Video SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has two purposes:

1. Helping search engines determine the relevance of your content
2. Increasing the popularity of the content that you wish to rank highest in search results

In this article, you’ll learn how to optimize your video content for search engines by getting the most out of:

• Keyword analysis
• Metadata
• Video sitemaps

The purpose of video SEO is to help search engines understand your video content better, as they are unable to ‘read’ it directly. Video SEO helps you by:

• Making sure your pages and videos appear in the Google search results
• Influencing the ranking of your videos in the Google search results
• Ensuring that your video appears as a thumbnail
• Enriching your video results

1.0 | Step-by-step video SEO guide

1.1 | Keyword analysis

Decide per page or website which subjects you want to rank in the search results. Translate these subjects into specific search keywords to optimize your video for search engines. Here are some tips for deciding on your keywords:

• Research per product or service
  • What challenges does your target group face?
  • What words does your target group use to search for products or services?
  • Is seasonality an issue?
• Enter each subject in one of the following tools
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Ubersuggest
  • Answer the Public
  • Google Trends
• View and compare the suggestions and search volumes given by the tool
• Decide on the best keyword
  • Use the search volumes to determine where a certain keyword will rank in the search results
  • Consider less obvious keywords

1.2 | Add metadata

• Navigate to the “Media Library” and open a clip
• In the “Metadata” tab:
  • Enter a title
    • Keep it between 50–60 characters
    • Make sure you put the most important keyword at the beginning
  • Add a description
    • Keep it to a maximum of 300 characters
    • Use the most important and relevant keywords
  • When applicable, add an author
    • Google can display these in the search results
  • Deep link
    Enter the URL that leads to the page on which you want to index the video.
    
    Tip:

    When you embed a video on your own website, we advise you to enter the page URL where you placed the video.

  • Add tags
    Use the most important keywords.
    
    Tip:

    You can add a standard tag, so media clips are automatically added to a clip list. For example: create a “video sitemap” tag.

  • Custom fields
    You might have unique and relevant custom fields, so be sure to fill them in. These could be fields like Category or Product.

Learn more about clip metadata and custom fields.

1.3 | Create a video sitemap

A video sitemap is an XML sitemap to help search engines understand and index video content on your website. It provides metadata about each video, such as:

• Title and description
• Thumbnail URL
• Video URL or embed location
• Duration
• Publication date
• Category and tags

Use a playlist to create a video sitemap for your website.

• Create a playlist
  • In the Online Video Platform (OVP), click “Playlists” in the menu panel
  • Click “Create new smart playlist”

• • Add a title and description (optional)
  • Add filters to display the clips that should appear in your video sitemap
  • Click “save and activate”

• Convert your playlist to XML
  Enter your account handle and playlist ID into the following URL format: https://[account_handle].bbvms.com/sitemap/[playlist_id].xmlFor example: https://yourcompanyname.bbvms.com/sitemap/1740573682172098.xml
• Place the video sitemap on your website
  Instead of manually adding and replacing XML files, we recommend adding a script on your website that dynamically adds the XML content from https://[account_handle].bbvms.com/sitemap/[playlist_id].xml to your dedicated video sitemap (for example: https://www.yourwebsite.com/videositemaps/videositemap.php). Reach out to support@bluebillywig.com for example code.
• Submit the XML to Google Webmaster Tools
  This way, Google knows exactly where your videos are located. We recommend having a webmaster handle this step.
• Check if your videos are being indexed
  Head over to https://search.google.com/test/rich-results and type in the URL of the page where your video is embedded. See if a video comes up in detected items. By clicking the dropdown, you can also see all the metadata Google has on your video.

2.0 | JSON-LD

Besides applying keyword analysis, metadata, and video sitemaps, Blue Billywig automatically optimizes your videos for search engines by injecting schema.org markup (via JSON-LD).

JSON-LD tags provide structured data: a standardized format for providing information about a page. This helps search engines understand the content of a page.

JSON-LD tagging is enabled by default. If needed, it can be disabled per playout via the Disable automatic JSON-LD tagging setting in the playout configuration.

Learn more about JSON-LD tagging.