Video content is still growing in popularity on the web. If you are going to spend time and money creating a video, you have to make sure that it’s optimized properly in order to rank higher on Google and reach a wider audience.
On this page
6 steps you can take to help Google find your video
- Make your video available on a web page that isn’t blocking Google (i.e. by using robots.text or noindex robots meta tags).
- Create a standalone page for each video, where the video is the most important thing on the page. This is Google favored format for showing videos.
- Use the correct HTML tag to help Google identify a video easier (i.e. <video>, <iframe>, <embed> or <object>).
- Add a video sitemap. This will help Google find and index your videos.
- Make your web page fully accessible and don’t use complex user actions (p. ex., avoid lazy-loading primary content upon user interaction) or specific URL fragments.
- For an embedded video (hosted on Vimeo, Facebook or YouTube), Google may index both videos (i.e. on your web page and on the third-party hosting site). Google still recommend (for your web page) to provide structured data and include these pages in your video sitemap.
Tips to make sure your video can be indexed once Google find it
- Allow Google to generate a thumbnail or provide one using the supported ways:
- if using the <video> tag, specify the poster attribute.
- in video sitemap, specify the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag.
- in structured data, specify the thumbnailURL property.
Note: your video thumbnails must: be accessible by Googlebot, use a supported format (.bmp, .jpeg, .gif, .png, .webP, .svg), have a minimum size of 60×30 pixels, and 80% of thumbnail must have a transparency (alpha) value greater than 250.
- Use structured data to describe your video. This will help Google understand its content and relevance to specific users queries. Use unique thumbnails, titles and descriptions for each video.
More useful tips available on Google Search Central including using stable URLs, expiration dates, video previews, key moments, live badge, restricting search results and SafeSearch. Check it out!
Key takeaway
- Optimizing your video for Google search is crucial to increase its visibility and reach a wider audience. By following the tips mentioned on this page, you can help Google find and index your video effectively.
Useful resources
- Video SEO best practices (Google Search Central)
- Google: Video must be main content to appear as thumbnail (Search Engine Land)
- Learning video structured data (Google Search Central)
- Video sitemaps and alternatives (Google Search Central)
- What are robots meta tags? (moz)
- A new way to enable video key moments in Search (Google Search Central)
- Video SEO best practices for ecommerce (Google Search Central)