Your Turn :: Reader Q & A
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I was sent a great question this morning by a friend of mine, the talented and beautiful Kelly King Anderson from Startup Princess.
Unfortunately, I have NO IDEA what to tell her.
Since you are a smart bunch, I figured I’d throw the question your way. You’re all so good at helping each other out anyway… 
Reader Question of the Week:
Do you think video or podcasts are better for SEO?
What do you think?
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Easton Ellsworth is owner of 
Not necessarily better, but I think that a video or podcast once a week would be a great way to complement regular posts. I’ll stick to writing though. I’m terribly shy hehe.
To be honest, I can’t imagine how either can affect SEO. I haven’t seen any evidence that Google is able to determine the contents of either a video or an audio file. But I suspect the real question is which one is better for business (assuming that improving business is the real point of SEO).
On that front both would have their benefits, but with sites like YouTube available to mass distribute video, and nothing really to that scale available for audio, I’d say your potential overall marketing boost from video is much higher.
Neither one is better for SEO, in my opinion. Currently, I don’t think that any of the major search engines have any way to determine the contents of video or audio content.
This might change in the future, with Google’s Universal Search, but I think it’s quite a way off.
The best type of content for SEO remains good ol’ fashioned text.
Now, in terms of business market and the like, I agree with Ninja Jon in regard to video being able to have a potentially wider reach than audio.
Video by a longshot. Why? Because YouTube videos are starting to show up in Google search results.
Additionally – a well produced video is likely to get alot of good links, which search engines love.
Be sure to:
1. Post your videos on YouTube – try to get people to vote for the videos. It seems the higher rated videos get pulled into the search results.
2. Write content along with the post to include links to anything discussed in the video as well as context for those who can’t view video (maybe they’re at work or something)
Matt Cutts went over video vs podcast at Wordcamp and I’ll agree with him that it depends on how pretty or handsome you are.
http://onemansblog.com/2007/08/04/matt-cutts-lecture-whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/
I run a weekly podcast, and I’d say that if you just post videos without writing other articles (even if you have tags), there’s just not enough words for the search engine to see. So it’s not good for SEO. However, they can be eye-catching eye candies that get human users’ attention and an invitation to check out other videos (pages).
I haven’t done either on my blog, although I’ve wanted to learn more about podcasting.
It seems like the only way that video would affect SEO is with the text that you would write in the post that you included the video.
I haven’t seen any blogs yet where podcasts are part of posts… they are usually just listed in a separate part of the blog, so I don’t see how they would affect SEO.
Overall, doesn’t all SEO come down to text?
Thanks so much to all who have commented and offered their input!
Wendy wrote me an email that said, “my readers ROCK” and I’d have to agree–completely!
I heard from some friends who are video producers that soon there will be video recognition on the web, so if there’s a video of Wendy doing a Blogher conf speech and you searched “video of Wendy Piersall” then Google would recognize her face in the video and pull it up! WILD.
I know that audio is inexpensive to produce with free editing software like audacity, but with interviewing women entrepreneurs it would be so much more compelling to show their products, etc. don’t you think!? I do.
Thanks for granting my wish, Wendy and friends!
The only thing i can think of that was meant to be said is which is better for building backlinks? I know on youtube videos you can get a link from them on the actual youtube page plus on some other video sites. I think there are a lot of podcast directories so that would work better for links
I’ve never given either one much thought really. I wouldn’t participate in either one. A few years back, I did some television and radio spots for a good cause and admitted then that I wasn’t cut out for radio or television. I’ll stick to the written word
It’s interesting to see how much both influence traffic though.
I think both have a place to play in driving traffic to your site. I think they can work hand-in-hand, and will reach a different market. So, I don’t know that one is better than the other.
This has been really interesting to read all of your comments, thanks! I *just* started using YouTube videos on my blog about three weeks ago for a “4 Free Friday” weekly giveaway that I do http://mom4life.typepad.com/mom_4_life/4_free_friday/index.html. I will say that these are by FAR the most popularly viewed pages on my blog (but after all they are for a giveaway and everyone loves those right?). I really try to make the videos fun to watch and interesting enough that people will want to forward a link to their friends so I think that helps. It has been interesting to learn how to do it and I must say YouTube makes it VERY easy.
After reading a post on SEO Scoop (http://www.seo-scoop.com/2007/08/12/tailgating-your-competitors-for-fun-and-profit-a-case-study/), I feel confident in adding that hosting a video at Google Video is just as good as hosting it at YouTube – better yet – host it at both – hey we’re going for the long tail.
Why not use both? There are probably benefits to using video and podcast and anything you can do to help SEO is a plus.
On Squidoo, I incorporated uTube modules:
http://www.squidoo.com/homebasedbusiness-workfromhome/
On my website, I use a video:
http://www.earnaextrapaycheck.com
Still trying to figure out the podcast thingy.
Thanks for the great tips. Looking forward to more.
All the best!
thanks for the insight Nathania and Stacey! My biggest breakthrough with podcasts is I found an editor for $10 an hour!
If you need a referral, let me know.
I agree with Stacey when you stated, why not use both?
These days, videos on YouTube is one of the hottest things going (I mean even the government is using it for the election debates).
And podcasts are easy to do as well, with free software such as audacity or low cost software like Audio Acrobat.
I think the biggest thing here to do talk about content and gaining readers or visitors for your business whether it be by your blog (writing), video (looking), podcast (listening). It is about offering different options for your potential customers. And I do believe someone had mentioned in the comments above that videos are starting to be found by that search engines. Also, you can submit your podcast to podcasting directories in your industry and take your powerpoint presentations
and turn them into video. (if you would like help with this, let me know)
Some people are more visual and some are more auditory. These are just different ways of appealing to those audiences.
Great topic!