A study from Forrester Research late last year found that webpages with video are 50x more likely to show up on Google’s first search engine results page (SERP). But this shiny new apple of the SERPs doesn’t seem to be the low hanging fruit many e-retailers are looking for.
In fact, the same report showed that 52% of the top 50 retailers have no videos indexed by Google at all (another 24% have 10 videos or fewer). So why are so many retailers seemingly reluctant to jump on the video bandwagon?
A video sitemap is the best way to get videos indexed by engines.
Much of the delay can be attributed to the overall youth of this market and the tricky issue of using video sitemaps. Creating a sitemap for web pages is a tried and true SEO technique, but for some reason, the video extension of this practice is still a mystery to many web retailers. However, creating a proper video sitemap to submit to the engines is the best optimization approach currently available to search engine marketers.
Creating a Video Sitemap
It‘s now possible to produce video for every portion of your product catalog and get those videos indexed by search engines. But as we’ve noted already, this marketing channel is only being used by a handful of retailers, with Amazon and HSN among those leading the way.
The current best practice for retailers looking to get video content indexed is to create a video sitemap or mRSS feed. Video sitemaps provide the search engines with essential information, including video titles, thumbnail images, URLs for the pages where the videos live, and other optional information such as duration and expiration date. The Google Video Sitemap submission page can be found in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The image below is an example of what a video sitemap will look like before submission:
By using the required video submission tag definitions, you can populate a text file up to 10MB or 50,000 videos – whatever comes first. The video information you add to a sitemap must include the following information listed between the appropriate tags:
- Title:
- Description:
- Play Page URL:
Video Landing Page Here -
Thumbnail URL:
- Raw Video File Location and/or the Player URL (SWF):
While the remaining elements seen below are optional, they provide useful metadata that can significantly improve Google’s ability to include your video into its universal and vertical search results.
Completed video sitemaps can be uploaded for indexing here:
- Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
- Yahoo Site Explorer: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
- MSN Webmaster Central: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/
- AltaVista Video Search: http://www.altavista.com/addurl/default
- Blinkx: http://www.blinkx.com/rssupload
- Yahoo Video: http://video.search.yahoo.com/
Define a Clear Video Marketing Strategy
We all know how video can bolster an e-commerce product page. Now, imagine video bringing every product on your site to life. Let’s even take that a step further: try to envision integrating video with your email, social and search marketing efforts.
Let’s take an example from the social marketing landscape – specifically, from Facebook – where video syndication is already a powerful marketing force. Facebook is the second largest video referral site and offers three methods for sharing video: one, upload videos personally; two, allow fans to upload videos; and three, post links to videos that may reside on your company’s home domain.
For top brands, posting a video can generate hundreds, or even thousands, of comments and likes (see screenshot below). This effectively translates into thousands of impressions, from fans and their friends alike.
Couple this video syndication strategy with the reach of a site like YouTube, and you have a formula for significant brand promotion. As an added bonus, you can generate big increases in your site traffic, thanks to all the referrals your videos drive as they’re embedded around the web.
With benefits like these – improved brand awareness, increased traffic, prime real estate on SERPs – the case for incorporating video into your online marketing is stronger than ever. Start with video sitemaps to make sure the engines can find you, and continually strive to create strong, customer-driven content. As the Forrester report revealed, there’s still room in the video arena to gain a first-mover advantage, so act now. After all, from an SEO perspective, a well-defined video strategy is the smart way to generate more clicks and visibility – and eventually, conversions and revenue.
Learn more about incorporating video into your SEO efforts by emailing us directly at bebrilliant@acronym.com.
