Have you noticed that more and more video results are showing up in Google search results? Everywhere I turn, it seems that Google is providing me with options of videos to watch on the first page of their search results. As a user, I appreciate the video content and will often click on the video results. As a marketer, I am incredibly jealous of those placements and am constantly searching for ways to capture that traffic for my site. This post highlights the five most important factors I've found that play the largest role in when and where a thumbnail is awarded.
1. Index Status
This may seem like a no-brainer, but if your videos are not included in the video index, then you will not be eligible for the video thumbnail. That makes getting the video content on your site indexed your first priority.
If you want to check to see if your videos are included in the index, simply do a site search for your domain and click the Videos tab in Google. Below is an example of the list of videos included in the index for SEOmoz. As you know, the site feature of Google is not entirely reliable (not everything will show). However, it does give you an idea of the videos that Google includes in the index along with their thumbnails, titles, and descriptions, which can be incredibly helpful.
If you have a video sitemap submitted inside of your Google webmaster tools account, you will be able to see the number of videos that you submitted along with the number of videos that have been indexed. Again, I have found the numbers to be less than comprehensive, but it is another tool to use in checking whether your videos have been indexed.
Getting your videos indexed by the search engines doesn’t have to be difficult. There have been some awesome blog posts here on SEOmoz about that, including this one titled An SEO's Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding and this one called Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube. There are also some excellent resources directly from Google, such as this section of their Webmaster help on Video Best Practices. Here is a screenshot of that page from their site:
Check these resources out when you have time, they are definitely worth the read. If you are struggling with getting your videos indexed, you might want to consider using a hosting provider with built in SEO features such as Wistia (they will take care of most of the heavy lifting for you). In the meantime, here is a quick overview of what you need to do in order to get videos in the index.
- Create and submit a video sitemap: Make sure that your sitemap includes a unique title, description, embed location, thumbnail, and content location for each video on your site. The keyword phrase and description should match with the content on the page where you have embedded your video.
- Embed your videos using a simple SEO friendly embed code: The embed code that you use on your page needs to be SEO friendly. Google needs to be able to verify the information from your sitemap entries to ensure that the video is actually embedded on the page and that the information is accurate. Most SEO friendly embed codes will include all or most of the information from the sitemap. However, several hosting providers are also starting to integrate schema.org info into embeds to make information even more visible to the search engines.
- Get your page found: Standard SEO principles also apply in video SEO. Googlebot needs to be able to find the page where you have embedded the video and in order to get that page to rank, you are going to need to make sure that it has pagerank passed to it through internal linking, external linking, or both.
If you are embedding your videos on pages that are already indexed or on a domain that is regularly crawled by googlebot, it shouldn’t take long for you to see new videos show up in the index (1-3 days for our site).
2. Competition
Once your videos are included in the index and eligible for video thumbnails, the next major factor to consider is competition. Winning the video thumbnail result is highly dependent on how competitive the search term is for which you are trying to rank. If you want to beat out the competition, here are a few things to consider:
Are you competing with your Video Hosting Provider for the thumbnail result? If you are embedding videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, or other public video sharing sites onto your site, you are fighting an uphill battle to win the video thumbnail. Until about a year ago, it was difficult to get Google to index these videos on your site. Now they will index them (in the case of YouTube you don’t really even need to submit a video sitemap). However, given the choice between your site and YouTube, Google seems to choose YouTube 9 times out of 10. The same is true to a lesser degree from sites such as Vimeo or Metacafe. For this reason, you are really better off hosting your videos with a hosting solution such as Wistia, Vzaar, Brightcove, Limelight, or using a custom player such as JW Player. Phil Nottingham provided a great overview of the features of these different options in the blog post I linked to above. Here is a screenshot:
If you have your video hosting situation figured out, the next thing you need to figure out is what type of competition do you have on YouTube? Currently, the vast majority of video thumbnail results that are awarded seem to be given to YouTube videos. It probably has something to do with the fact that they are the largest repository of video content on the web. However, it doesn’t hurt that they are owned by Google. Topics that have large amounts of high quality video content on YouTube will be very difficult to crack using your own website. Keep this in mind when choosing key phrases and creating content.
Are you competing with yourself? If you create a lot of video, the temptation is very strong to distribute it everywhere (YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, etc.). This is a valid strategy for some companies. However, it is important to note that you will most likely be competing with your own content on these platforms for the video thumbnails. At MyBinding we have a huge YouTube channel, and we run into this problem all the time. Our YouTube videos outrank the videos on our own site. Ultimately you need to decide whether that is worthwhile for you or if you want to try and attempt to rank on different platforms for different keywords. This decision is going to be based on your business case and is going to vary from company to company.
Finally, remember that you are competing for a space on the first page of the Google search rankings. If the page where you embed your video doesn’t deserve to rank on the first page of Google for your chosen keyword, then winning the thumbnail will be difficult. That isn’t to say that video results don’t jump up the rankings occasionally. However, it is far easier to try and get a thumbnail added to an awesome page that is already ranking than it is to get a weaker page to skyrocket in the rankings.
3. Keyword Intent
It is difficult to define exactly which key phrases will qualify for video rich snippets in Google universal search results. It appears that virtually any key phrase could be awarded a video thumbnail. However, certain phrases are far more likely to have video results than others. The best way to think about this is to consider keyword intent. Search terms that include words such as demo, demonstration, review, tutorial, video, test, lesson, or how commonly return video search results. Google has determined that these words represent “intent” by the searcher that fits with video results. These type of search terms tend to be the easiest to dominate with video thumbnails.
Below is a search results page for the term “Wire Binding Machine Demo” (something from my industry and probably not exciting to most of you). However, you will notice that the first three results are all videos (one from Metacafe and two from YouTube). Of the other results on this page, four others are video related.
Recently, I have also noticed that more and more specific product names are also returning video results in universal search. I suspect that moving forward, Google will continue to expand the search results that receive weighting for video thumbnail results. That being said, it is always a good idea to stick with the terms that are more likely to produce video results.
4. Page Placement
According to Google’s best practices for video, they are looking for you to “Create a great user experience on your video pages.” Specifically, they state that they are looking for sites to create a standalone landing page for each video. With this in mind, the page where you embed your video should only have one video on it and that video should only be embedded on one page on your site (again don’t compete with yourself). The page should also include descriptive text, title, captions, and other information to help make your video stand out. Google can’t watch your video (yet), so they will often rank it based on the other information surrounding it on the page. Adding other media elements such as images along with text will not only provide a better user experience, but will also help you to rank your videos better.
Here is the exact wording from Google on this issue:
In addition to the content on the page along with your video, Google has also stated that they are looking for a “Prominently Placed” embedded video player on the page. As we know from the Page Layout algo update in January 2012, Google is able to understand the placement of various elements on the page and use that information as a ranking factor. If at all possible, look to place your videos towards the top of your blog posts or pages.
5. High Quality Relevant Thumbnails
The final element to consider when trying to win the video thumbnail in universal search is the thumbnail itself. You have the opportunity to define the thumbnail for your video in your video sitemap that you provide to Google. When it comes choosing a thumbnail, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- It should be high quality. Google’s guidelines says at least 160x90 and up to 1920x1080. I suggest going with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
- It should be representative of your content. Google is looking for thumbnails that reflect the content of your video. If your thumbnail is generic or unrelated to your video, it is possible that you may have problems keeping your videos in the index.
- It should be unique. Using the exact same image for multiple thumbnails is similar to trying to include the same video twice in the same video sitemap and can cause indexing problems. Make each thumbnail unique and save yourself the hassle.
- Choose your thumbnail with CTR in mind. This is your best chance to help yourself and get users to click on your content. Make sure that your thumbnail is awesome and that users will want to click on.
These are five of the most important factors that I have noticed in attempting to win the video thumbnail in Google. Have you seen others? Are you having success in these areas? Leave a comment and let's help each other get better in the area of video SEO.
Hi Jeff...thanx a lot for the information!
On some of my clients i work a lot with videos and after reading the post i´m a bit confused. In order to avoid uploading all the videos to the server i prefer to work with Youtube. That means that i have all my videos on youtube and embeded in my webpages. I try to have a video for every product and coordinate the keywords between the meta titles and descriptions that i have on my web and on youtube.
And yeah... my videos goes always on the firs google page...but it is not my page....is the video....is youtube....Is this COMPETING WITH MYSELF?
What do you recommend me?
Thank you very much.
I have a very similar problem with my site. With more than 2000 videos in a very niche space we will have a video thumbnail for most of the keyword prhases in our industry. However, the thumbnail is almost always awarded to Youtube, Metacafe or one of the other hosting sites that we have been using. The idea for this post came from my experiments trying to change that and win video thumbnails for my site instead of Youtube and the other partners. We compete with Youtube for those thumbnails and I hate it but I am willing to accept it.
Check out my response to George above and if you still have questions post a reply here or send me a PM.
Thanks,
Jeff
Yes it may seem odd at first glance to think of it in this way, but in fact you are competing with yourself by dual posting on both YouTube and your site. If your goal is to get all video search traffic to drive to your site, you'll want to consider not posting everything to all services.
We recommend to users to use a hybrid approach: post a portion of your content on both YouTube and your site (and other social video services like Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc.), but post the the rest of your content only on your site -- especially the content that is most likely to rank highly or convert well. For example, post sales-oriented videos that have clear context and high production values to YouTube, your site and all over the place -- these are intended to be understood and searched for by persons that may not be looking for specific keywords. However, reserve the "keyword rich" specific videos that dive into more detail to post only on your website. That way you can still get the "discovery" bonus of YouTube and other services (especially "related videos") but ensure that the richest content will drive traffic to your own site.
Kieran
The risk with what you suggest is that your competition can take those "keyword rich" video topics and put their's up on YouTube. Now you are competing with YouTube for the very KWP you hoped to get for your own 'hosted' videos.
This whole conversation/blog post has theoretical value, but in practice, unless you are getting a lot of traffic for your onsite/hosted videos, (to quote Kevin Nalty in his book Beyond Viral), "You are putting a billboard up in your own back yard."
People on your site may see it, but that may not be enough for it to get you new eyeballs/traffic.
Great post and great buried tip about category pages. It really does help rankings to include this in the video sitemap xml file, and there are other bonuses as well (for example, video search results have a special symbol to tell the search user there is a collection of additional videos from your site on this category).
In the video sitemap syntax this is known as "gallery_loc", for example:
<video:gallery_loc title="Cooking Videos">https://cooking.example.com</video:gallery_loc>
It's important to have the "gallery_loc" landing page be a functional navigation page that also will rank highly in its own right. With VidCaster you can create these groups and landing pages on your video site with one-click and we include those in the video sitemap file for you, then auto-submit to Google and Bing when you're done :)
Great post, Jeff. One question about YouTube, however...
You say that "If you are embedding videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, or other public video sharing sites onto your site, you are fighting an uphill battle to win the video thumbnail."
But if it appears that Google SERPs are giving priority to YouTube videos over those hosted elsewhere, why not use YouTube? Doesn't that increase your chances of getting the thumbnail?
I'd say using YouTube increases your chances of getting that Video Thumbnail... From YouTube. Jeff wants to get the thumbnail from his site... herein lies the struggle of Thumbnails... where to try to get them from.
Jeff's goal it to get a Thumbnail for the pretty picture and have that be click-able to HIS site, not to his YouTube Channel.
Old school embed will credit the display URL in the SERPs to your site and also sends users your way. Also doing this usually outways a video on Youtube as you get the extra weight of quality headers and relevant content surrounding the video ;)
Are you refering to the old embed code on YouTube versus the new <iFrame> embed code?
I had the same question. It seems like a catch 22 because is will be very difficult to beat a YouTube video in Google, but (at least from my experience) the conversions are substantially lower on YouTube because of all the distractions. Something that could help would be having only half of the video on YouTube and tell viewers to see the rest go to your website. Although this would probably make some people upset it would probably increase website visitors/conversions. Anyone else have any thoughts?
I think that's an excellent way to make people associate your brand with bait-and-switch hassles.
I agree with CMC-SD the cost in creditbility with your users isn't worth it.
Here are a few tips that I have picked up in terms of driving traffic from Youtube back to your site (although it is a little bit off the topic of video thumbnails)...
1. Focus on your call to action at the end of your video. Ask them to visit your site and offer them something of value in return. The affiliate space does a really good job of making this compelling pitch at the end of their videos. However, they don't always deliver on the promise. If you offer something of value make sure that you provide it.
2. Include consitent branding throughout your video.
3. Be sure to include a fully qualified link in the first 2 sentances of the Youtube video so that users have something to click on.
4. There is a really cool annotation trick that got mentioned in the comments of my whiteboard friday post. The annotation allows you to pause your video before it displays the other videos recommendation at the end. This can be really powerful in terms of stopping the distractions.
5. I have seen some people use annotations really powerfully to enhance their videos and drive traffic. Again most of the examples are from the affiliate space but it might be worth looking into.
If you are interested there is a really good Youtube marketing course out there that I would be glad to talk to you about in a PM. I bought it about a year ago and learned a lot. However, I haven't wanted to post about it here because some of the tactics the guy talks about are pretty shady and I don't want to promote that kind of stuff.
Awesome post! Cheers for the sharing :))
Most of the time, i see those cute thumbnails in the search. I can't resist checking them out.The type of snippet surely makes the difference.
Thanks, great article and good advice on using microdata - I'll be following development in this area with interest.
Good article and well researched with usable steps.
My question is this.
Is there a way to tell if Google has a spot reserved for video on the front page of search results? I had read that if you don't see a video thumbnail there then getting a video to rank on the first page is near to impossible.
For example, I do video marketing for local businesses including attorneys (which can be a very competitive field especially personal injury) and although our videos rank at the top in the video search area only a few have made it to the first page.
First, is it true (and I understand that we can only hazard a guess as to what the Quants in Mountain View are developing at any given time) that unless Google has allotted the space for video on that first page for that search term then it's not going to happen? Or is this incorrect?
If it's true then we can look for other phrases that might have better results with the slot open or we take the standard route and go after the current video on the first page by taking the necessary steps to outrank them.
Other than seeing if there is a video on the first page I wonder if there is a way to tell if the space has been designated by Google and no one has done enough to get a video there.
Or perhaps I'm just chasing my tail here and there is no such thing or a way to really tell.
If it does exist then off to the programmers to see if we can figure out how to analyze these pages to make this determination for our phrases.
Thanks again for a great article.
Although I missed this post in between but Very Interesting read indeed!
After the read i did some searches on Google and find out how important it is to have a video indexed in Google and how much traffic you can get with these videos.
I was sitting with my fellow professional who works on videos mostly and i was amazed to see the downfall in bounce rate and increase in visitor’s Avg. Time on site due to interesting videos he have on his blog...
Obviously killer content is must but if you have it and indexed in Google then no wonder you can get EPIC response from visitors in terms of sharing and leads to the website.
Very nedded post for the community at the right time...
Really great post! You certainly provided some of the most important details to consider when optimizing video content for a Google search. To add to your first point, a feature that is offered by my company (https://www.kzoinnovations.com) is the ability to add chapters and metatags in your video for searching within our platform. This way, the viewer can navigate among the different segments more easily finding the information they need, and it also provides keywords you can use to tag your video and that are attached to a specific segment when search engine optimized. You want to be sure your information can be found on Google, but also can be easily navigated on the platform where it is hosted!
Based on #2 would it be better to use the YouTube embed code to begin with and give your video thumbnail a higher chance of success?
Hi Jeff, nice post. Your post is much valuable thanks a lot
If I have my videos hosted on YouTube and embedded on my website pages, do I need a video site map?
You don't really need a video sitemap since the website pages will most likely no longer qualify for video thumbnails. However, the additional information provided to search engines from your video sitemap could possibly help them better understand the content of your page which may have value. If you can add a video sitemap without a massive amount of development work it may be worthwhile. If not then I would probably not worry about it and instead spend your time optimizing your videos on Youtube for better rankings.
I am making product videos right now. I am making custom thumbnails for each product video. I plan to use a general template, 1270X720 and I have the play button location located on the screen as well, so that I can place the actual product image to the right side of the play arrow and general text to the left side and above, if needed.
Is there and data/study to figure out what is the best call to action text to get the video played?
My plan was to have the product title run across the top of the entire thumbnail, product image on the right side of the play arrow, as large as I can make it and the on the left side of the play arrow, the call to action text.
