Videos Indexed in the SERP
Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you're hosting on Vimeo or Youtube?
Not only does it help them spider your website by giving the search engines clues as to where to look for video embeds, it may also earn your site a click through boost by giving you a picture in the SERP. Below I'll show you how I managed to index my Vimeo video embeds to include a thumbnail. The same steps may work for Youtube as well, including using iframes for embedding. There is a lively discussion about success (and failures) in the comments below.
Benefits of a Video Sitemap
There are several reasons why you'll want to add a video sitemap.
- It makes it clear to Google what your content is.
- You have the opportunity to provide a range of details through schema.
- Additional presence on video.google.com search.
- RAD picture thumbnail, which is a pretty great call to action.
Video Embed Code
It's important to pay special attention during this part. Video embedding is largely done using iFrames these days and that poses a problem if you want the search engines to index your videos. For whatever reason Google doesn't currently spider iFrames. This is frustrating as iFrames are great for playback compatibility on mobile devices, iPads, and the like. There is a workaround, but first, let's discuss how a video sitemap works.
A video sitemap is simple guide for the search engine bot. Think of it as a map to treasure, it just makes it easier for the bot to find the treasure. If you use an iFrame, the bot can't find the video making the video sitemap useless. However, Google can find and spider standard object embeds, AKA the old fashioned way of doing things. With this in mind, I'm going to describe the safest way to get your videos indexed by using old embed code still available on Vimeo and Youtube. Here is a picture to help you find it:
Embed Code
If you found it correctly your embed code should look something like this. (vimeo example)
You don't have to cleanup your code like I did above, I only did it so we could easily see what's happening. Pay special attention to the embed src line, the URL inside looks like this..
vimeo: https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35117351
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/v/VMeXGE_a8Gg
This is the RAW video player link, it tells google/bing where to find the original video file. We'll need this information later when building the video sitemap.
Nested iFrame/Embed *OPTIONAL*
There is one thing worth mentioning. Some people have developed a technique to trick google and still use an iFrame. I haven't actually tried it myself as I'm happy playing it safe with the old method and showing up in the SERP.
Anyhow, the idea is that you use the new iFrame code and the old embed code at the same time with the noframes tag. This essentially nests the two videos, such that end users will see the new html5 iFrame version and google is served the old embedded version.
A couple drawbacks worth mentioning.. First, this is technically cloaking content as you're serving one thing to the user and giving google something else. Second, your page will take longer to load as the original embed starts to fire up before the iFrame gets control. Lastly, noframes wasn't designed to work like this, it's a hack. With that in mind here is what it'd look like:
Video Sitemap Requirements
Now that you have your embed code all sorted out, it's time to start working on the video sitemap. Google requires that your video sitemap MUST contain the following information and that it should MATCH what is on your webpage.
- Title - This should be the same as the title of the page your video appears.
- Description - Make this exactly match the meta description of your page.
- Play page URL - The canonical URL of the page your video appears.
- Thumbnail URL - By thumbnail they mean a high resolution image up to 1920x1080.
- Raw video location - This is the embed src link noted from above pointing at the clip.
- More Details: Google: Creating a Video Sitemap
Example Video Sitemap
The best way to learn how a video sitemap works is to see one. First start by creating a new file, name it something like: video-sitemap.xml
Then fill it in so that it looks like the example sitemap below, except replace the white text with your own information. For every video you have copy/paste the <url></url> block. In the example below there are two video URL blocks, the top block has descriptors for the fields, the bottom block is exactly what my video sitemap looks like. I prefer to keep mine in chronological order with the newest video on top. Once you're done you'll upload it to the root of your website ex. https://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Tweak Robots.txt
This isn't absolutely necessary, but it doesn't hurt. Add your sitemap to your robots.txt file. Don't worry about being redundant, you can have a video sitemap describe the same page as a standard article sitemap. To add your sitemap to robots.txt place the following line at the top:
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Update Google Webmaster
Once you're ready with your sitemap head over to Google Webmaster Tools and submit it under site configuration. Google will crawl it and report if there are any errors. If everything looks good the videos will be queued to be spidered and you should see them online after about a week.
Conclusion
This is actually the bare minimum to get you started. There is a lot of depth to the schema and you can include a range of details in your video sitemap including tags, categories, and author just to name a few. Hopefully with the above information you can get your embedded vimeo/youtube videos indexed with a picture. Feel free to contact me if you get stuck or check out my video sitemap at https://winefolly.com/video-sitemap.xml.
Source of noframes trick https://www.reelseo.com/vimeo-sitemaps/
"Don't worry, the same steps should work for Youtube as well."
I am very interested in know if you have tried out this method with a YouTube video your self and seen it work. I've researched this for probably 40+ hours over the past couple of months and although I have not seen anything definitive from Google, all the commenters and experts I have read say that embedded YouTube videos in the Universal Search box WILL NOT click through to any domain besides the video page on YouTube.
