In today's digital age, video dominates the content paradigm, and optimizing your video content for search engines is crucial to improve your search engine ranking, expanding your reach, and boosting visibility before your target audience. This is where video sitemaps come in. By creating well-optimized video sitemaps, you can give search engines a clear understanding of your videos, which makes it easier for them to crawl and index your content.
This article will explore video sitemaps and discover how they can improve your video SEO.
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What is a Video Sitemap?
A video sitemap is a file or document that web crawlers can access and read to find information about the video content hosted on a particular site. Search engines use this information for video indexing according to video search requests.
Creating a sitemap is essential to help Google understand what your video is about, what purpose it serves, and who its target audience is.
A video sitemap includes a wide range of metadata about the video content hosted on websites, including its category, title, description, video tags, and running time. This information is evaluated and can heavily influence the listing of the videos on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In other words, a sitemap is an essential component of video SEO, as it dictates the positioning of video content on the internet.
How is it Different from Other XML Sitemaps?
XML sitemaps are files that provide search engines and web crawlers with a list of URLs on a website. These are the URLs the website owner would want to be crawled by the engine and indexed to search by users.
The core differences between video sitemaps and other regular XML sitemaps are:
- Video sitemaps contain metadata of each video, including their thumbnail images.
- Video sitemaps contain additional information like video-specific tags to divulge the technical details of the video.
- Video sitemaps allow multiple entries for the same URL if there is more than one video on the web page.
How to Create a Video XML Sitemap?
If you are using Gumlet VPaaS for your video streaming needs, then you can easily add sitemap data to your videos using the Video CMS. If not, there are many ways to create an XML video sitemap for your website content. You can either do it manually or use an external tool's help.
Using Online Video Sitemap Generators
A video sitemap generator, quite like XML-Sitemaps.com, can help you create sitemaps on the go. This method might not be as convenient as using Gumlet VPaaS, but it's quick.
The scripts of such generators are equipped to detect video content on various web pages automatically. From there on, the script can easily generate a video sitemap after a few seconds.
Using Plugins
Many plugins allow users to publish and create video sitemaps automatically. For example, a specific plugin for WordPress allows users to create sitemaps on the go and focus instead on curating content.
This particular plugin has strong capabilities, creating a well-structured sitemap file based on all YouTube videos collected on your website.
Creating Video Sitemaps Manually
Creating a video sitemap manually requires much more labor than using comprehensive tools and plugins. But it also allows greater control to website owners over the sitemap's functionality. Here's how you can create video sitemaps on your own:
- Identify video content to be included in the sitemap.
- Create a new XML file for each sitemap using text or XML editors like Notepad, Sublime Text, or XMLSpy.
- Create separate entries in the XML file for every video your website hosts and include all relevant information.
- Include necessary video tags like “video:player_loc”, “video:content_loc”, and “video:thumbnail_loc” for proper indexing.
- Validate the sitemap for proper formatting and inclusion of necessary information.
- Submit the sitemap directly to Google after validation.
How to Validate a Video Sitemap?
A properly validated video sitemap allows Google and other search engines to understand, read, and index the content of your website, including digital assets like videos. Video sitemap validation can enhance your website's visibility and rankings. Now, the question remains - how can you validate your video sitemap? The process is simpler than you would imagine.
Here are the various tools that you can use for Video Sitemap Validation:
- Google Search Console Sitemap Validator: It is a user-friendly, free application that validates your sitemap and offers suggestions/changes in case of errors.
- XML Sitemap Validator: It is an online tool that allows you to validate video sitemaps directly by entering the sitemap URL.
- Ryte Website Checker: Checks sitemaps for validation and provides suggestions and improvements in case of errors.
- SEOptimer: Also validates sitemaps using their URLs and provides a detailed report in case of any inconsistencies.
Video Sitemap Example
Here is a working example of a regular video sitemap with videos included on the website. The sitemap's content includes two entries nested in a single <url> tag.
