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How To Get Your Videos On Google?

How To Get Your Videos On Google? featured image
24 Oct 2020
Nirlep Patel
Video SEO

Follow Below Steps To Get Your Videos On Google

Mark up your videos with VideoObject for providing explicit video explicit details such as video description, thumbnail URL, upload date, duration, etc. . Videos appear in search results, Google Images, and Google Discover.

Your video appearance eligibility depends on the way you mark up your content. Your videos can be eligible for the following video enhancements:

  1. Live Badge:
    • Add a live badge to your video by marking your it with BroadcastEvent. Apply the Live Badge to any public video live-streaming for any length of time. Examples:
    • Sporting Events
    • Award Shows
    • Influencer Shows
    • Live Streaming Video Games

Ensure to follow the Live Badge Guidelines and use the correct Indexing API to ensure that Google crawls your page at the correct time.

  1. Home Activities: It helps people find activities to do at home. You can expect videos, online events appear in search results. Adding Video Structured Data makes your videos eligible for rich results with no additional steps.

Check Out the Home Activities Post for more information on the Home Activities Content.

  1. Clips (limited access): It helps users navigate quickly to specific video points.
    • For videos hosted on youtube: Google search might enable clips based on the video description on youtube. To know more about the practice, check out the Best Practices for marking timestamps in youtube descriptions.
    • Videos hosted on web pages:

Add Clip structured data to your VideoObject for helping Google understand the important points in your video. Currently, the feature is available only for a small set of providers. For Participating, register yourselves in the Google Form.

  1. Video Host Carousel: It enables users to explore video galleries by adding ItemList structured data. Currently, the feature is available only for a small set of providers. Google search might automatically show a host carousel for your website without adding ItemList structured data.

HOW DO I ADD STRUCTURED DATA?

Check out the earlier posts of the Series, to know in detail about How To Add Structured Data.

What Are The Guidelines To Follow?

Apart from the Webmaster Guidelines and General Structured Data Guidelines, Video Best Practices, Video sitemap guidelines and Carousel guidelines, follow the following guidelines:

  1. Live Badge Guidelines :

When adding BroadcastEvent for live streaming videos, follow the below-listed guidelines:

  1. Never use Vulgar or offensive language in structured data.
  2. For ensuring that Google crawls your Livestream video at the correct time, use the indexing API.

Use the API for the following events:

  1. When a video goes live
  2. After the video has stopped streaming, and the said page’s markup has been updated for indicating the endDate.
  3. Whenever there is a change in the markup and Google has to be notified.

PRO TIP: The Indexing API is used only for Livestream videos.

2.Best Practices for making timestamps on youtube:

  1. Timestamps: When a clip starts
  2. Label: The name of the clip

Ensure to adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. Adhere to the timestamp format : [hour] : [minute] : [second].
  2. Make sure to specify the timestamp label on the same line as the timestamp.
  3. Ensure to Place each timestamp on a new line in the video description.
  4. Ensure that the label contains at least one word.
  5. Always list the timestamps chronologically.

  1. Clip Guidelines (limited access):
  1. The said video must be publicly available to watch without a subscription.
  2. The video should have the ability to deep-link at some point other than the start point in the said video URL.
  3. Always add Clip structured data to a page where users can watch the video.
  4. The total video duration must be of a minimum of 30 seconds.
  5. Ensure that no two clips of the same video that are defined on the same page must share the start time.
  6. The video should have VideoObject structured data.

WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS PROPERTIES OF THE MARKUP?

For enabling video enhancements in Google search, add the below-listed properties:

  1. BroadcastEvent: Used for marking up Livestream videos to enable a Live Badge on videos.
  2. ItemList: Used for marking up pages with a list of videos to enable video host carousel.
  3. Clip: Used for marking up important segments in the video aiming to help users navigate to specific points in the video.

A. VideoObject :

The main entity of the markup. It must be added for content to display as a video-rich result. The entity holds a video file.

Ensure to add the following sub-properties:

      1. Description: The entity holds the description of the said video. HTML tags are always ignored.
      2. Name: The entity holds the video title.
      3. ThumbnailURL: The said URL pointing to the image file.
      4. All images must be crawlable and indexable
      5. Images should represent the marked-up content.
      6. Image must have a .jpg , .png or gif format.
      7. Images should be 60px x 30px, minimum.
  1. UploadDate: The said date when the video was first published in ISO-8601 format.
  2. Content URL: The URL pointing to the said video media file, in one of the supported encoding formats. Avoid linking directly to the page where the video lives. It should be the URL of the video media itself.

It is advisable to provide the video URL. Provide a URL by using either one or both properties: Content URL or embedURL.

