The TL:DR of getting pages indexed with a video rich snippet is “submit a video XML sitemap“. Unfortunately, this advice is not much use for the majority of users, who host their content with external providers or social video platforms and are then forced to work out whether or not their hosting service does this for them, and if not, how they should create and structure a video sitemap for their specific circumstances. To help simplify the whole process, I have created this post as a reference guide for those who have video on their site and want an answer to the ”how do i get video snippets?” question without having to do the additional work.
Below is a glossary of the simplest and most reliable (but not the only) ways to get rich snippets for each of the major hosting platforms, which I will keep updated as a reference guide with the most up to date information I have. With Google changing the way they handle video on a regular basis and platform adjustments being frequently rolled out across the competing online video providers, I’ll add in a caveat that the list below isn’t 100% foolproof, but I’ll do my best to keep it as fresh as possible.
If you have found a simpler or better way to get video rich snippets that isn’t included below, please send through the method with an example to phil.nottingham@distilled.net or respond with a comment. If it’s any good, then I’ll add it to the list below and give you an attribution link for your contribution. Additionally, If there is a hosting solution you’d like to see covered that’s not currently included, let me know and I’ll do some research before adding it to the list.
Contents:
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Video Sitemap Basics
-
Additional Tips for getting videos indexed
-
Creating a sitemap for each video hosting platform
Video Sitemap Basics
A video sitemap is essentially an XML feed which details metadata that allows Search Engines to find and index your videos. Google have a created useful page with detailed information about how to structure a video sitemap, which can be found here, but unfortunately it’s a fairly technical and impenetrable page. The following table details each of the required elements and what they mean, in layman’s terms.
Required Tags
| Tag | Explanation |
|---|---|
| <loc> | The URL of the page you’ve embedded the video on |
| <video:video> | A tag which just wraps around all of the subsequent “<video>” tags for each video referenced per <loc> tag |
| <video:thumbnail_loc> | The URL of the video thumbnail image, which should be a .png or .jpg file. The image should be 16×9 aspect ratio, ideally either 1920×1080 or 1280×720 pixels |
| <video:title> | The title of the video – treat this exactly like a page title. Plain text, with keywords and around 70 characters |
| <video:description> | Treat this exactly like a meta description, but for your video – 160 characters-ish and plain text, including keywords |
| <video:content_loc> OR <video:player_loc> | content_loc should point to the actual video file URL (.mp4/.mov etc) if you have access to it. Otherwise, such as in instances where you’re embedding a flash player, you can include a player_loc tag which references the URL of the player. You can include both if you wish, but it’s not necessary.You can also include “allow_embed” and “autoplay” elements within the player_loc tag – which indicate whether Google can embed the video directly in the search results (which they currently don’t really do, but may do more in the future) and whether or not clicking through to the page can trigger an autoplay. You don’t really need to worry too much about this, but to future proof the sitemap with the best functionality, I normally include the attributes in there as standard so the tag reads <video:player_loc allow_embed=”yes” autoplay=”ap=1″>PLAYER-URL</video:player_loc> |
So, the minimal requirements to build a video sitemap are as follows:
- The URL of the page the video is embedded on
- The URL of the thumbnail image for the video
- The URL of the file or player being embedded
Optional Tags it’s worth including for SEO
| Tag | Explanation |
|---|---|
| <video:duration> | How long it is, in seconds. It’s worth including this so your video thumbnail in the SERPs can be appended with the length in the bottom right corner, rather than just a play symbol. (example) |
| <video:publication_date> | This can help with getting the video into freshness influenced queries. It should just be numbers in the format (yyyy-mm-dd). If your video is really time sensitive or news focussed, then you can also include the time it was published followed by the timezone, in the format (yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss+hh:mm). However, for most videos, this level of detail isn’t necessary |
| <video:tag> | This is essentially like a page meta tag for your video. However, unlike meta tags, there is some indication that Google will take these into account for ranking, so they’re worth including. Include as many of these as feels natural, but don’t overkill it. Google offer a maximum of 32, but 4-5 is almost always sufficient. |
| <video:category> | This can be included if relevant, and should reference the overarching topic or style of your video. It’s worth including this, for example, if you have a lot of videos all organised in a faceted navigation. Just input a plain text term, normally one or two words, e.g. “SEO” or “online marketing” |
| <video:uploader> | A URL (on the same subdomain as the URL referenced in the <loc> tag) for an indvidual associated with the video. Ensure the page in question has rel=author attribution and this seemingly can help to ensure your video result is additionally appended with an authorship image. |
Creating and maintaining video sitemaps can be a fairly dull and arduous task, so to help out, I’ve quickly put together a Googledocs tool which can help you scale the process for up to 5 videos.
