feel they will boost you in the rankings. I run a dog training company and post on youtube and have seen higher traffic to my site and I feel I will soon rise in google searches. My dog training video that drives the most traffic is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUGAcennOOs