Video schema can sound like a foreign concept, particularly for those who don’t practice SEO full time. While schema has been around for significant amount of time, it’s becoming increasingly important to search engines. In this post we will take a look at just what video scheme is, why it’s becoming ever more important to SEO and how you can mark-up your videos to give them the best chance of a solid performance within the search engines.
Why Is Video Schema Important?
For those who aren’t aware, search engines run on millions of web crawlers. These crawlers are constantly browsing the world wide web, gathering information such as text content, and various other web elements that are then stored in search engine indexes. For the most part, search engine spiders are able to read most elements of your website, but there are limitations with items like images and videos. That’s where video schema comes in to save the day!
“Videos are one of the most common types of results on Google and we want to make sure that your videos get indexed. Today, we’re also launching video support for schema.org. …now the recommended way to describe videos on the web”Henry Zhang, Product Manager for Google Videos
Video schema has always been important because it helps search engines better understand the content of your video. Without it search engines have very little information to analyze the video. So as more and more businesses leverage video to market their brand and reach customers, it increases the relevancy of video schema in your marketing strategy. The following stats illustrate how important a marketing tool video is becoming, as well as the favorable way in which search engines such as Google treat video:
- “92% of mobile viewers share videos with others” (Invodo 2015)
- “65% of executives have visited a vendor’s site after watching a video” (Forbes 2014)
- “Video content increases the chance of appearing upon Google page one by as much as 50 times over“ (Neil Patel 2014)
What Is Schema Mark-up
Schema mark-up is, quite simply, the tags and various attributes that can be added to a video to communicate specific information such as title, URL, thumbnail, etc.
The schema for video will be known as Video Object and the backend code for a video will look a little something like this:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject"><h2>Video:<span itemprop="name">Title</span></h2>
<meta itemprop="thumbnailURL" content="thumbnail.jpg" />
<meta itemprop="embedURL" content="http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123" />
<object ...></object><span itemprop="description">Video description</span></div>For those who may not have any knowledge of coding whatsoever this code may appear to be more than a little intimidating, and it’s worth noting that if you use a CMS such as WordPress or Joomla then they’ll likely be working with pre-built plugins or extensions to handle any coding for you. Alternatively however you may wish to have a video overhaul by using the services of a professional (who will ideally take you through the process of adding your own schema). That said, here we run you through a quick Video Schema master class.
Recommended Schema From Google
The following elements are the main ones you need to focus on with your video schema:
Name:
This is required and it defines the title of your video. It should be short and relevant, including within it any keywords or geo-specific keywords.
Description:
The description is also a required tag and provides for a relatively short description of the video’s content. This too must be engaging, as it will appear alongside your video result within the search engine listings (where the user must be compelled to click through).
Duration:
The duration is recommended, particularly as users will largely make a choice about whether to watch and engage with a video based upon duration alone. This data must meet the standard ISO 8601 format.
Content URL:
The ContentURL is another recommended element and is the url to where the content (e.g the video) resides. It should be in .mp4, .wmv, .avi, .rm, .flv, .mpg, .mpeg, .mov, .asf, or another video file format.
Embed URL:
This is a recombined element and provides for the URL that relates to the player that you’re using. It is found within the src part of your video tag.
Upload Date:
This is only ever used in instances where videos are subject to an expiry date.
Helpful Video Schema Videos
There’s no better a demonstration of the power of video than a collection of super helpful training videos right when you need them, right? Which is why the following videos can help no end when understanding why video schema is important and how it should be implemented. So here we’ve sourced some essential viewing material for your video schema education (don’t say that we don’t treat you!).
Schema.org – What, How, Why?
This video covers much of what has been said within this blog post, but goes into a little more visual detail as to how it works.
Does the use of schema.org mark-up create a ranking benefit?
This video straight from Google Webmasters addresses the SEO side of video schema, and there is no one better to provide insight into this than the all-powerful Google guys.
Should I add schema.org mark-up on my videos even if they’re on YouTube?
This final video provides a little more information for those who use their videos in conjunction with the all-powerful being that is YouTube. Again, this is from the Google Webmaster guys.
Are Video Sitemaps still important?
If you’ve been around a while and have previously read about the improvements that video sitemaps make to your website then you’ll likely be wondering whether the Video schema replaces Video Sitemaps, to which the answer is an unequivocal no. Instead it will work alongside video sitemaps.
“Using schema.org mark-up will not affect any Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds you’re already using. In fact, we still recommend that you also use a| Video Sitemap because it alerts us of any new or updated videos faster and provides advanced functionality such as country and platform restrictions.”Henry Zhang, Product Manager for Google Videos
Featured image courtesy of Creare.
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