Once you’ve created and uploaded your video sitemap, make sure Google can crawl it by adding the URL to your robots.txt file as sitemap entry.
Additional tips for getting videos indexed
- You need to have a reasonably strong page for Google to bother crawling your video sitemap entry. As with normal indexation, a lack of PageRank and a large number of pages with videos on is going to mean that a lot of them don’t get crawled frequently and your videos won’t all be indexed. It can take a while for Google to recrawl a video sitemap, even for relatively strong sites, so if you’re desperate for rich snippets on lots of pages, yet don’t have the domain strengh to back it up – keep your video sitemap restricted to just the most important videos.
- Pages with additional content outside of a video tend to get video snippets more often. This is somewhat counter intuitive, but pages that only have video (and no supporting text) can seemingly often be viewed as low quality. Pages containing videos that also have text and images will often both rank better and get crawled more often – therefore including text descriptions, stills or transcripts alongside the video is always worthwhile if suitable
- Google appear to be better an indexing flash files, oEmbeds, or videos embedded with the HTML5 video tag than iframes. Unfortunately, most video platforms use iframe as the standard embed method, as it’s lightweight, mobile friendly and flexible. I’m not saying that iframes can’t get indexed, but it’s typically slower to happen less surefire. While I’m sure they will iterate and improve in due course – if you have a weak site and are desperate to get a video result quickly, it may be worth avoiding an iframe embed.
Creating a sitemap for each video hosting platform
Brightcove:
To get video rich snippets with Brightcove videos, you will currently need to create and maintain your sitemap independently of the platform.
- You’ll need to upload your chosen thumbnail to your own site to reference in the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag.
- For a brightcove video sitemap, you’ll need to reference a url for the <video:player_loc> tag, rather than a url for the <video:content_loc> tag. This is because Brightcove occasionally switch which URLs the encapsulated files are held at. Unfortunately (as with many things on the Brightcove platform) locating the appropriate URL for the <video:player_loc> tag is unnecessarily complicated.
I’ve done my best to simplify the process with the steps below:
- Naviagate to your video within the media section of the VideoCloud control panel
- Within the “quick video publish” sidebar, select “blog”. Copy and paste the HTML given into a text editor.
- You then need to pull out the string of numbers that follows the playerID parameter within the code
- Go back to your control panel and note down the Video ID number referenced just above the “quick video publish” sidebar
- Now navigate to your Brightcove profile page and note down the PublisherID number
- Your task is now to fill in the blanks of the templates below with the numbers you’ve just pulled together.
If you’ve used the Chromeless Player:
http://c.brightcove.com/
If you’ve used the Normal Player (Single Video Player):
http://c.brightcove.com/
- Double check that the URL you’ve pieced together is correct by putting it into a browser. If all is in order, it should return a full screen version of your video.
Viddler:
To get video rich snippets with Viddler videos, you will currently need to create and maintain your sitemap independently of the platform.
- To find the appropriate URL for the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag, go to the “embed” options of the video in question and select “Flash w/ HTML5 fallback” under the Embed code type drop down. Pull out the poster element of the object tag within the code and add an “http:” in front of the string. Put this into a browser, and the URL should redirect to the location of the .jpg file, which should look something like http://cdn-thumbs.viddler.com/thumbnail_NUMBERSTRING.jpg
- For Viddler videos, include a <video:player_loc> tag in your sitemap, rather than a <video:content_loc> tag. Locate the appropriate URL by selecting “legacy” within the embed options and copying the src element of the <embed> tag within. Put this URL into a browser (with the additional http:) and it should redirect to a file that looks like http://cdn.static.viddler.com/flash/as3/full-publisher.swf?ref=&key=UNIQUESTRING. This is the URL to include in the <video:player_loc> tag.
- For SEO, I generally recommend embedding your content with the “Flash w/ HTML5 Fallback” code if you’re hosting with Viddler.
Alternatively, if your site is on a WordPress platform, you can use the Yoast Video Sitemap plugin for WordPress if you host with Viddler.
Vimeo:
To get video rich snippets with Vimeo videos, you will currently need to create and maintain your sitemap independently of the platform.
NOTE: I do not condone trying to get rich snippets using a free Vimeo account as a sensible strategy, as if the vimeo.com and yoursite.com pages are targeting similar keywords, the vimeo.com version will often outrank you. Moreover, you dilute your potential traffic and links unnecessarily (See here for more details). If you can afford it, i recommend upgrading to a Vimeo Pro account and disabling the community pass to ensure you can’t be outranked for keywords relating to your video by the page on vimeo.com
- You’ll need to upload your chosen thumbnail to your own site to reference in the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag.
- To locate the player URL for the <video:player_loc> tag (which, in this instance you should use rather than <video:content_loc> tag) go to the video page on vimeo.com and click “share” in the top right hand corner of the video frame. From here, click “show options”, scroll to the bottom of the options then displayed and select “use old embed code”
- The code in the box will then change. Pull out the src element of the <embed> tag, which should be a URL that looks like http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12345678 followed by a load of parameters” Remove all of the parameters past and including the initial ampersand, so you’re left with a plain URL, with which to populate the player location field in your video sitemap.
- Embed using either the iframe or “old” (flash based) embed code
Alternatively, if your site is on a WordPress platform, you can use the Yoast Video Sitemap plugin
Vzaar:
To get video rich snippets with Vzaar videos, you will currently need to create and maintain your sitemap independently of the platform.
- Go to your video page on the vzaar platform
- Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the “advanced video links” sections
- Open both the “poster frame” and “video” links as indicated below
- Copy and paste the .jpg URL for the poster frame to find the URL for the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag of your sitemap
- Copy and paste the URL for the video file in the box, which should look like http://view.vzaar.com/NUMBER/video. This should be referenced in the <video:content_loc> tag for
- Make note of the flashplayer URL for your video, which you can find through taking the video file URL and replacing “video” on the end of the string with “flashplayer” e.g. http://view.vzaar.com/1234567/flashplayer. This is the URL to use in the <video:player_loc> tag.
Wistia:
With Wistia, you don’t need to create your own video sitemap, as the service has a Video SEO feature that automatically generated and maintains the creation of your video sitemaps
NOTE: Wistia has, by far, the best SEO features of any paid hosting provider If your priority is rich snippets for a large number of videos, then Wistia’s probably the best platform for your needs.
- Go to the “Video SEO” page accessed through the “account” drop down.
- Complete the steps on this page to validate the sitemap in your Robots.txt file
- Embed content on your site using the now unlocked “SEO” embed code
- Under “Media Actions” on the video page, select “Add to SEO Sitemap” from the “more” dropdown
- Fill in the information requested
- Select “Add video to sitemap”
Alternatively, you can use the Yoast Video Sitemap plugin for WordPress if you host with Wistia – but given how easy it is to use Wistia’s native sitemap creation tools, this isn’t necessary.
YouTube:
If you’re trying to get rich snippets to your site for your own embedded YouTube videos, then you’re doing it wrong.
However, for the purposes of trying to get rich snippets for other’s YouTube videos, the following method works :
- Go to the YouTube video in question
- Copy the unique indentifier from the end of the URL without parameters e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZoGAXhuosc
- Include this string within the following template to generate the appropriate URL for the <video:player_loc> tag - http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/VIDEOID
- Include this string within the following template to generate the appropriate URL for the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag – http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/maxresdefault.jpg
WordPress users can also use the Yoast Video SEO plugin to get pages ranking with rich snippets for embedded YouTube videos.