I can put Watch Product Video or Play Video, in as large a letters as I can. Any suggestions about this?
Let me know. Thanks.
A great post and insights on Video Thumbnails
I was searching for Video Thumbnails - how do they come up, excellent !!
thanks for the very good advice.
Hi Jeff,
After your Mozcon presentation you inspired our ecommerce site to start creating videos so over the past month and half we been creating video. I feel like we have the production side down and now we are focusing on the hosting / posting side of things. It looks like we will most likely host our product videos and how to guides on our website and submit our video sitemap using Wistia, we also be posting the same videos to Youtube. The question I have for you is in regards to the location of where we should post our product videos on our website, your post states the following:
...."According to Google’s best practices for video, they are looking for you to “Create a great user experience on your video pages.” Specifically, they state that they are looking for sites to create a standalone landing page for each video. With this in mind, the page where you embed your video should only have one video on it and that video should only be embedded on one page on your site (again don’t compete with yourself)...."
We have quite a few product videos which can be applied to several products (i.e. we have a widget which comes in 6", 8", 9", 12" etc..) our current set up which I realize is not the best is that each product has an individual product page. Initially we were going to embed the same video on the product page for the 6", 8", 9" and 12" model so this would mean 4 pages would have the same video embedded. Should we create individual unique videos for the 6", 8", 9", 12"? Based on the information above it sounds like we should not embed the exact product video on all 4 product pages, is this correct?
How do you handle this at My Binding, as I am sure that you have products that may have the same issue? I have read where companies create separate optimized video landing pages and then link the optimized video landing page back to there product pages (i.e. put links on this optimized video page back to the 6", 8", 9", 12" product pages) do you like this approach, the down side is that if we supplied this url in our video site map than the SERP would not be going to our product page and would be going to this newly created landing page which would cause an additional click to the user to get to the product page.
One more question on this topic, how do you handle a product which could have multiple videos? i.e (a "product demo video" and possibly a second video showing "why to buy from us") It sounds like you should not have two videos on a single page, so what would be your approach.
Thanks
Patrick
Amazing. something new i got to know today. video sitemap..
I am gonna work on this now...
Thanks pal,
I had a video on one of my pages, but Google pulled an image within the same post to use as the thumbnail which had nothing to do with the video. Do you know if this happens often?
This is really common if the thumbnail attribute isn't clearly defined in the video sitemap. A similar problem can happen with authorship markup if you aren't careful. You can use microdata to define the video thumbnail on the page. It isn't foolproof but it should take care of the problem 99% of the time.
I'm a fan of using YouTube, so I am interested but skeptical about what will end up from these ideas. But to add a bit of value, here is a tip, re #3 above:
When trying to figure out what KWP to go after in your Video Thumbnail Quest, look to see which KWP Google has already awarded a Thumbnail to... there's your target... all you need to do is out rank that result and you can pretty much guarantee that your Thumbnail will show up in SERPs... "Let the Games Begin!"
The game is definitely fun. However what is even more fun is to try and win multiple results on the same page using the different platforms. Imagine 3 video thumbnail results for the same KWP all linking to video content that you have created. In niche situations it is actually very possible.
Howdy Jeff ! Thanks for discussing this brilliant and useful topic about Video thumbnail. It's a great sigh of relief to see Google giving preference and ranking to video thumbnails and its keyword related search. To overcome competition in online video sharing and marketing, the video makers have to be very creative and promote it in right manner as you stated in your blog. Thanks again for this wonderful piece of information...
In my world (hyper-local service companies) I'm seeing rankings boost for home pages with basic commercials imbeded. It's almost like gewgle has a spot reserved in the serp, and, with very few local videos to choose from, goes with a site with otherwise weak link metrics.
I've seen plenty 'o action with getting Thumbnails for KWP that people don't search for much (i.e. using the GEO name along with the KWP). You'll get TNs and it is impressive to clients, but there is little proof that you'll get any traffic via those Search Results (that nobody searches for).
Getting the thumbnail for a homepage is something that is very interesting to me. I saw a really cool post that showed an experiment by the guys over at ReelSEO where they managed to place their logo next to their homepage in the SERP's using an embedded video. However, they took it down (probably because they didn't want to be accused of Rich Snippet Spam).
