Video Snippets for SEO
By Nick Spears – Follow me on Google+
Let’s first start by asking the question “What is a video snippet?”
A ‘video snippet’ is the same as a ‘rich snippet’, but specifically for video. A rich snippet allows Google to better suck info from your site. You’ve most likely seen new looking website results within the Google results, these are usually some form of a rich snippet. These new results display things like a rating, thumbnail photos, an author name, etc.
“How will a video snippet help my SEO?”
Most SEO agencies do not offer rich snippet implementation as part of their services, mainly because they require a lot of time to implement. Adding the mark-up is one thing, but doing it right is another monster in itself. I personally spent hours implementing rich snippet mark-up for sites, only to find out later that I did it wrong. Much like development code, if one tiny element is wrong, everything is broken. The importance of rich snippet implementation and optimization are crucial moving forward. This new info is requested by Google and the time is now to build your foundation before the rest of the herd. Additionally, these new type of results with Google search are enticing to those searching. Click thru rates will most likely increase. Additionally, the video snippet is ‘self-hosted’, therefore the video acts as a back-link to your site when embedded elsewhere. This is huge.
Is You Tube better for SEO than a self-hosted video?
This was the exact question I asked when the topic began floating around the office here at Incredible Marketing. In my opinion, I figured, that if a You Tube video is optimized properly within You Tube, it will pop up in the Google search results. It’s great for branding and if someone clicks on that You Tube result, they will be taken to the You Tube channel where they can potentially watch more videos, or even click the website link. The counter to this kind of thinking is this: Sure, You Tube is great, but you don’t get the back-link if someone embeds your video AND aren’t two search results better than one? YES. Below are some great quotes from my Incredible Team members regarding this exact topic…
“You Tube is great, but, a self hosted video gives us way more semantic mark-up, because we implement full schema mark-up for it.”
~ Drew Leahy, Incredible Marketing SEO Specialist
“In order for you to have a video thumbnail show up on Google, you have to host it yourself instead of using a You Tube embed.”
~ Tim Dewey, Incredible Marketing Developer
“Anytime we can get a video snippet to show-up in the Google results (rather than nothing) should be a benefit. If for no other reason than more potential click-thrus.”
~ Butch Flarida, Incredible Marketing SEO Specialist
***Video Snippet Mark-Up Tip***
Use full schema markup for the video, an html5 player, and a video sitemap.
EL FIN.
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