All the tags that Google can use are included in the first entry. The second entry only includes the required tag.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>https://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
<video:description>
Alkis shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every time
</video:description>
<video:content_loc>
http://streamserver.example.com/video123.mp4
</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc>
https://www.example.com/videoplayer.php?video=123
</video:player_loc>
<video:duration>600</video:duration>
<video:expiration_date>2021-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:expiration_date>
<video:rating>4.2</video:rating>
<video:view_count>12345</video:view_count>
<video:publication_date>2007-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:publication_date>
<video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
<video:restriction relationship="allow">IE GB US CA</video:restriction>
<video:price currency="EUR">1.99</video:price>
<video:requires_subscription>yes</video:requires_subscription>
<video:uploader
info="https://www.example.com/users/grillymcgrillerson">GrillyMcGrillerson
</video:uploader>
<video:live>no</video:live>
</video:video>
<video:video>
<video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.example.com/thumbs/345.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Grilling steaks for winter</video:title>
<video:description>
In the freezing cold, Roman shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every time.
</video:description>
<video:content_loc>
http://streamserver.example.com/video345.mp4
</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc>
https://www.example.com/videoplayer.php?video=345
</video:player_loc>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>How to Submit a Video Sitemap?
After creating and validating your video sitemap, you need to submit it before the search engine can index the content of your website.
The easiest way to submit video sitemaps is to use the Google Search Console. Here's how you can do it:
- Sign in to your Google Search Console account.
- If you have multiple websites on your account, you must choose the website for which you want to submit the sitemap.
- Navigate to "Sitemaps," located on the left-hand side of the screen under the "Index" section.
- Click on the "Add a new sitemap" section and paste the URL of your sitemap.
- Click on "Submit".
- Google will then process your sitemap and read its contents. If there are any issues, the platform will highlight them. The sitemap won't be used for indexing until the issues have been fixed.
- After the sitemap has been processed, you can consider it submitted. Now, you can monitor and track its indexing status and note any changes in your search rankings.
Best Practices for Video Sitemaps
Here are some of the best practices to consider when creating, validating, and publishing video sitemaps:
- Use Correct Schemas: Using the correct schema is important for providing the correct information about the video. Typically, the schema used for video sitemaps is VideoObject.
- Include All Relevant Details: Include as many relevant metadata points as possible. Everything is essential, from thumbnail URLs to the title and description of the video.
- Host Videos on Own Website: Many people like to host videos on other platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. Instead, website owners should embed videos on their websites, as search engines will attribute the video to your website.
- Use Descriptive Titles: Make sure you put in descriptive titles that clearly talk about the content and purpose of the video.
- Include Closed Captions: Closed captions are overlooked, even though they are of paramount importance. It makes the content more accessible to a wider audience, especially for users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
What are the Benefits of a Video Sitemap?
There are several technical and general benefits of using video sitemaps. They can improve your website's visibility and rankings by optimizing its video SEO performance.
Here is a comprehensive insight into how video sitemap can be beneficial for your website:
- Improved Visibility: Providing detailed information about the videos on your website can help search engines crawl and index all the digital and textual content efficiently. Thus, search engines will be better equipped to decide if your video is a suitable response to specific search queries, resulting in increased views, clicks, and engagements.
- Faster Indexing: Web crawlers can read and index your videos sooner using sitemaps. Your video may appear in search results sooner than expected, increasing traffic and visibility.
- Delivery to Relevant Users: Video sitemaps help search engines understand the contextual framework of the content uploaded on your website. As such, they will also be a better judge of what sort of audience is best suited to view your content, resulting in timely delivery to the relevant audience only.
- Better Accessibility: With details like closed captions available with video sitemaps, your videos will be more accessible to the broader population. For example, it will be consumed by deaf people or foreigners who are not as good at understanding accents.
Conclusion
Creating a video sitemap is key to standing out in the digital space and driving more traffic to your website. By providing detailed information about your videos, search engines can crawl and index your digital and textual content more efficiently, increasing views, clicks, and engagements. In addition, faster indexing and better accessibility, including closed captions, can help deliver content to the right audience at the right time!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
1. How to create a video sitemap for YouTube?
You can easily create a video sitemap for YouTube videos using a tool like the XML Sitemap Generator or the Yoast SEO Plugin. From there, follow the instructions provided by the respective tools.
2. Do you need a video sitemap?
A video sitemap is not technically mandatory. However, it's necessary to include effective video sitemaps to make your video more visible and SEO-friendly.
3. How to find your sitemap?
If you use a CMS like WordPress, you can easily find your sitemap using a sitemap plugin. The easier way is to add the command "sitemap.xml" at the end of your website's URL to view the sitemap you created.
4. What does a video-rich snippet mean?
Video-rich snippets act like thumbnails but for your videos. It is a small preview of the uploaded video that users can view to determine the relevance of the video as per their requirements. Such snippets include the thumbnail image, title, description, and other types of metadata.
