Does video on my website help or slow it down?

Both, depending on how it's built. A video won't lift your rankings on its own. A Google analyst said so plainly years ago, and nothing official has said otherwise since. A carelessly embedded video can also make a page slow on a phone. But one short video of you talking to the camera, loaded only when someone taps play and with the words written out on the page, can do something text struggles to: show a prospect who they'll be sitting across from. So put one good video where trust is decided, build it so it costs nothing until it's played, and keep the important information in text.

Does adding a video to my website help SEO?

Not directly. In 2017 Google's Gary Illyes said "having a video on your page will absolutely not help you rank better in web search," as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. That's an old statement from one Googler, not a policy page, but we haven't seen Google say anything since that contradicts it.

Your video can show up in Google as its own result, which is a different thing from your page ranking. Google's video SEO best practices say the video must be embedded on a watch page, "a page whose main purpose is to show users a single video," that it "can't be hidden behind other elements," and that the page "must be performing well in Search before its video can be considered for indexing." A homepage with a video halfway down isn't a watch page. For most agents, video results are a bonus, not the reason to film.

Does embedding a YouTube video slow down my website?

It can, if the player loads before anyone asks for it. A standard YouTube embed is an iframe that pulls in the player's scripts as soon as the page loads, whether the visitor watches or not. Chrome's own Lighthouse documentation on lazy-loading third-party resources with facades names video embeds as a common example and recommends the fix: a facade, "a static element that looks similar to the embedded third-party, but is not functional," which swaps in the real player only when it's clicked. It lists open-source YouTube facades such as lite-youtube-embed.

Self-hosted video has its own trap. A file uploaded straight to your site can start downloading before anyone presses play. The HTML preload attribute is the switch: MDN's reference explains that auto means "the whole video file can be downloaded, even if the user is not expected to use it," while none and metadata hold back. Add a poster image so visitors see a still frame instead of a blank box.

The worst case is the autoplaying background video in the homepage hero. It's usually the largest thing on the first screen, which makes it the element Google times for page speed. We covered that in how fast your site should load on a phone.

So where does video actually help an agent?

Here's the honest counterpoint first: most prospects will never press play. People skim insurance pages for a phone number, a service area and a reason to trust you. Some vendors put a number on how many visitors watch versus read; we couldn't trace those figures to an independent source, so we won't repeat them. Plan as if the video is for the minority who want it, and make sure the page works without it.

For that minority, video does something text can't. A person deciding who to trust with their health coverage or their family's life insurance wants to hear your voice before they call. Spots where it earns its place:

• The About page. Sixty to ninety seconds: who you are, who you help, how a first appointment works. This is the video we'd make first.
• Next to the booking calendar or contact form. A short "here's what happens when you book" clip lowers the nerve it takes to commit to a call.
• Answers to the question you hear every week. One explainer per common question, each on its own page with the answer written out. These are the only pages that might qualify as watch pages.

Where it doesn't help: a stock-footage montage with music, or a ten-minute webinar recording on the homepage. Neither shows a prospect anything about you.

Can ChatGPT or Google's AI see what's in my video?

Don't count on it. AI assistants answer from text they can read, and none of the major assistants documents that it watches embedded videos on small business sites when deciding who to recommend. What's observable is simpler: a sentence written on your page can be quoted, and a sentence spoken only in a video usually can't. If your best explanation of how Medicare Supplement pricing works lives only in a video, assume no assistant knows you said it.

The fix is the transcript. Put a cleaned-up transcript, or a well-edited written version of what you said, directly under the video. Correct the auto-captions first; auto-captioning often mangles terms like "Medigap" and "IRMAA." That text is what makes the page citable, and it's the same answer-first writing we lay out in our AEO guide for insurance agents.

Do I need captions on my website videos?

You should have them. The web accessibility standard most organizations measure against, WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2, says "captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media," at Level A, the baseline tier. Your audience is the other reason: plenty of Medicare-age prospects have some hearing loss, and plenty of people browse on a phone with the sound off. We aren't giving legal advice on accessibility obligations, but captions cost little and help everyone.

If you sell Medicare, remember that what you say on camera is marketing just like what you write. The same rules apply on your own site: no unsubstantiated superlatives, never call a $0-premium plan "free," and keep the required disclaimers on the page. Check with your FMO or carriers on whether they want to review video scripts.

Should I host videos on YouTube or on my own site?

For most agents, YouTube behind a facade. It handles compression and playback quality on slow connections, it's free, and your channel is one more place people can find you. The trade-offs are YouTube's branding and the suggested videos at the end, which can include a competitor. Self-hosting avoids both but means you manage file sizes, formats and bandwidth yourself. Either way, the speed rule is the same: nothing loads until someone presses play.

Frequently asked questions

Where we fit

The sites we build are text-first: every page answers its question in writing, so it's fast and citable before any video is added. If you have a video, or record a short intro, the place we'd start is your About page, behind a click-to-play image, with captions and a transcript beneath it. See what's included with each plan on the what you get page.