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  1. Does the extra loading time that a background video has, affect SEO? Or that does not really affect it because the HTML already loaded and the video is just streaming after?

  2. Does it make a difference (in terms of SEO) if the video is embedded using the video tag, or a JavaScript or jQuery?

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  1. Yes a video background does effect your SEO see https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en and http://searchengineland.com/mobilegeddon-beginning-not-ending-220512

    The slower your site loads the farther Google pushes you down the SERPs. The biggest concern for Google is mobile devices.

    So what should you do instead of adding a video background? Research Sales Copywriting, customers care about your website solving their problem more than anything else. It's hard for a video that's a background to solve any problem unless that customer is looking for flash.

  2. Maybe, but the main goal of your site should be to create something users love. Your website could look terrible and very plain and outdated however if users find it valuable you'll get backlinks and organic traffic. See http://craigslist.org for a shining example.
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    Both links in your answer do not answer the question in any way. They are talking about mobile friendly sites, they do not even contain the word "video". To say "The slower your site loads the farther Google pushes you down the SERPs. " is kind of misleading also. Of course loading time is a factor, but the most important one? The interesting part of this question is if there is a difference bewtween a sync and async load. Whats your opinion about this?
    – tobltobs
    Commented Jan 11, 2016 at 0:10
  • The question is about SEO. Google wants websites to load fast period. Speed is now a ranking factor. Good point on the second question, I'll edit my answer.
    – Virgil Shelton
    Commented Jan 11, 2016 at 0:16
  • I had a video auto-playing on one of my pages. It didn't seem to affect the page speed in Google Analytics but in July the page speed in Google Analytics shot up. Google was making Page Speed updates in July so I suspect it was related.
    – albertski
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 15:53
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Google measures the speed of your page using Googlebot. If the page load event doesn't happen for 10 seconds, Google may directly penalize your page.

Google pays attention to user experience. If users turn back to Google too look for something else, Google notices. If your video is loading so slowly that it makes your site appear to load slower to users, then users will turn back. In my experience, three seconds appears to be the magic number. If your page can load in under three seconds, users won't turn back to Google enough to affect your rankings.

So for background video, make sure that your page is useable and that the page load event can happen even before the video loads. If you do so, an unloaded video shouldn't change the user experience or SEO.

The technology you use for embedding the video doesn't matter unless some of them make it harder to allow the rest of the page to be useable when the video is loading.

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  • Yeap, that is the general idea. The page already loaded, the video is a stream that loads after and it is an adition to the already loaded design.
    – Rafael
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 16:48
  • Hi Stephen Can I know How much time Googlebot take to load specific webpage?
    – Goyllo
    Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 12:37
  • If you have your own question please use the ask question link
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 13:21

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