Many thanks to Annie Cushing and Ethan Lyon for suggesting this post and helping me to define the content and structure. They’re both really nice and you should send them cake.
Phil Nottingham Phil is an SEO Consultant at Distilled London, where he specialises in video, ill-judged humour and complaining about poor design.
Phil what a great resource. Pleased you mentioned Yoast’s plugin, it really takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting. I’ve also noticed a increase in crawl rate for my video sitemaps since using it.
That’s true Greg. Yoast’s video and SEO plugins are the real value additions for any site running on WordPress. They have a great potential in helping a webmaster boost the rankings of his content on the SERPs. Video snippets on the serps do help site owners see improved click thru’s for the pages with video content on their site appearing in the SERPs. Site owners can get more ranking benefits if the video is hosted on their site rather than on the third party site. Thanks a lot for the great post Phil.
Thanks for another great video post, Phil! You really hit the nail on the head with your last section: “If you’re trying to get rich snippets to your site for your own embedded YouTube videos, then you’re doing it wrong.” I still find myself having to explain to clients why YouTube is NOT always the way to go for Video SEO/Video Marketing.
Love reading your posts! Keep ‘em coming!
Dani
Thanks Dani for the encouragement, glad it was useful! Yes… so many marketers struggle to get the whole YouTube vs self hosting debacle. I’m doing my best to lay it out as simply as possible… but unfortunately it is a very complex and nuanced issue.
We use Kaltura here at Desire2Learn. Looking at the hoops you have to jump through to have a sitemap created “automagically” for submission to GWT looks absolutely insane. I’m seriously considering just creating an xml file in Notepad by hand; it might be faster.
Hi Dawn,
Have you got a link for the advice Kaltura are giving you? Yes… the steps are outrageously complicated in most instances and building it yourself (or writing a script) is the best way to go, outside of using Wistia, who are the only hosting solution (as yet) to automate the process simply and effectively. Here’s hoping the others follow suit soon!
I’ll research Kaltura a bit more and work out the simplest method, then add it to this list for you. It’s a popular platform, so worth including.
Thanks, Phil
Hey Phil,
Great resource you’ve created! Do you know anything about the process for VidYard’s product as well?
Hi Will,
Yes, i do. Unfortunately it’s not currently possible to create and submit a video sitemap for VidYard videos, because the platform have locked down the media files and players to make them inaccesible to end users. So – you currently can’t get rich snippets for VidYard videos.
The add from YouTube feature is essentially just wrapping YouTube videos in a custom player via the YouTube API – so is subject to the same advice given for YouTube videos above (submit for other people’s if you like, but don’t do this as a strategy to get rich snippets for your own content).
VidYard do have a page about SEO and video sitemaps accessible via https://secure.vidyard.com/dashboard, but this page is misleading – as the sitemap template they include is incomplete and won’t get indexed once submitted.
However…the guys at VidYard are aware of all these issues and have informed me that they’re looking to rectify this and get a working automated video sitemap creation service in place soon.
Phil,
Great post! I’ve been having a bit of trouble with video rich snippets via youtube and this is just the resource I needed to make some progress. Thanks!
The YouTube method is flakey and certainly not surefire, moreover, it’s not very strategic if you’re trying to get rich snippets for your own content.
I recommend reading this article to explain the principles a bit further http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy
Weird but I was actually going to reach out to you about this exact subject, Phil!
I had been meaning to chat with you about it since your talk at Search Love actually… I have over 400 videos all hosted on YouTube but I am genuinely considering deleting them and moving over to Vimeo (maybe Pro) at some point in the near future. Would you consider this a smart move?
Thanks again for the great article!
Hey Matt,
It’s really hard to say without seeing the content or getting an idea for what you’re hoping to achieve. The hosting strategy has to be driven by the content type and the overall goals – so I try not to make any blanket recommendations without a further investigation. Feel free to drop me an email and I can take a further look for you.
