5 Tips for Smart Video SEO (Part 1)
So you know all about SmartVideo. You’ve decided to enhance your website’s content with always up-to-date, engaging videos. If you’re not also thinking about how these videos can drive more search engine traffic to your site, you’re missing on a key opportunity.
When it comes to getting visitors to your website, few media formats shine as bright as video. Whether in advertising or in search engine results, video is more noticeable and boasts better click-through rates than other forms of content. Pages with video also tend to rank better in search engine result pages (SERPs) than their plain-text equivalents.
So how do you ensure that you enjoy these benefits?
Enter SmartVideo SEO. Here are 10 tips to help you drive search engine traffic from your on-site video:
#1. Add schema.org video metadata to your pages
Search engines have limited capability of understanding your video content. To help them do so, they offer several methods to describe your video using on-page markup. The recommended method, endorsed by Google, Bing and Yahoo, is schema.org markup.
Using schema.org, you can provide your video and player URL, a title and description for the video, a thumbnail to use in search results, and more. The markup must exist in the page source as it is loaded from the web server. Don't create it using JavaScript.
Adding schema.org markup to your pages increases the chances your SmartVideos will get crawled and indexed properly. For more on schema.org for video, check out Google's Schema.org for Video guide. To validate and test your markup, use Google's Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
#2. Create and submit a video sitemap
Google allows you to submit information about your videos using a video sitemap, which is an XML file that describes the videos on your site. While Google's ability to crawl videos without a sitemap has improved substantially over the past year, submitting a video sitemap is still a good idea. It helps Google discover your videos faster, and provides additional information about the videos.
Keep your sitemap as up-to-date as possible, and make sure the information in your sitemap and on-page schema.org markup match. Your SmartVideo provider should automatically generate and update your video sitemaps. For more information about video sitemaps, read the Video Sitemaps guide from Google.
#3. Embed your video in a search-engine friendly manner
Using overly complex JavaScript or Flash to create your video object makes it harder for crawlers to find the video on your page. Even with video sitemaps and schema.org markup, you should make it easy for the crawler to detect the actual video object on the page.
The sooner the video object is created in your page, the more likely it is that the crawler will detect it. Ideally, embed the video directly in the page's HTML source. You may still manipulate the video object in JavaScript later. And whatever you do - avoid launching your video in a browser popup. Even if the crawler discovers your video, it will link to the wrong URL, rank poorly, and will probably have poor keywords. Using an on-page JavaScript popup is a better alternative, if you must. Your SmartVideo provider should offer tried and tested embedding methods that are both search-engine friendly and offer the full range of dynamic SmartVideo capabilities.
#4. Provide context to your video
Search engines typically understand little about the actual content of your video. To associate your video with relevant keywords and topics, search engines make use of the content around the video. Make sure you have relevant text on the page such as titles, headings, descriptions, comments, tags, categories, links, breadcrumbs, and so on.
Adding supporting on-page content is important even if you added schema.org markup or submitted a sitemap with titles and descriptions, because search engines usually need to verify that your provided markup matches content the user will actually see on the page.
#5. Place the video prominently
Search engines prefer displaying video results for pages they consider to be "video pages," with a great video user experience. They favor pages where videos are prominently placed and are easily accessible (think YouTube, Hulu, CNN Video). The harder it is for users to find the video on the page, the less likely it is that search engines will decide to show your page as a video result. Embed the video on the page itself, ideally above the fold. Showing the video in a JavaScript popup or hidden tab that requires user interaction through a small button is not as effective. Additionally, search engines tend to prefer videos with dedicated landing pages.
Stay tuned for 5 MORE TIPS tomorrow to give your website videos the ultimate SEO boost to drive more traffic to your site!