Video Sitemap 101 by Semetis

Sun 7 November 2010 18:00, Gabriel Goldberg

Online videos are interactive and attractive communication assets providing large visibility possibilities to your company. They can increase brand awareness as well as traffic on your site. But, how do you make your videos visible?

By focusing on content, technical aspects and promotions strategies (more information on our videos http://www.youtube.com/semetis). In this article we will focus on the technical side of video Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and more specifically on sitemaps. They provide Search Engine crawlers for instance, Googlebots, a clear list of videos and important information related to them (title, description url, etc). This way Google will be able to find and scan the videos faster and be helped to index them in an optimal way.

How do you get started?

You need to create an xml file in your CMS then insert the lines of code that are shown below for each of your videos. Note that tools facilitate this process such as: A1 Sitemap Generator. http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/

Feeding Google with the right descriptions

In order to help Google accurately index your videos, you will have to provide necessary information about each of them in your sitemap. Here is a list of the information you will need:

Landing page URL
Location of the video
Thumbnail
Title
Description
Keywords in relation with the video
Category
Family friendly classification
Duration

The required fields are in red, the rest of the fields are not required however highly recommended.

How to structure the information?

Below is an example of a sitemap code. The highlighted lines of code are specific to the sitemap and should not be changed.

The rest is specific to one video and needs to be changed. The variable parts that you need to customize for your video are in blue. If you have more than one video you need to copy the part that is not highlighted and paste it right above the last line: </urlset> This process needs to be repeated for each one of your videos.

</urlset>

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"

xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">

<url>

<loc>http://www.semetis.com/Publications/Lancement-Semetis-Youtube-Channel.html</loc>

<video:video>

<video:description>These tutorials will provide you with tips and tricks for SEO, SEA (AdWords) and Google Analytics</video:description>

<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.semetis.com/images/stories/Articles/youtube-semetis.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>

<video:content_loc>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0ZDtjSgh0</video:content_loc>

<video:duration>53</video:duration>

<video:title>Search Marketing and Web Analytics Video Tutorials</video:title>

<video:tag>AdWords</video:tag>

<video:tag>Google Analytics</video:tag>

<video:tag>Search Engine Optimisation</video:tag>

<video:category>Introduction</video:category>

<video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>

</video:video>

</url>

</urlset>

Non Youtube Videos

The above example took into consideration the case of a Youtube video but is the sitemap structure different in the case of a non Youtube video? If your videos are not hosted on Youtube, you will have to give information on the player you are using and thus add one line of code. It is easy and straightforward:

<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">
http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>

Do not forget the Webmaster Tools!

When your video sitemap is created do not forget to insert the address in the Webmaster Tools along with your other sitemaps (image, webpages, etc.). http://www.google.com/webmasters/

To go further

It is also possible to add other parameters such as: Expiration date, Ratings, Segment, View count, Publication date, Country restrictions, Gallery, Price, Required subscription and Uploader. In order to do that more lines of code are required in your sitemap. Check this link to know more about it. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hlrm=fr&answer=80472#4

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Comments (2)

- Oljanov
That is a good and well structured article and it help me in my seo. I did this intruction and can see it working good.

Vr 10 dec 2010, 18:38
- Tawanna
Thanks for sharing such a great and excellent post.

Vr 23 sep 2011, 16:48

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