Cheers, Phil
This is a great resource, I did a bunch of research for our video hosting and ended up choosing Wistia so i am glad they come highly recommended. I have got to say the embed process is relatively simple and certainly works. Within a couple of weeks we had our product listings with video significantly higher in the serps.
Hey Phil. Great stuff. Thanks for taking the time to share.
Can I make a suggestion?
Why don’t you set this how-to up on GitHub? This way others can contribute freely. You can manage those contributions, etc. In short, GitHub can be used for collaboration and it doesn’t have to be limited to coding / programming. Cool, yes?
I have a question?
Are you aware of a “reasonably priced” platform where you can submit a video and get a fairly accurate transcript returned in less than 24 hours? Even just audio to transcript would be helpful.
Hi Mark,
Interesting suggestion regarding GitHub which I had not thought of. I’ll look into it!
Transcription wise – I’ve always found that the stuff returned by SpeechPad ($1 per minute) has been pretty good.
Thanks Phil (i.e., SpeechPad).
btw, I have a similar need that I’d like to move to GitHub. I’ve used GH a bit for code but not for doc / project collaboration. If you like to trade ideas (read: collaborate) on the zooming in and fleshing out the idea, workflow, process of doing so, etc. just ping me.
fwiw, threaded comments would be nice as well
Or did I miss a reply link below your reply to my original comment?
Hi Phil,
Great post, bookmarked! I’m embarrassed to say that I had been trying in vain to add rich snippets for YouTube videos and I also didn’t know about Wistia’s free plan so this has been a proper Eureka read for me.
Cheers!
Hi Phil,
Thank you for the detailed post about this. I’m struggling for a few weeks now on this subject. I followed your instructions for the Vimeo Pro/Plus but when i test my video sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools it gives this warning:
Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt. Value: http://player.vimeo.com/external/56628570.hd.mp4?s=06176cc014057c8cd67ddbba6190ae6c
Is there an option in Vimeo to set the robots.txt open?
The privacy setting i’m using in Vimeo is : Hide this video from Vimeo.com This to prevent Vimeo from outranking my website.
Thanks in advance.
Yeah, it’s a bit weird with Vimeo – as it shouldn’t work, but (probably due to the popularity of the platform and Google making special dispensations), it often still seems to.
Make sure you include the http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=56628570 element as well and it should work.
Thanks for your quick reply Phil. I have include the player loc and the content loc. So now the waiting game is started for me.
In the meantime I was searching for some SERPs where vimeo embeds showed up and linked directly to a page outside of vimeo. But I cant find any, this gives me not much confidence i’m going to get them.
Can you give some example SERPs with succesvol vimeo embeds?
Thanks in advance!
I used to think that Google automatically favored Youtube with this but it is not the case: as stated above, having a site with Page Rank and videos all over the place will definitely “make it worth their while” to crawl and snippet your page.
Hey Patrick,
Yes – I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that Google favours YouTube from a ranking or SEO perspective. Certainly the company would rather you used their product, but it doesn’t then follow that their product is best for improving your rankings or on-page factors. This is because YouTube is ultimately a social platform, where any embedded content treats the youtube.com version as the canonical. You can’t currently restrict other’s from sharing or embedding your YouTube videos, meaning you can’t secure it to your own site and thereby show it’s “your” content.
Nor do i forsee Google going down the route of offering further SEO benefits for those using YouTube, as ultimately they want their product to rank and to get the lion’s share of the traffic. More than likely, they’ll incentivise indivduals to do YouTube by offering further advertising and branding benefit. This should be taken advantage of by all companies able to invest, but that doesn’t mean all of your videos should be hosted on YouTube.
Giel,
http://www.distilled.net/events
Awesome article Phil. You laid it all out there nicely. The gem in here (and my fav) is to only add your most authoritative videos to your sitemap. Sometimes less is indeed more.
Have you ever tried http://vidyard.com ? Just a suggested addition to your list of video platforms.
