Embedded videos can drive clicks and engagement for magazine publishers — when they’re done right. If you’re incorporating video into your website content, keep these best practices from Google in mind.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth many times more. Digital publishers in every vertical are integrating more embedded videos into their websites. Interviews, tours, slideshows, video ads, and even webinars are all more dynamic when they incorporate video.
Legacy magazine publishers, like Seventeen magazine, are creating video channels and video portals with new content published on a regular schedule. But smaller regional and city magazines are getting in on the trend, as well, by using interactive video in creative new ways.
With YouTube now responsible for 37% of all mobile internet traffic, it’s clear that video is the future of online publishing. The question is how best to use it. Embedded videos can keep people subscribed and improve the quality of other content on a publisher’s website. As more advertisers latch onto video ads, publishers are recognizing video as a lucrative revenue stream, as well.
Video in Google Search
Google recently updated its best practices for embedded videos, with guidelines designed to help publishers get maximum exposure. Google’s new recommendations ensure that the videos publishers embed on their websites are found and indexed on Google, and that those videos are available for Google’s rich results.
For publishers who rely on organic search results for traffic, keeping these best practices in mind when using embedded videos can have a major impact, especially for certain kinds of keywords and queries. Google can now show video in regular search, as well as video search results, Google Image results, and in Google Discover.
As a best practice, publishers using embedded videos should always use video structured data. Using video structured data is necessary if you want to gain visibility in Google’s search services. Structured data tells Google about the video, so it can rank in search. Although Google’s bots try to automatically decipher details about embedded videos, publishers who explicitly provide that information through video structured data have an increased likelihood that their videos will rank.
What type of structured data should publishers provide? According to Google, structured data should include a description, thumbnail URL, upload data, and duration of the video.
Beyond adding structured data to embedded videos, Google has other suggestions for publishers who want their videos to rank in search results.
Publishers should make each video its own webpage, in addition to the page the video is hosted on. Adding a dedicated page for every video may not be realistic for all digital publishers, especially news and magazine publishers that upload video alongside written articles. However, Google’s newest video SEO recommendations do say:
“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.”
Google’s also highlights the following suggestion:
“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.”
At this time, Google isn’t telling publishers how to structure their dedicated video pages. The company also isn’t offering any advice on how publishers should link those pages to make them easily discoverable. One solution that’s been floated is to develop a video XML sitemap file, so the dedicated video page is hidden from visitors, but it can still be discovered by Google.
For more guidance and assistance in setting up embedded videos on your website using the latest best practices, contact the digital publishing specialists at Web Publisher PRO.
