There are a number of options available today for search engines like Google that index videos from millions of sites across trending topics ranging from news and sports to shopping and education. These platforms cater to videos uploaded by individuals as well as organizations/groups. By looking into videos all across the web, Google tries to accommodate users efficiently to deliver what they are looking for.
Recently, Google shared five videos where it promotes SEO practices to optimize their video content. On the Google Search Central channel, this information was accorded in the latest Lightning Talks video. Google has presented in its lengthy report how website owners can signal to communicate what their video is about and Google will know how to surface the video in Search and Discover.
How Google finds search index for videos
Video SEO is about how to add the right ingredients to the page so that signals are transmitted to Google. Every time Google squirms and opens a page, it tries to recognize the contents of a video. Then it begins to hunt for signals to understand what the video is about. Those signals are significant because they are the only ones that allow the video to get surfaced on Search boxes.
Some of the signals that Google looks for and uses to understand the content of the video are:
- On-page text: Google tries to find out page title, headline, captions near the video to relate the relevance between them.
- Referral link: some signals are sent from other sites, Google tries to find the link between them with the relevant video.
- Structured data: markup that helps in interacting metadata of video to Google.
- Video files: sometimes it becomes easy for Google to find out the content of the video and audio section of the file and adjust accordingly.
Some recommendations for Google for best video SEO practice
Google in the recent discussion has recommended five best practices for getting spotted and understood by internet surfers easily. It has laid out a five-point action to achieve it:
1. Video should be accessed publicly
The foremost step of getting more views on your video is to make sure that they are available publicly. The video should have a corresponding web page with a URL that Google can access. The video should be easily visible without any complex user data to load. The easier for all to see, the more it gets optimized.
2. Usage of structured data
To help Google find videos and understand its content, site owners can provide structured data. They can use Schema.org or video object Markup. Structured data is classified data that Google uses to heighten its search contents. Major utilization of structure data is to communicate specific information about a web page so that it becomes acceptable to be displayed in Google search results.
Along with a markup, one can also use various other information as a hashtag like a video title, description of the video, content, and span. One can also use additional features like “LIVE”, for video live streams.
3. Thumbnails should be provided of high quality
Thumbnails are still images that act as a preview image for a video. It’s kind of a book cover that is used to attract viewers. One should always present high-quality thumbnails for each video at URLs that Google can easily access. If the thumbnail is not enabled to be accessed by Google, the page might not be able to appear in the video feature.
4. Need for a video sitemap
Video sitemaps are another way to help to optimize video viewers in Google. Google video sitemap is a type of annexure to the sitemap standard providing additional data about the video uploaded on the pages. Google always recommends using Video sitemaps, but one can also use mRSS feeds too. A video sitemap naturally includes metadata tags to help Google recognize what the content of the video is all about.
5. Easily accessible video files
One always has to be sure that Google can easily fetch your video content files so that your pages might be eligible for search features like video previews and key moments. A video preview is a special feature in the Google search result where Google grabs a few seconds from a video and makes a clip for advertising as a trailer or a premier of the whole video content. To control the length and duration of the video preview one can opt for max-video-preview where Robot metatags control the extent.
By following these points of action, site owners can easily optimize their videos and reach them on Search/Discover options. Google aims to allow people to find the most suitable video for their search and interest, organizing the world’s information and making it universally attainable and beneficial.
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