Heres the stunning discovery we made from the results of a small Youtube and Metacafe video marketing research study we did comparing Youtube and Metacafe together using Alexa.com showing how people have been finding videos to watch.
You might be asking yourself the question…..Why would we even begin to do a marketing research study when everyone already knows that Youtube is the largest video sharing website, and the 3rd most visited website in the world, with Google being #1 and Facebook #2 ?
Well this actually peaked our interest a few years ago while doing some video marketing when we noticed that most of the videos we uploaded to Metacafe were getting more views than the same videos that we uploaded to Youtube.
It didn’t matter what market it was, the results were unanimously the same, our Metacafe videos always received approx 50% more video views overall than the same videos we had uploaded to Youtube.
Why is that? How could we possibly get approx. 50% more video views from a video sharing site that was only ranked by Alexa.com as the 276th most visited website in the world compared to Youtube the 3rd most visited website in the world?
Well here’s what we found in our marketing research….
1) The final url address Youtube provides users is not optimized for search
2) The final url web address for the videos we uploaded to Metacafe were optimized and what we would call SEO friendly (search engine optimized). In this example “Crazy cat“
3) The Youtube video pages where the users’ tags lead to are not technically optimized. Rather the tags lead to a query string search result that can lead to unrelated video results pages not optimized for Google organic search.
4) The video pages where the Metacafe videos actually appear on seem to better optimized for organic Google search than they are over at Youtube. The video tags that the user gets to select are placed near the top of the pages and when you click on the tags they lead to other video pages that are better optimized for people to find videos in the Google search results.
Another words Metacafe is better SEO optimized giving the search engines better food so people can find the videos easier in the organic search results from Google helping video marketers let people find their videos easier.
Don’t you think this is rather ironic since Google owns Youtube?
Well we just found further evidence to support what we suspected was true all along. That People were finding more of our videos we had uploaded to Metacafe over the same videos we uploaded to Youtube using search engines.
Here’s what we found using Alexa.com analysis tools:
Which sites did users visit immediately preceding Metacafe.com and Youtube?
9.61% of all users to Youtube came from Google
20.18% of all users to Metacafe came from Google
As you can see from the images above this aligns perfectly with our earlier video marketing research findings why our Metacafe videos are getting approx. 50% more video views than the same videos that were uploaded to Youtube.
Its because 50% more people actually ARE finding our Metacafe videos in Google organic search results and then clicking over to watch the videos.
Now 2 years later Alexa.com confirms our findings that we just shared with you.
Here’s another interesting video fact for you…
Metacafe’s Alexa traffic rank has been falling in the last 18 months (2010-2011) but more people are still finding your Metacafe videos using Google search compared to Youtube videos.
So if you’re marketing on Youtube don’t forget to make Metacafe a priority when uploading your videos to maximize your reach.