  1. Duration: The duration of the said video in ISO-8601 format.
  2. EmbedURL: The URL pointing to a player for the said video that is one of the supported encoded formats. Avoid linking directly to the page where the video lives. It is in the form of a <embed> tag. It is advisable to provide the video URL. Provide a URL by using either one or both properties: Content URL or embedURL.

For ensuring that only Googlebot access your content, use a Reverse DNS Lookup.

8. Expires: The date after which the video will expire and not be available for viewing in ISO-8601 format. Do not include the entity for entities not having an expiry date.

9. Haspart: Videos having important segments must nest the specified Clip properties in the said VideoObject.

  1. InteractionStatistics: The entity holds the number of times a particular video is watched. From October 2019, Google recommends using InteractionStatistics instead of InteractionCount. Goggle supports InteractionCounts but recommends using InteractionStatistics.
  2. Publication: For live videos wanting the LIVE Badge, nest the BroadcastEvent properties in your VideoObject.
  3. RegionsAllowed: The specified regions where the video is allowed. Google assumes it to be everywhere when not specified. Specify the said countries in ISO 3166.

B. BroadcastEvent:

The entity holds an on-air or online broadcast event.

For being eligible for Live Badge when displayed, you must nest the below-listed properties in your VideoObject.

The BroadcastEvent properties are not needed, below-listed properties are a must for your video to gain a Live Badge.

  1. Publication: The entity holds the live-streamed video. It can be a list or a single video.
  2. Publication.endDate: The specified time and date when the Livestream ends in ISO8601.It is necessary to provide an end date for videos that are no longer live and finished. In case the end date is not known before the live stream ends, provide an approximate EndDate. When the endDate is in the past or present, it indicates that the video has ended and is no longer live. When the endDate is in the future, it indicates that the live stream will end at the stated time.
  3. Publication.isLiveBroadcast : A boolean entity. Set it to true if the video is live-streamed, irrespective of the past present or future.
  4. Publication.startDate: The said time and date when the live stream is expected to start in ISO8601. The startDate in the past or present indicates that the stream has been started

C. ItemList (Limited Access) :

The entity holds a list of items. It can be any item example: Top 10 best Gadgets for homes.

For helping Google understand your pages better add the below listed ItemList properties with the VideoObject properties.

  1. ItemListElement : Notes a single page item. Every ItemList should include VideoObject properties and ItemList properties.
  2. ItemList.position: The ordinal position of the said item page in the list.
  3. LastItem.URL: The said canonical URL of the item page. Every item must have a unique URL.

D.Clip (Limited Access) :

The entity holds a short tv, radio program, a segment or a part of the segment.

For being eligible for Clips ensure to nest the below-listed properties in your VideoObject. Clip properties are not required but the following properties are required for wanting your video being displayed with video segments.

  1. Name: The entity holds the name of the clip. It can be a descriptive title for the clip content.
  2. StartOffSet: The said start time of the clip stated as the number of seconds from the beginning of the work.
  3. URL: The said URL pointing to the start time of the clip. The clip’s URL should point to the same URL path as the said video with additional query parameters specifying the time.
  4. EndOffSet: The clip’s end-time represented as the number of seconds from the beginning of the work.

HOW DO I MONITOR SEARCH RESULTS WITH SEARCH CONSOLE?

It is recommended to check Google Search Console in the following three cases:

  1. Following Deploying Structured Data For The First Time :

Look for issues via the Rich Results Status Report after Google completes indexing your pages.

In case of issues:

  1. Fix the Errors.
  2. Inspect a Live URL for checking if the issue persists.
  3. Request a validation via the status report.

  1. After releasing new templates or updating your code :

When significant changes are made to a website, monitor it for increased structured data errors and warnings.

A. If your website displays increased errors, then you may have rolled out a new template that does not work, or your site interacts with the existing template in either a new way or a bad way.

B. If you notice a decrease of valid items ( not complemented with an increase in errors), then maybe you are not embedding structured data in your webpages. Make use of the URL inspection tool for knowing what causes the issues.

C. Analyzing Traffic Periodically :

Use the Performance Report for analyzing traffic periodically. The specified data will let you know how often your page gets displayed as a rich result in a search, how often users access it and your average position on search results.

You can pull these results using the Search Console API.

HOW DO I FIX TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMS?

  1. Your structured data must have errors. Check out the list of structured data errors.
  2. Troubleshoot missing rich results or drop in total rich results.
  3. Check out the Webmaster FAQ for general questions about crawling and indexing.
  4. Pop a question in the webmaster office hours.
  5. Post a question in the Webmaster Forum.

PRO TIP: Google never guarantees features using structured data will show up in search results. Check the General Structured Data Guidelines to know the common reasons why Google may not display your content as a Rich Result.

The Video Structured Data Post Concludes The All About Data Structure Series Posts.

Check out All our Data Structured Posts to know more about every structured data element in detail.