For small local businesses this could be really key. Are your clients getting multiple rankings on the first page or just the video result?
Hi Jeff, I really like how you've detailed these factors. Great information. What changes are you making to your video pages, if any, to help those pages to rise higher in the results? Or, have you decided to stick to your Youtube channel? I couldn't really tell from your post.
Hi George,
As you noticed I didn't get very far into what we are doing in the blog post. I felt I had so much to say already. But the information above mostly comes from a bunch of research I have been doing as I have been experimenting and adjusting my video SEO strategy for our site. Things are always changing but here is what I am doing now...
1. We are continuing to grow, promote and optimize our Youtube traffic to get as many viewers, subscribers and customers to find our content there as possible. The things that I talked about at Mozcon and in my whiteboard Friday are a good part of that and we haven't changed that and don't really plan on changing at this point. The brand exposure that we get from Youtube is far too great to ignore.
2. We are continuing to syndicate our content to most of the other major video platforms such as Metacafe to drive additional brand exposure as well.
3. I have been experimenting with different types of embeds on our own site trying to win the video thumbnails and to compete with our Youtube content. I have tried embedding Youtube videos, videos with JW Player hosted on S3 and Wistia. We are now in the process of changing all of our embeds on our site over to Wistia as I believe that their embed code gives us an advantage over the other options that I have listed. Plus their solution makes it far easier to manage a sitemap with 2000+ videos in it.
4. I am continuing to embed our Youtube videos on our blog (for now) in order to get the embed credit and the synergy that comes from the views counting for Youtube. Plus a visitor to our blog is slightly better than a visitor to Youtube but ultimately the goal is to get visitors to our main site. However, this may change depending on our sucess with #3.
5. I am trying to figure out ways to embed videos on our site onto pages with more authority. I have found that it is far easier to win the thumbnail if you embed a video on a category level page than on a product level page (most likely this is a matter of pagerank). I am tasking my video guy to create at least one category level video per week starting this week in order to increase that content and win more video thumbnails that way.
6. I have also been embeding videos onto article type pages on our site that are dedicated to the specific how to topic for that video. Those pages seem a lot easier to win the thumbnail for as well. Currently most of these pages are embeded with Youtube videos and we are in the process of changing them over. I suspect that it will probably take my team a few weeks to finish replacing all the Youtube / JW Player embeds on the site over to Wistia though.
What do you think?
Jeff
Perfect, I have learned a lot from your post and comments; you've been very TAGFEE. Thank you.
So you are thinking that you will take pages that currently have YouTube video embeds on them and are awarded a YT Thumbnail in Google SERPs and replacing those YT embeds with hosted Videos?
Sounds interesting and risky IMO.
If I got it right, then I'd like to know if you 1) loose your Thumbnail in the SERPS and 2) if it comes back, or someone else's YouTube video takes over in the SERPS and you have now lost that SERP Thumbnail.
I really don't think that a single embed of my Youtube video is that strong of a ranking factor to dramatically change the ranking strength of those Youtube videos either in Google or Youtube itself. That being said I suppose there is some risk in switching over to third party hosting if you have a huge amount of success with Youtube.
Currently about half of my videos are embeded on my site from Youtube and the others are embedded using a JW player. The JW player embeds aren't as good as the ones from Wistia so that is an easy switch. For the ones that are embedded from YouTube I haven't seen any sort of significant increase in rankings after embedding them. Then again I am in a pretty niche industry and have a lot more videos than any of my competitors.
Do you think that the synergy from views and the vote from the embed substantially raise the ranking of a Youtube video?
Thanks Jeff. This is extremely helpful and complete. I appreciate you sharing all of this. We too have strong branding presence with our YouTube channel. I have some follow-up questions: Do you host the same videos on Wistia that you have on YouTube, or are they all different? Or is there some crossover? If so, have you had any success with the identical video being hosted on Wistia outranking the same YouTube video?
Also, a question about transcripts. If we have already transcribed our videos, and all of those transcriptions are already posted at DotSub.com and YouTube.com, will we get any credit for that content if we post an interactive transcript on our site, or will the credit for the original content go to DotSub.com and YouTube.com because that's where it appeared first?
