When optimizing a website for search engines, there are numerous factors to consider. If you have ever owned or maintained a website, chances are you are familiar with Sitemaps. For those of you who are not, think of a Sitemap as a textual blueprint of all the pages contained in a particular website which is used by search engines like Google when they crawl the Web. Making your content easily accessible to search engines is the first step towards efficient SEO, and for those of you featuring unique video content, Google has made it easier to do just that with their guidelines for creating Video Sitemaps.
How it works
A Video Sitemap works in essentially the same way as a traditional XML Sitemap by providing some basic information about each video so it can be easily placed in video search results. For each video, five pieces of information are required:
- Title,
- Description
- URL of the page it is on
- Thumbnail image
- URL of the raw video file itself
From that information, Google places each video within the appropriate user search result which in turn generates more traffic for that site.
How to set it up
Depending on your needs, there are several different ways to implement a Video Sitemap. Existing XML Sitemaps can be revised to accomodate video content as seen in the example below:
Third-party options
Much the same as traditional sitemaps, there are many third-party options for helping to create Video Sitemaps.
http://www.videositemappro.com/
http://www.microsystools.com
WordPress XML Sitemaps for video
There are dozens of other third-party options available and are easily accessible from your favorite search engine.
Real world results
To exemplify the benefits of submitting a Video Sitemap, Google is using data from Discovery.com. Randy Abramson, Senior Product Manager of Broadband Video for Discovery, has the following to say about the effectiveness of Video Sitemaps:
Since we implemented the new video experience and Video Sitemaps in 2008, we’ve seen a 123% increase in video streams, and we’ve definitely seen an increase in time consumed per user.”
Additionally, Discovery saw a 30% increase in streams of short videos from Google visitors alone for Q2 2010, which should be incentive enough for anyone with video content to take the time to implement a Video Sitemap.
Conclusions
With the immense popularity of online video, and its growing use on mobile and Internet TV devices, making your unique video content as accessible as possible can lead to significant increases in your organic search traffic. Something as simple as proper Video Sitemap implementation can bring you scores of potential new clients, which can translate into increases in sales and ad revenue.
For more information about Video Sitemaps, visit the official Google guidelines page here.