Cheers, Dan
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the comment. I’m not sure if you noticed, but Will Lam also asked about VidYard in the comments. Unfortunately it’s not possible to get rich snippets for VidYard videos at the moment, or submit a full sitemap, since the platform lock down player files and encapsulated media files to make them inaccessible to users. This is done for supposed security reasons, but the VidYard team have promised that they’ll resolve the issue in due course with an automatic sitemap generation tool.
Cheers, Phil
Hi Phil,
Thanks to your great previous post about the different video hosting solutions, i chose Wistia and have good experiences/ results so far with it.
Nevertheless i have a question; the different video hosting solutions offer social media plugins to share the video, however some websites are already using solutions like Addthis etc. We use normally on our website Addthis, but on the landing pages with video content i use the social media plugin from Wistia itself.
What do you suggest or prefer to use for the video content to get shared/engagement in the most ideal way. Is using two social media plugins next to each other a bad thing?
Hi Ward,
Great question. In short, it ultimatley doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to define the default message in social bar and that the link shared is the correct page on your site (some of the video platforms – namely Vimeo and Vzaar – share the versions on their domains as default).
With Wistia – the decision is entirely up to you with a focus on determining what’s going to have the highest conversion rate. This might be two plugins or just the one – and it really fluctuates as to what the right answer is dependent on your site design and information architecture.
I therefore recommend looking at this on a case by case basis and just doing some A/B testing to work out what converts best.
Hi Phil, definitely a great post. Thanks a lot. Do you have any info to try this with Dailymotion?
Dailymotion is a social video platform and not a video hosting platform. Yoast’s plugin will allow you to get rich snippets for those embeds, but it’s very rare your page will be the version that ranks rather than the Dailymotion version. If you have your own video content, you’re much better off securely hosting – so the only use case for trying to get a rich snippet for Dailymotion embeds is if you’re trying to do it with other’s content.
That’s completely legitimate, but not something I recommend, as a rule.
Hi Phil
Thanks for sharing all of the great info on creating video sitemaps across the various platforms. Like many we have standardised on Wistia as our Video hosting platform of choice.
Hi Phil: Thanks so much for this excellent post. I’ve been searching trying to find detailed information like yours.
I’ve worked as a freelance SEO for the past year and most of my jobs have been pretty small. But, I recently partnered with an agency to work as their SEO Planner and I’m embarrassed to say that I little experience with optimizing video period.
I will of course have access to developers, etc.; but I’m wondering what the best course of action would be for an agency when it comes to implementing videos on new sites that they build for their customers.
I was looking over Wistia like you recommended above and that seems like a great option for anyone whether for personal use or business. If I’m understanding correctly how it all works; then I wouldn’t have to worry about having the developers create any coding?
I’m trying to figure out the best possible way to implement video and image SEO on our customer websites. Any input would be greatly appreciated Phil.
Love the help you’re sharing.
Thanks. Janie
Hi Janie,
I would recommend the Wistia Agency Plan http://wistia.com/pricing/agency
It’ll mean you wont have to worry about getting devs on board and allow you to manage all of your clients easily through one login.
Hi Phil,
I have to say – I wish I had never read your work – BUT NOT IN A BAD WAY! what I am saying is that your knowledge and contribution to handling the comments you get on your posts is nothing short of EXCEPTIONAL! The down side for me is that I saw just one of your posts – and then after almost 2 hours of being online reading your stuff and the spin offs from it – well you have stolen some of my life HA HA – however, I have to say that I feel so enthused and empowered in areas that were until now grey areas.
I would welcome some feedback on this point if you will….
I use Yoasts SEO plugin and love it and am considering buying the developer version of the video seo one. I have started using Wistia for clients and of course they handle the SEO part – So would there be a downside to using both the Wistia options for SEO and also the YOAST plugin? – My initial observation or concern is the fact that would there be 2 sitemaps created and could this be bad?
Keep up the awesome work!!
Hey Mark,
Thanks for your kind comments! Glad you found my work useful.