If you have seen this work somewhere in the wild, where a YouTube video shows up in the SERPs and you can click through to a site that is not YouTube that has the YouTube video on it, please let me know. From what I've seen it seems that Google will not allow that because they want the traffic on YouTube.
This is why we've moved over to Wistia at my company, in the hope of getting that video traffic to our own domain and not let it go off to YouTube.
Video SEO seems much more underdeveloped and underexploited compared to regular SEO which is why I think there is not that much information out there on video SERPs and SEO. Rand always mentioned it briefly in his presentations but there haven't been many posts on it on here, which is why I'm glad you mentioned it.
I saw a post (https://www.reelseo.com/google-video-sitemaps-matt-cutts) on Reel SEO where they mentioned the importance of video, and in the old comments which have since been replaced by Facebook comments, the founder of Reel SEO Mark Robertson said the following:
"I would plan on hosting your own videos (easy to do) – or perhaps using something like Blip.tv or Vimeo. I really dont think that they are going to go for showing youtube thumbnails for another domain. Ive been trying to accomplish that for a few years with no luck…"
I also watched a webinar (https://www.reelseo.com/video-xml-sitemaps-video/) on the same site with Nelson Lee from Google Video and repeatedly throughout the webinar the moderator asked about click throughs on video and the importance of video sitemaps with YouTube videos. What Nelson was saying is that they do encourage you to create a video sitemap if you have YouTube videos on your site in order to let Google know where YouTube videos are on the web - although I'm pretty sure myself that Google could find this without a video sitemap for your YouTube videos embedded on your site.
Here is what the moderator said to clarify Google's stance on video sitemaps towards the end of the webinar:
"They accept and encourage sitemaps with Youtube videos. They are worried about random sites embedding videos they don't own and stealing Youtube click throughs to their own site. They are working on ways to get through this."
So Google is worried about spammy sites embedding whatever YouTube video they want and through better SEO and maybe shadier tactics, getting their page with the video embedded to show up in universal search with the video clicking through to their own domain. This makes sense to me, and in the webinar Nelson Lee was also saying that they were looking on a way to verify ownership of videos to deal with this problem.
So I have not seen any YouTube videos clicking through to anywhere but YouTube myself, and I would love to be proven wrong so if you have any examples please let me know.
The solution to getting click throughs for video search therefore, is to use Vimeo like the author has used as an example, or using your own hosted videos such as on Wistia, using JW Player, or any of the other options. But I would not expect traffic to your site from YouTube videos in the SERPs at this point.
Wow, I really appreciate the thoughtful comment, thank you!
I have these two examples:
https://www.carlvanderpal.com/wordpress-plugins/google-video-sitemap/google-video-sitemap-plugin/
https://fourblogger.com/how-to-upload-and-install-a-theme-in-wordpress-video-tutorial-im-doing-thesis-here/
If you search from google video for site:fourblogger.com & site:carlvanderpal.com you'll see the domain specific click throughs for what appears to be youtube hosted videos. You can also get them in the standard SERP, but it's finicky on when it shows a thumbnail and when it doesn't. (I did get both working in the SERP though just a second ago)
I looked at the code, it looks like standard youtube embeds. Except carlvanderpal.com has removed the embed tags within the object. However, there does appear to be some tom-foolery. They are uploading to other sources, such as vimeo or locally and also have that object embedded on the page in a hidden div. Then for the user, they are serving the youtube link.
That seems like obvious deceit, but, maybe iFrame the youtube video and noframe a vimeo or local player? So google can find the object embed, but at the same time, you are off-loading the work to an external video host. Is this black hat, or a trick? I'm not sure.
Otherwise, the XML for both sites is dressed for HTML via an active plugin rather than a static file, I'm not sure how to trick them into displaying raw XML.
Those sites seem a little shady, like they know exactly how to finnagle (similar to tom-foolery) the YouTube embed. Have you seen any standard iFrame YouTube embeds that are ranking in Universal Search?
The first site listed here a an example actually has two videos on the page - one Youtube embed, and one self-hosted video.
It's the self-hosted video which is in the sitemap, but it's hidden on the page with javascript.
The idea is that the self-hosted video is shown to Google in order to get indexed in Google video, while normal users view the Youtube video (which gives it more views, and helps it to rank better).
Wow that's great info Gary, glad you found that.
I also see the same thing when you search "Wordpress SEO" on page 2 of the SERPs there is a vdeo for jasonfox.me that shows up, and when you click it it take you to his website and it shows a YouTube video.
I wonder if he's doing the same.
So, the Vimeo works (no doubt as I've posted about that here - https://www.reelseo.com/vimeo-sitemaps/) HOWEVER - YouTube does not. The first 2 examples (as Gary Pointed out) are not because of YouTube. If you look at every result that was indexed, all of the landing pages have videos NOT from YouTube that Google is crawling and discovering due to the publishing method (object/embed).... The last example you mentioned (jasonfox.me), Im still looking into but need to check whether it's being cloaked as I dont see a reason it would be working otherwise at first glance.
There's a couple more examples Ill dive into below in the comments.
I would really advise updating the article to mention this because it is going to cause a LOT of confusion. I work with many companies to assit with video sitemaps and video indexing and I receive emails all the time through our site (reelSEO) regarding youtube and sitemaps. At this point it does not work. That being said, things may change in the coming months and so Ill let you know what I find out with regard to that.
Just as an FYI as well (and you mentioned this)... I would not recommend cloaking (in particular for Youtube) as I've been told directly that even with good intentions, this is not advised.
Several posts down a user claims to have gotten his youtube iframe videos indexed. I can't find a second embed. Any ideas?
youtube iframe index?
Joe - i have been getting videos indexed in Google SERPS for a couple of years now and you are absolutely right that Mark Robertson of reelseo.com has cracked this and while jhammack post is interesting -I fear it will lead a lot of people to frustration and disappointment.
Do you think the video sitemap has any benefit to someone who is hosting their videos on youtoube? (regardless of being indexed or not?)
I'm going to ask SeoMOZ for some edits and want to get the valuable comment notes up into the post, there seems to be a lot of users out there who are frustrated and can't find answers. (or at least know what is/isn't possible)
Like the user below, who does apparently have his youtube videos indexed, but is on blogger..?
simple answer: site:winefolly.com/episode/pandora-cellars/
You have no idea how much time you saved me. I was just about to start the search for information on Video XML sitemap implementation.
Really interested to see if that idea of cloaking has long term potential of working. It sucks that we have to cloak it to give the user the best possible experience...
I actually don't like the cloak at all, it's incredibly frustrating. If you need any help with your sitemap, feel free to hit me up. I spent hours scouring the internet on how to get it to work with few sites actually doing it right. And by right, I mean actually showing up in the SERP/google videos on either of those platforms.
Also, I'd recommend you title your video differently on youtube/video than the keyword phrase you'd like to match, those sites have so much domain authority they can outrank if your video doesn't get traction.
Yes and I also think the <video:tag> tag can't hurt either.
Add the time you saved me to the time you saved Jon cooper, and you'll have an idea of the impact your post has made on our lives! :)
You say that "iFrames are great for playback compatibility on mobile devices". So, if we use iFrames we'll have issues with Google indexing the content, and if we use <object> we'll be in trouble with mobile devices...
I ran a couple of tests to see how the the old embed code and the new iFrame code would behave on mobile devices. From my tests they both work perfectly well on the mobile devices I have at hand (an iPad 2, an iPhone and an Android device).
Am I over simplifying this, or is this a non-issue and we can use the old embed codes and stay away from the cloaking hack?
Thanks
Michel
Is there sitemap generator you recommend. I was looking into A1.
This is a really helpful guide, and yet it makes me more and more thankful all the time that I use Wistia to host my videos. Wistia (also used by SEOmoz) boasts integrated SEO video XML sitemaps. All you do is set up a line on your Robots.txt to reference the Wistia XML sitemap. Then, each time you add a new video, you can add it to the SEO sitemap and include all the meta data.
It saves tons of time. Regardless, what you did is quite helpful for those that don't have access to a tool such as Wistia. Great post!
Wistia is great and I'd highly recommend it for anyone that can afford it. if you are doing supplemental videos for a blog though and don't have the budget for self-hosted video, some of us are stuck with vimeo/youtube (this guy).
I actually don't find the sitemaps that difficult, I just copy/paste the url block, fill in the meta data and then execute a script which uploads the file.
N/A
The Google documentation pretty much lays out what you need, however the tips on the embed code vs. iframe is great!!! I always try and shy away from anything that could be consider cloaking or “Black Hat” in any way. Also like you say it doesn’t hurt to add your XML sitemap to the robots.txt file, but the xml sitemap submitted through Google webmaster tools should cover it.
Also, a quick note. If you don't have any vidoes in your XML sitemap or if you accidentally delete them Google Webmaster Tools will indicate that there is an error with your sitemap. So make sure you always have at least one video in the sitemap to avoid this issue.
Great tips!
here's a link to the google documentation Cappy is talking about...in case anyone was wondering.
https://bit.ly/yVCSAW
Awesome post dude, just started on our youtube channel and im sure this is going to make the results that much better, Cheers, Really helpful xD
What an amazing post... for someone like me who has 2/3 of his site pages with video and did not even know a video site map existed!
Any insights on whether the old embed code works when you use a WP shortcode?
Also, YouTube provides under the Share button a different code ("youtu.be" vs the classic "youtube.com" code). Any advice on that issue?
Thx Justin!
You made me do some research! Heh!
Wordpress shortcodes use oembed API. There are details on their use here:
Wordpress Youtube Shortcodes
And there are details as to how they were integration into wordpress here:
Wordpress Embeds
I pulled up the oembed API from the developer and did some more research. Bad news, from what I can tell, youtube decides what to return, in this case, they send an iFrame. In fact, if you're curious you can see exactly what youtube returns when you call an oembed here:
Youtube oEmbed Call
The third line shows the HTML returned as an iFrame. Boo. With all that above information, it doesn't look like there is a simple answer to the wordpress shortcode, you'll have to manually embed the old code.
As for youtu.be vs youtube.com, if you use the old embed code checkmark, the code they give you should create an object for you using the correct link. If you look at my picture above, you can see in the code block for youtube *(below the youtu.be short url), there is a bunch of text about objects and params, hidden in there is the link pointing to the youtube.com player file.
I hope that helped!
Awesome. Thank you sir!
use a plugin called "shortcode UI" on WordPress. It lets you create your own shortcodes easily. I set up one where all I have to do is give an url as an attribute, and puts out the old embed code nicely on the rendered page.
Is it just me or is the "old embed code" gone from You Tube. I'm not seeing it there any longer.
Foreword: I too use the old embed option if possible in order to make the video "seen" by the bots
Philosofical question:
why do you say that using the iFrame (which is better for users, as they can see your video also in mobile platform like iPhone and iPad), which has the terrible defect of not showing to the bot you have embedded a video, and using at the same time in noframe the old embed code is cloaking?
Please follow my logic before jumping on me (and remember my foreword above): cloaking is showing to the bots something you don't show to the users. But if the "cloaked" code is referring and pointing to the same video the users sees thanks to the iFrame, therefore you are showing to the bots the same content the users are seeing: hence you are not doing any black hat there.
By the way, great post and useful reference guide.
And sorry for my crazy sillogism.
I thought for my first post I'd play it conservatively and at least open the door to the idea that a nested embed within an iFrame could be seen as cloaking.
It's true that from an honest point of view, they are identical visual pieces of content. However, from google's point of view, one of data, source, and page attributes, they are uniquely different. They have to consider that not everyone is honest and it's really easy to serve different content via an iFrame.
This is a difficult question, because it's really about why google doesn't spider iFrames to begin with. I can only offer speculation that iFrames are too unreliable, since they are basically embedded sites that have their own entire variable scope and object tree on a different domain.
Assuming google doesn't spider the iFrame, how can they verify the two pieces of content match. Even if they do spider iFrames, technically, one may be a flash object and the other an HTML5 object. They are the same length, but they would never match a checksum and google can't with all certainty know they are in fact the same video rendered with two different compressors and served by different players. (too resource intensive) All google sees is that it's being served one thing inside a noframes tag and the user gets another thing from an external website served via an iFrame.
I know I didn't really answer the question. To be honest, I'm not even sure where I stand on it. I do know that even on seomoz, they host the webinars with embedded objects and not iFrames.. vOv
Justin..You made me avoid the silliest mistake which I would have done , if not followed your Post. I was thinking about the nested iframe method of the videos embedding(actually I had read about it somewhere) Honestly I was having the same doubt of cloaking risks and it got confirmed from your words as well, I would love to do embedding in Old way, sometimes being OldSchool is safe and Good. And lastly Thanks for the Video-sitemap creation tips, many of the folks still get confused about it, hence it was the great way to sort out the confusions! Thanks Justin It was a great Read for me, thumb up to you!
Hello - great post indeed.. although im quite perplexed at my own video ventures this week, im hoping i can share them with someone here to decypher more of the code and contradictions im finding.
7 days ago i embedded 7 videos to my sites (call it an experiment)
The sites were built with xsitepro, and an easy embedd feature where FLV files can be inserted to play as a flash player. i also setup thumbnails for them and pointed to them accordingly.
I would like to mention - i never made any video sitemaps whatso ever... only the original sitemap was updated.
within 24 hours they were indexed and thumbnails now show on many (but not all) if the pages.
I actually spread these same videos accross about 20 pages, so duplicate videos on different pages.
But most are showing at least once in the serps.
Now... i thought lets add them to youtube and make a chanel
I did and i saw i think one or two indexed in the serps with a thumbnail - however this didnt last long
I then thought what will happen if i put the youtube embedd code on a few pages of my site too
and create seperate pages for each one, and see if that will show in the serps for the same video
After doing so... and waiting a few days
i can now report that Youtube is showing all but one 'video thumbnail; hosted on youtube itself in google serps
which is suprising in my opinion...
I thought youtube would definitly show thumbnails for the same videos as they are hosted, i may experiement more by removing the youtube embeds on my site. but im quite perplexed...
I also tried a video yesterday and uploaded the same video to daily motion
I serached today and found it indexed (but again no video thumbnail)
could this mean that google is now stopping all duplicate video content to show in thumbnails?
Or have i flagged a filter?Would a video sitemap change all this?
SO many questions and so little answers on this subject, i would like to contact anyone who may like to investigate and test these theories with some projects, so that more can be decided on whats what in the seo video arena
feel free to PM me
Hey,
I’ve noticed that if you put Reel SEO into Google their top video thumbnail links through to one of their pages, but there is no video on that page?
Does Google not check the video sitemap and the page together to check the video actually exists?
Thanks
Chris
Hi !
It's really good guide...
I have few questions...
We own ecommerce site. we are in process of building videos realted to our niche. I'm planning to host videos like this :-> www.ecom.com/videos where videos folder i m going to manage with wordpress and wordpress has plugins like :- https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/
I am planning to host video on youtube and vimeo. as both will have same videos. which service provider i should use for my own sitemap...
we know both can rank in google and my ecommerce site too..
Keep SEO benefits and traffic in mind. what should i do...
Thanks
Hi Justin,
Thanks for this incredible post! There is an amazing lack of information online about video sitemaps with embedded videos.
Looking over your current video sitemap, it looks like its all vimeo. Did you cut YouTube entirely? Any reason why?
I'm trying to create one right now for a site that has all embedded YouTube videos, and looking for any help out there on it!
Thanks Alexander Pokorny
Great post. Very helpful.
I just made a video sitemap and hopefully one of my videos will be indexed soon.
How do I block one video from being indexed and allow other videos on the same page to be indexed?
Thank you very much for this post! I knew about video sitemaps but now I understand that I need to remove the iframe embeds on my site and use the objects.
Also, with Vimeo, I used the link to the file like this
<video:content_loc>
https://player.vimeo.com/external/11111111.sd.mp4?s=1d1e01b9065e0926aa63b4ac18bb0917</video:content_loc>Do you think that works too or I should change the sitemap and use the player location instead like you advise: https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35117351What do you think?Thanks again
Thanks for the post. It is going to help us in our reputation management project where a client has a few negative videos and using these tricks, I hope we can get those ones down.
Thanks again!
Double post ... excuse me
Still haven't had any luck with youtube embeds picking up and even showing anywhere whether it be a site:bluewidgets.com search in google and then clicking on videos to see all the videos its showing 0. Anybody have any more tips or had any luck where we could see what you have done?
I submitted the video sitemap to Google the day of this post and it has been picked up and says all 7 videos have been indexed but not seeing any in live search results though.
How does this apply now that Google has removed rich snippets from most sites?
Hi there, I have a Blogger blog that I would like to create video sitemaps for. How do I go about doing this?
it seems that vimeo does not suport any other embeds anymore except the iframes.
Has google began to crawl iframes now or is there another solution?
I wonder if I embed old codes of YouTube videos uploaded by others in my blog page, will that page still rank? Should I embed only my own videos I've created and hosted in YouTube or Vimeo?
Great stuff here.
I am tryign to digest it all. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this at a site like mine where I create a daily one mintue video (so every post almost has a video.) I use the new embeed code so that viewers can watch on mobile devices, but also so I can change the url so that the title of the video doesn't appear on the screen (it can be distracting) I'm open to a better way to do this if there is one.
I'd also really like to find a way to use a video site map of some kind, since I know there are lots of people in the same shoes where we were a year ago, searching for videos like the ones we post, and I want to do all I can to help them find them.
Thanks again for the great post!
Hey Justin, I'm not sure if you're still responding to this post, but I've had difficulty with a parsing error in my video sitemap.... Google WT says it's on line 2... and I'm lost as to how to fix it, as it looks generally identical to your example.
Here's what it looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="https://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9” xmlns:video="https://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> <url> <loc>https://www.scottkdouglas.com</loc> <video:video> <video:title>Pepsi Moon Festival Fireworks</video:title> <video:description>Chinese Moon Festival Fireworks Display sponsored by Pepsi</video:description> <video:thumbnail_loc>https://scottkdouglas.com/PepsiMoonFestFireworks.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc> <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=75593024</video:player_loc> <video:publication_date>2012-10-05</video:publication_date> <video:duration>238</video:duration> <video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly> <video:tag>Pepsi</video:tag> <video:tag>Festival</video:tag> <video:tag>Fireworks</video:tag> <video:uploader info="https://www.scottkdouglas.com">Scott K Douglas</video:uploader> <video:live>no</video:live> </video:video> </url> </urlset>
Any help would be great!
hi friends this is my sitemap
https://populerhdvideo.com/video-sitemap.xml
but still google not displaying thumbnail.
i have submitted this sitemap to google webmaster.
I read this on Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472 <video:title> Required The title of the video. Maximum 100 characters. The title must be in plain text only, and any HTML entities should be escaped or wrapped in a CDATA block.
<video:description> Required The description of the video. Maximum 2048 characters. The description must be in plain text only, and any HTML entities should be escaped or wrapped in a CDATA block.
Could be an update?
Hi Justin,
Thanks for writing about this topic. For people like myself it is very helpful. I am trying to put together a video sitemap for a new video subdomain I set this subdomain on my website at: https://video.emilywilliamssculpture.com. This has been done through Vimeo Pro's video Portfolio. I am using Google Analytics and I am trying to iron out things properly so the Googlebot can crawl my new video subdomain. Many posts I am reading on the web about the video loc are about 2-3 years old (if not older.) Before I start doing a hit or miss situation with my sitemap in Google Analytics can you confirm which embed code approach is best for my particular situation. I am doing an Xml sitemap in Dreamweaver.
Thanks so much for any help or suggestions you may have for me.
Emily Williams
Hi Emily!
You actually may have a better chance of getting a prompt, up-to-date response if you post this question in Moz Q&A. There are a number of experts in there who may be able to help you.
Good luck!
Great introductory article. This is an underutilized area of SEO that every expert should be a master of. Universal search requires it and so does improving CTR and CROs.
I would award you double thumbs up if I could for that double embed tip, it's simply brilliant.
Thanx! I wish I could take credit, I've seen it before and i can't remember where. I wonder if they'll let me add a source if I can remember..
Of course we will! :) If you remember, shoot me an email and we'll get it added.
What up jhammack?
I just wanna you guys to check out google indexing an iframe youtube video from my website:
He is the url ->https://www.google.com.br/search?tbm=vid&hl=pt-BR&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=643&q=site%3Awww.lilwaynebrasil.com.br%2F2011%2F05%2Fvideo-clipe-hustle-hard-remix-lil-wayne.html&gbv=2&oq=site%3Awww.lilwaynebrasil.com.br%2F2011%2F05%2Fvideo-clipe-hustle-hard-remix-lil-wayne.htm
If you look at the source-code of the webpage, you can find the youtube iframe.
Thoughts?
That seems super rad, can you help shed some light:
Did you have a video sitemap for this post?
Do you have other videos embedded and if did they also get indexed with a thumbnail?
Is it possible google favors blogger sites?
I don't really have a video sitemap. I have a lot of videos indexed with a *thumbnail, here is some examples:
Another video with youtube's iframe -> https://www.google.com.br/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=hea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=pt-BR&q=site:www.lilwaynebrasil.com.br/2011/03/video-clipe-look-at-me-now-chris-brown.html&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&ix=hea&ion=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=vid&source=og&sa=N&tab=wv&ei=MNofT66YNMK4twfl75S-BQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=6b82f7eb5682d123&ix=hea&ion=1&biw=1366&bih=643
This one is also an iframe (from twitvid) -> https://www.google.com.br/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=hea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=pt-BR&q=site:www.lilwaynebrasil.com.br/2011/09/video-apresentacao-lil-wayne-vma-2011.html&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&ix=hea&ion=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=vid&source=og&sa=N&tab=wv&ei=ZdkfT8GsN4fAtgfBxoHABQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=6b82f7eb5682d123&ix=hea&ion=1&biw=1366&bih=643
Here, you can check out all videos indexed by google, embedded with different players (like mtv, worldstarhiphop, jaycut, and many others) -> https://www.google.com.br/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=hea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy-ab&hl=pt-BR&tbm=vid&source=hp&q=site:lilwaynebrasil.com.br&pbx=1&oq=site:lilwaynebrasil.com.br&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=32535l34520l1l34758l5l5l0l0l0l3l345l1117l0.3.1.1l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=e62e98e56e7e3de1&ix=hea&ion=1&biw=1366&bih=643
*I guess Google is generating the snippet with thumbnails based on the featured image of those posts, not from the videos.
There are a few things that Im noticing regarding the YouTube one. (the other ones I understand and can tell you that they're picking them up via crawling).
1) Are you cloaking and replacing with another video or doing anything that is not visible on the page?
2) There are some interesting on-page javascripts that may be misinterpretted as video by Google. I'm not convinced that's what's doing it, but definitely could be.
3) I wonder if it may have to do with the fact that you're on blogger.com, a Google property...
4) And for the YouTube results, you're saying that you dont have a sitemap, correct?
Ill dive more into this and see what I can find out but as far as I know, Google has not changed anything to allow for YouTube embeds showing in search.
Thanks for your comment.
1. No
2. Can you point me which javascrip you're talking 'bout
3. Don't think so.
4. Yeah. I don't have a video sitemap.
*P.S.: He's crawling also twitvid, not only youtube.
Still looking into it. The JS is the one that refers to the mp3 swf. As for twitvid - yeah, that doesnt surprise me. Googlebot has gotten great at discovering almost any video embedded in the old <object><embed> twiced-cooked publishing method. Im actually really interested in #3.
I see you already have a comment here =)
I had another user link me his youtube indexed iframe videos and he was also on blogger. I'm not sure two examples lead to conclusive evidence, but it ceratinly is suspect of google favoring its own properties.
Here's an example of Wordpress blog showing up a youtube video rich snippet that links to the target site: https://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Controlled+Labs+White+Flood+Review+%7C+Protein+Shakes
Looks like videos on website are quite important too.
I already have a sitemap.xml submitted to Google Webmaster Tools. Can I add both a regular sitemap.xml as well as a video-sitemap.xml. Or do I need to incorporated the videositemap into the regular sitemap file?
Thank you for the thoughtful question!
You can absolutely add additional sitemaps. In fact, I have 6 sitemaps submitted. (my tools auto split them)
In fact, I think it's specifically required(?) in the schema that they be different. One sitemap is for text and structure of your site, the video sitemap is specifically for the content of your videos. Google seems to distinguish between the two.
Jeez, brilliant post. Seems like not enough people take advantage of this. If I'm working on a WordPress site I will typically include a custom post type that includes a video (either customized or part of the theme). Although I use an xml sitemaps plugin I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't include information on post types. Keep up the good work!
A couple of comments up, Discountvc, had some specific wordpress questions that you might find interesting. Thank you for the comment!
Thanks for the post! Something I hadn't thought of.
Thanks for this post .First time i've heard that there is a sitemap for videos also
Am just a step ahead, I knew about it, but never tried to make one, now I will surely give it a try!
I was looking for some reliable source to emphasize on this topic and here at seomoz you have explained in a very good manner, thanks for your great efforts!!
Has anyone had any luck after implementing a video sitemap?
Are you on YouTube? Other users are having hit or miss luck (mostly miss) with YouTube, there are some tricks to get it to work, but at the risk of upsetting google.
Lots of ideas in the comments. Also, you could try a vimeo embed as well.
Let me know how your results progress, I'm going to update the article with community information.
I have youtube video embeds, would love to get them to rank like some others have done. Most of my videos are from manufacturers on our site that we have embedded but a few are from our own youtube account though. Implemented the video sitemap on the 25th, so need to give it a bit more too I guess.
I have YouTube videos embedded on my site (about 15) but also have my videos loaded into Vimeo. When I create my Video Sitemap so I have to do it with the YouTube information since that is what is embedded on my site or can I do it with the Vimeo information?
Our YouTube videos get a lot of good views and comments and we want to keep that momentum flowing, ie. not replacing the embed on the site with the Vimeo videos. But I don't want to upset the Google gods with a video sitemap.
Suggestions??
This is an excellent and timely post for me -- Thanks!
My main site is in the very competitive real estate industry and we post the YouTube Playlist, rather than linking directly to the stand-alone video (this prevents another realtor's video playing on our page via the playlist YouTube would otherwise create).
Do you see this variation working the same way in your tutorial or, would adjustments be required?
Thanks again!
To be honest, I have little experience with youtube embedded playlist.
I would assume you'd have to make a sitemap which lists all the videos available on the playlist for a URL. This is beyond the scope of what I wrote above, but google documents it in their sitemap help center. (there is a link in the post)
I'd recommend you experiment with that method. I'd really like to hear how it turns out, sorry I couldn't offer more insight!
I checked and YouTube does not provide an alternative to the iFrame tag for embedding playlists. Perhaps I'd better look into Vimeo!
Excellent article!, what are your thoughts on multiple video sitemaps for products or services. something similar to a zappos site.
Cheers!
You can list multiple videos for the same URL in a single sitemap, if that's what you're asking.
I don't think you'd actually benefit from multiple video sitemaps, the schema supports it all in a single sitemap. Unless it was easier for you to compartmentalize the data in terms of groups of videos?
thanks for the response i was viewing it from our multiple sitemaps for products and brand, and we have had great traction in terms of indexation. with videos, we were just pondering the thought with video product sitemaps
I copied and pasted your sitemap in notepad ++ and made the appropriate changes per your post. I get an error this error:
XML Parsing Error: prefix not bound to a namespaceLocation: https://www.andreviolante.com/sitemap-video.xmlLine Number 4, Column 2: <video:video>
Currently, I'm uploading the video to Vimeo and then I'll swap out the location URLs. Any advice?
Here is my sitemap:
<urlset> <url> <loc>https://www.AndreViolante.com/how-to-make-a-video-cover-letter/</loc> <video:video> <video:title>How To Make A Video Cover Letter | Easy Tips And Video Example</video:title> <video:description>Would you like some tips on how to make a video cover letter? Here are some easy tips & an example on how to make your video cover letter process easier.</video:description> <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.AndreViolante.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/AndreViolante.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc> <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">https://www.youtube.com/v/b89d7xkLXJg</video:player_loc> <video:publication_date>2011-12-02T20:55:53+00:00</video:publication_date> <video:duration>121</video:duration> <video:tag>video cover letter</video:tag> <video:tag>creative resume</video:tag> <video:category>Marketing Mix</video:category> </video:video> </url> <url> <loc>https://www.andreviolante.com/video-cover-letter/</loc> <video:video> <video:title>Video Cover Letter | Watch This Video Cover Letter Of Andre Violante</video:title> <video:description>See this video cover letter & get to know Andre Violante. If you like my video cover letter & want to get in touch or have questions, let's connect online.</video:description> <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.AndreViolante.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/AndreViolante.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc> <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">https://www.youtube.com/v/b89d7xkLXJg</video:player_loc> <video:publication_date>2011-12-02T20:55:53+00:00</video:publication_date> <video:duration>121</video:duration> <video:tag>video cover letter</video:tag> <video:tag>creative resume</video:tag> <video:category>Marketing Mix</video:category> </video:video> </url> </urlset>
The first two lines need to specify the document type and the schema, here is the google solution for a video sitemap:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="https://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:video="https://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
Thanks for the quick response! That worked for the first error. Now Im seeing this:
XML Parsing Error: not well-formedLocation: https://www.andreviolante.com/sitemap-video.xmlLine Number 10, Column 108: <video:description>Would you like some tips on how to make a video cover letter? Here are some easy tips & an example on how to make your video cover letter process easier.</video:description>
Sorry to keep bugging you with questions but I've been waiting for a post like this for a while.
I just swapped out the youtube video for a Vimeo one to match your sitemap exactly.
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35654300&</video:player_loc>Still an error in the description tag.
Figured it out! No &'s!! Thanks. Great post!
Woohoo! I was just about to take a look at it =]
NICE:
Andre Violante
Anyone have suggestions on how to create the thumbnails for YouTube embeds? I have a couple hundred videos embedded on my site.
The questions for me are:
1. Should I move my Youtube videos over to Wistia which will take time and a monthly fee
or
2. Implement the tweak suggested in this post which will only cost time
or
3. Leave everything as is and spend my time on Linkbuilding instead
Can you try a couple videos just on Vimeo? Less time, free and you can measure your results to establish value?
This is incredibly important and quite timely post! I am planning to suggest my manager about the video series we can do and obviously once we are going to do that we have to have proper video sitemap to it!
Like Jrcooper said, you have no clue how much time you have saved as finding relevant information regarding video sitemap and others is very frustrating and eat hours and hours of time!
I really haven't seen a need for a video sitemap. Most of our videos are hosted on BrightCove and Google is indexing and ranking them just fine with the thumbnails included in the SERPS. Some sites don't even have an XML sitemap for the pages! But...this is not a best practice and I would always recommend using them. Unfortunately our dev team has been slow to prioritize the sitemap.xml dev work.
Thanx for the comment cnoble, that's awesome! Sometimes google just gets right in there and takes care of it. I wasn't as fortunate, I couldn't get any of my videos to index without a sitemap.
Can you link your site, I'd love to try compare your success to sites that require a sitemap.
Here are 5 reasons you might still want to consider a video sitemap:
Hope you don't mind, I used your comment as a platform for something I've seen mentioend a few times. =)
So if my video is hosted on YouTube and embeded on a page/blog I should use the title from the page/blog, and not the YouTube video? Same goes for the description?
You are correct!
The video sitemap (title & description) has to closely match YOUR page. I have had good results with naming the video on vimeo something else entirely, that way it's not competing in the SERP with my page.
Hello guys,
I had immediate success with this. I did all the above and within 10 minutes I was in google video search for some good keywords.
I then got an email saying that my video will not display ... Mobile.
So I saw the hack and thought ... Wait what is actually wrong with anyway? Not that way above ... With the greyhat trick, but right up front clean white chapeau.
If you put the ifranmes link into WP and then underneath put the embed (old skool) this is helping google is it not? Like puting images where there was no flash support in the old days.
Anyway ... I put my noframes under my iframes on a seperate line. It looks good and hopefully no google penalty for my site.
My rise in google videos was a real great surprise. Check out "dancehall reggae charts" and i am there with Reggaedancehallmusic.net.
Thanks VERY much.
hi
i am new to video sitemap creation. i have vimeo, youtube, amazone videos in my site. how can i create sitemap so that these external videos will give a link bank to my site
as a new member of the site, I never knew this information until now. I just recently was offered an opportunity to monetize my YouTube videos with AdSense, and looking for unique ways to not only increase subscriber count to my YouTube video channel, but also increase views whereas I can get more traffic and potentially earn more income.
There is a comment a couple up you'll want to read about youtube being tricky. You might have to iframe it or hide another source, but there are working solutions in the wild that use more or less what I wrote above.
Nice post :-)I am really interest if something I did works for video's.Basicly it works the same way as getting an rss feed on your site. Here the url so you can have a look. https://www.cfcms.nl/vimeo/ . Hope to hear from you