I want to put some articles/tutorials on my website. I really want to do them as videos / screen casts because some things are just easier to learn by showing and doing then by reading it on paper.
Also, because not as many websites offer tutorials on video.
But I got to thinking… Am I shooting myself in the foot by doing them in video? Because if my entire website is a bunch of videos… How are search engines going to figure out my website… If I have the articles in text format then that is pretty easy. They can just read my pages.
But I don’t think spiders can read my video content to learn about my website.
Why not publish the videos AND written trascripts of them that the search engines and those who can’t access the video can use to find out the same information (eg. deaf people will need the transcript to understand what is said in the video).
I’ve considered doing that. In fact I was just thinking about that as I was coming back to check this thread. The problem I have is that I have no nice way to show the code in the written articles. I’m just starting this so I’m trying to figure out a method that will work.
Right now I am writting the articles up in a Word document, and then I plan on creating the HTML pages for each article, or loading them into a CMS. Depending on what I decide to do.
Writting the articles in Word is nice because I need to spell checker, however, it’s a complete pain because I have to copy and paste all my source code into the Word document and that just makes a complete mess. Word does not understand how to handle source code, and it makes the spell checker crash.
So right now I have a video, a Word document and an HTML document of every article I write. I’ve only done about 15 articles so far and have 32 more planned before I bring the website online and it’s already becoming a PAIN. I need to figure out a better method for producing the articles.
I guess I’m just not sure what method to use. I thought about typing the articles directly into the HTML page so that they will be nicely formatted along with the images and code and they will be ready to upload, however, if I do that I find myself copying each section of the text back and forth between the Word document so that I can use the spell checker.
I’m going to write each article and then provide a video tutorial to them as well. Maybe the video version will be a paid service, since they cost more to produce and bandwith and a lot more storage space than HTML files.
You should make a simple mix of screen shots, a video and lots of text, between 500-600 characters would be the perfect ammount. That combined with quality and layout makes for a great article/page.
I would suggest that you should go with both of them.
Figure out which format would be easier for the users to understand according to parts.
Give some parts of the content in articles and some part of the content in videos.
Problem or confusion solved :)!
You should add some text explaining what video contents is showing. you can give your video tags and categories which are best guide for search engines.
Just add videos but also add a little description with each video you put in your website. Don’t forget to insert keywords in the description as it will help your website to get visible to search engines.
I agree with adding text descriptions to your videos. But the more important thing is make the videos of good quality and share them on social media. As more people will notice some will be linking and sharing your videos themselves. The SEO will come naturally.
video is good thing to be listend by google if it is taged well…also if able then you should try both video and article containg information about it then it would work good for you…
If you have a page that contains videos as well as text, this shouldn’t be a problem The internet is starting to change as well. Even though Google can’t officially crawl videos, I suspect they are starting to recognise the importance of videos on the web, and their value as quality content for visitors.
Other than your SEO considerations, you might also want to take into account human visitors to your site who prefer to have text. Text is easier to use as a reference, say you have a good and unique video tutorial. I watch it, like it, but can’t memorize it all in one go. I’d want to check the transcript/article for quick references rather than having to go through the video again. Other than personal preferences, there are plenty of user who simply can’t watch videos, be it due to impaired vision or other issues, therefore it’d be ideal if you had both versions available on your site. You’d give your users the best possible service and you’d give search engines what they want. A win win situation.
The internet is starting to change as well. Even though Google can’t officially crawl videos, I suspect they are starting to recognise the importance of videos on the web, and their value as quality content for visitors.