Great question RE the Yoast plugin. In short, it’s not necessary for you to use it with Wistia – as, like you say, the platform automates the process – but i haven’t seen any examples so far of two conflicting sitemaps causing issue thus far.
In theory, it could cause conflict, and Google have definitely been choosing not to show rich snippets for site’s which excessively use schema mark-up and offer conflicting options – as well as pages that include 2 videos within the single video sitemap entry.
So, in short – I wouldn’t recommend doing both (you can either just not use the Wistia SEO features or disable the plugin) but i have no evidence to suggest it would be problematic in the way you suggest, at the moment. This could, of course, change at any time.
Cheers! Phil
Hi,
thanks for this article… at least I get yoast plugin after struggling a bit doing it my self
. It’s working fine for some of my video (I mean not all ideo got a rich snippet at the moment but some yes).
Just one question you mention NOT to do it with a FREE Vimeo account and use a PRO one… what about the “PLUS” account ?
Bye.
Plus functions in exactly the same way as Pro, except that it’s designed from creatives, rather than companies.
The principle with not doing it with a free platform is that the Vimeo platform will likely outrank you for your own video so you need to ensure your content is not visible on vimeo.com. If you have a vimeo plus account as a creative, you probably don’t want to do that – since you’ll get value from those community pages – but you can do if you wish.
Re-thanks
(It was already done on my account hopefully)
Thanks for sharing Phil, this is really helpful
I’ve noticed a small mistake in your method for YouTube. To get the thumbnail for a video, you mentioned this URL: http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/o.jpg. The “o.jpg” should be a 0 (zero) instead of the letter “o”.
If you want some different variations and dimensions for your thumbnail, you can use the following URL’s: - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/0.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/1.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/2.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/3.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/default.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/hqdefault.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/mqdefault.jpg - http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEOID/maxresdefault.jpg
Thanks Roald, have amended that typo.
Cheers for the other URLs too – but note that the resolution must be a minimum of 160 x 90, which means the url ending /3.jpg likely wont be usable.
Hey Phil (I’m following you all over today!) – super post. I’ve been researching video sitemaps/schema markup for a few days.
I found a desktop app called A1(one) Sitemap Generator 4 that you can specify to build Google Video sitemaps during a site crawl, and even EXTERNALLY hosted videos/players.
The sitemaps are really clean, which was helpful when making sure they got everything.
I’ve just submitted 2 to WMT, so we’ll see how it goes.
Great job again on some super useful info!
Jeremy
@jeremydestes
Phil:
Love your stuff. You’re the world authority! I’m stuck after finding out Vimeo (I have Plus) no longer supports the old embed code. Here’s their notes:
“The old Vimeo embed code is no longer available. But trust us: The new embed code is way better, and plays nicer with many different browsers and devices.”
Perhaps I’m thinking too much into this. I thought I saw you stressing the importance of the old embed code. Perhaps it was at seomoz.
Sorry if this sounds redundant but this schema markup has me stopped in my tracks. I’m having hard difficulties getting all of it.
Should I just forget it and use the standard iframe embed?
Thanks for your patience and hanging in to help us all!
Hi Ken,
So – Vimeo do still provide the old embed code, they just don’t support it; which means they aren’t fixing any bugs and can make no promises with regards to its reliability.
However…I don’t really think there’s need to use it any more, as the iframe embeds will get indexed providing the sitemap is submitted properly as recommended above. Once upon a time the iframes wouldn’t get indexed at all, but for the last 9 months or so I’ve seen it happen fairly consistently.
Schema is great, but not absolutely necessary, as a video sitemap will do the job on its own if needs be.
Cheers, Phil
I’m looking at setting up a video sitemap for a site which uses MyDeo (on a WordPress install) have you had any experience with that?
I was hoping to automate the process, but guessing this might not be possible?
Hi Charlie,
I’m afraid I am not familiar with MyDeo, but if i get a chance I’ll have a look into it and get back to you.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s going to be a way for you to completely automate the process without quite a bit of work.
Cheers, Phil.