Videos
Video content can be added to websites to increase user engagement and provide further information about a topic. There are several key differences between how search engines view video content compared to text, these are explored within our SEO Office Hours Notes, along with recommendations from Google for optimizing video content to increase the likelihood of your videos appearing within search results.
Learn more about SEO best practices for website content in Lumar’s Website Intelligence Academy.
Use the new “indexifembedded” robots meta tag to control indexing of embedded content
A user asked how to block embedded videos from being indexed seperatelty. John recommends using the new “indexifembedded” robots tag (in conjunction with standard noindex robots tags) to control which versions of the embedded videos are being indexed.
Ensure Video Content is Supported by Relevant Descriptive Text
It can be difficult for Google to recognise what is being shown within videos if there is no descriptive text around it. This can lead to issues with crawling and indexing these elements, particularly for large sites who have a lot of content in video format.
Unless Video Uniquely Available on Your Site, YouTube Landing Page Will be Shown Instead of Yours in SERPs
YouTube video pages are seen to contain useful content, so these will often be served in the search results instead of the landing page on your site that serves the same video.
Google Treats YouTube the Same as Any Other Website
Google treats YouTube pages the same as on any other website and doesn’t give them any preference in the SERPs. YouTube pages can rank like pages on any other site.
Use Video File Structured Markup to Tell Google Which Countries a Video is Available In
For videos that are only accessible in certain countries, make sure that the pages they are on are accessible in the HTML for all users, and that the video only plays for users in the right countries. Use video file markup to tell Google which countries the video is available in.
Google Validates That Videos Are a Good Context Match For Pages They Appear on
Google takes longer to index video and images compared to text content. For videos, Google needs to confirm that it is a reasonable video for the page before displaying it in search.