Google updated it’s Google Search Central Video Best Practices help page to add an additional recommendation that will help Google find and index video content better and make it available for Google’s rich results and for what Google describes as maximum exposure.
Videos in Google Search Results
Google shows videos hosted on websites across a range of Google search. Videos can be shown in the regular search, in video search results, in Google Images and in Google Discover.
People want to see videos so Google gives them a prominent search for certain kinds of queries.
In order to gain visibility in these various Google search services it’s important to use video structured data.
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This is structured data that tells Google facts about the video to help Google better understand the video so that it can rank it properly.
Google’s video structured data page explains:
“While Google tries to automatically understand details about your video, you can explicitly provide information, such as the description, thumbnail URL, upload date, and duration, by marking up your video with VideoObject. Videos can appear in Google Search results, video search results, Google Images, and Google Discover.”
Structured Data is Not Enough
Google updated its Video SEO Search Central help page. It added more suggestions for how to help Google rank your videos.
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It doesn’t matter if the video is embedded on your page and hosted on YouTube. Following these directions will help Google rank those videos in the search results.
Give Your Videos Maximum Exposure
Google’s guidelines for video SEO states that it’s important that the video is available on a public web page.
However that video SEO documentation has been updated with additional information intended to improve the chances that a video has more exposure in Google search.
Now it’s not enough that the video is displayed on a public web page.
Google is now recommending that the video is given its own web page in addition to whatever web page the video is currently hosted on.
Google Recommends Adding a Dedicated Page for Each Video
The new Video SEO recommendations state:
“To give your videos maximum exposure, create a dedicated page for each video, where the video is the most prominent subject on the page. Some features require that type of video page, including Key Moments, the Live Badge, and other rich result formats.
It’s fine to include the same video on both a dedicated page and its original page alongside other information, like a news article or a product detail page.”
How to Deal with New Dedicated Video Pages?
Google doesn’t provide advice on how to structure the dedicated video page so that it doesn’t look like a thin page.
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And Google also doesn’t offer advice on how to link it up in a way that Google can discover it.
One possible solution is to create a video XML sitemap file. That way the dedicated video page is hidden from users but discoverable by Google.