Jeff thanks for the awesome post. In your last White Board Friday I had rise a question that a thumbnail should be add in the your content category as Thumbnails are the only thing which plays the most important role in improving the CTR.
And today your post is really a big gift to me and other mozers. Really I am very thankful that you had choose to write upon the thumbnails and shared such a great tips which are obviously going to help us to boost our video marketing campaign.
Thanks again,
Raavan
Thanks for the info Jeff! We are currently in the process of updating a video on our site and I honestly didn't realize all that I should be doing with that. Normally, I would have just handed it over to my web designer/hosting company and said, "switch out the video." Now I feel empowered to lead and make sure these things are put in place. The direction is appreciated.
Good luck with the transition. How many videos do you have to replace?
We are also switching out the video on our site. We have finished with about 700 so far and have about 1500 (or more to go). After that it might be time to switch out the videos on our blog :)
Yes I do agree. It seems as if YouTube is winning the race to get indexed on Google. The tricky part is to get your own video up and running and get views.
Jeff,
Have you ever tracked how many people click through to your site from a youtube video? Or how many of those convert to sales?
I watch the numbers in my Google analytics all the time. Generally I am looking for my Youtube referral traffic to pay for my video production costs each month and normally that happens. However, measuring ROI for our video program really involves a lot more than simply referral traffic. Other things that I need to weigh include.
1. What type of conversion uplift do I get on products that have embeded videos on my site.
2. What type of brand exposure do I get each time my video gets watched either on my site or on a third party hosting site
3. How many users will simply type in my domain name or search for our brand on google after watching our video content.
4. What is the competitive value of owning multiple spots in the SERP's with our video content and having video content when our competitors do not.
We invest a ton of time and effort into video marketing at MyBinding (we create about 10 videos per week) and feel like it is very sucessful for us. However, you really need to be commited to both content marketing and to a long term picture of ROI to make it work(Rand mentioned a 5 year view of ROI at Mozcon last month).
Jeff,
Thank you for the detailed response, all of your points are very good. I think your point about long term ROI is very important. If the video that you produce pays for itself in the first 6-12 months, then every year after that is pure profit (if they don't change the product within that time frame).
I noticed that some of our video thumbnails had a shelf life in the universal search results for about 6-8 weeks. The thumbnails still show in a video search. Is anyone aware of a shelf life for video thumbnails and what can be done to extend the shelf life?
There does seem to be some recency influence in the video thumbnail results. Perhaps it is part of the freshness update. It is even more powerful with the "NEW" annotation that google is now providing to new video content that it discovers. I haven't really done testing to figure out how much of an impact this has so I am not sure I can be that much help.
Continuing to update the content of the pages where you are hosting the video with fresh content may cause the thumbnails to appear back in search. You could always try playing with the video publication date in your video sitemap to see what type of impact that has. If you do I would probably do a limited test though.
I loved your article. - If you could just help a little further on something I am missing in this.This would be greatly appreciated
Q. If the intention is not about fighting for a placement in Google results - From your video off your video hosting page
But rather you are targeting an existing blog page (or whatever) - That ALREADY ranks in serps (for known keyword)
And you want to get the video thumbnail appearing / replacing the already existing text listing in serps.
And you follow the rules i.e If this video is embedded and is properly identified with a video site map (or from Youtube embed) and video is prominently displayed at the top of the page and there is only one video on the page.
Are you saying that a video thumbnail should replace the existing already listed text result?
Or are you saying that there is still some part of the Google algo that in effect decides that this page topicality stops the thumbnail appearing - In effect judging the page inappropriate for a video thumbnail and deciding that this topic would be better served by retaining it as a text only listing?
Note: And also just to simplify the understanding - we also forget about all the issues about competing with ourselves on the video hosting (we have embedded from).
Awesome post, Thanks Jeff.
Love this post, wish it was here 1.5 years ago when we began trying to make a push on gaining these thumbnails. Regardless, now we actually might have more success thanks to this guide. Thank you!
Thanks Vistage. Have you found any other techniques for winning the thumbnails? Sounds like you have been working on it for awhile.
Thanks Jeff. Nice post and well explained as well!
+1 with Piyush! Great video, it's nice to see more stuff coming out about video op.