I viewed a thread that talked about the SEO effects of having a Youtube video embedded on a homepage. The overwhelming consensus was that it did not negatively impact SEO.
I want to confirm this. From my understanding, and external links, especially on the homepage, take some of the “link juice” away from that page, and essentially passes it onto the external site.
Does that not happen here?
I realize I could use a nofollow attribute, but still am hesitant as I’ve heard that even with this, it still gives some “credit” to the externally linked site/video.
I promise you beyond the shadow of a doubt, having a YouTube video on your home page will not hurt your SERP.
When people refer to link juice, it’s largely hype. Keep in mind that internal links to your own pages, which are the only benefit of link juice to/from your own website, are relatively useless. Google understands that 1,000 links from another page on your domain is worth significantly less than 1,000 different links from other relevant and trusted sources. They’re both link juice, but place a very different role.
Now, if you create a page that is all YouTube videos, I’m not sure it’s going to hurt you but it’s certainly not going to help you. You would be better off having one video per page and then some contextual content that compliments or relates to that particular video. That would be the most useful content to a user, thus it is the most appetizing to Google.
Don’t be afraid to link to other useful and relevant sources if it’s going to help the user. The web only works because we indeed do link to each other. Stay away from creating a link farm and you’ll be just fine.
Remember that the purpose of the Google algorithm is to find the best and most popular sites for any given word or phrase. Why would Google think any less of your site because you’ve linked to a (relevant) video on YouTube? This mythology where webmasters try desperately to cling onto every drop of googlejuice by not allowing any external links isn’t helping their search rankings at all, and it isn’t helping their visitors either.
If you think it will help your readers to have an external link on your site, have an external link on your site!
With my own experience I can say that there is nothing like link juice… Yes, you do get credit for good backlinks but you don’t lose anything.
Hosting a Youtube video on your website will be beneficial for you.
Also, host some more videos on your site and create a video Sitemap… that will give help you in boosting your rankings.
