XML Video Sitemaps
Part 1 of my video marketing talked alot about the best practices of getting your videos in SEO shape. Part 2 talks about how to use sitemaps and video RSS feeds to get the search engines to index these videos because at this point videos are not automatically indexable by the search engines. So, if you want your videos to show up in Google and Bing’s search results you’ll need to use a XML Video Sitemaps.
This sitemap is simular to your webpage XML sitemap but does offer different tags .Here are the essential tags to include in your XML Video Sitemaps to be optimized correctly:
- <loc> – This is the landing page URL visitors go to in their browser to view the video. It’s highly recommended that the HTML title tag on this page matches the <video:title> content (100 characters or less) for best results.
- <video:video> – This is used to specify the type of file the entry describes.
- <video:content_loc> – The location of the video file (.mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv etc.) itself. Technically this entry can be omitted if you specify the location of the video player file in <video:player_loc>, but Google recommends using both.
- <video:thumbnail_loc> – Image thumbnail URL, this is the image that will be shown in the organic search results. We highly recommended that you use an image that draws attention to your video.
- <video:title> – The title of your video. Include a carefully crafted title with your keywords here and make sure the content matches your landing page HTML title. Maximum 100 characters long.
- <video:description> – Description of what’s in the video, again use keywords here as applicable. The size must be below 2048 characters to avoid truncation, and it should match the landing page HTML Meta Description content for best results.
- <video:tag> – Although this tag is not required, we highly recommend it. You can add up to 32 separate tags (each with one entry) for each video. This is a good place to put keywords as well.
- <video:category> – This tag is also optional, but recommended as it provides additional ranking related metadata. The maximum length is 256 characters. If in doubt about what to use for a category, review the available categories that YouTube uses for it’s videos and find something appropriate.
Each video sitemap must contain less than 50,000 entries and be less than 10MB in file size. If you have more videos than that, you’ll need to use multiple sitemaps and I actually like this idea of splitting your video sitemaps even if you do not go over the limits.
Below is an example sitemap for video for a client of mine. Note the use of keywords that are used in this example:
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:video=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1″>
<url><loc>http://www.abc.com/videos/rebuilding-your-pool-pump.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.abc.com/rebuildingyourpoolpump.flv</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc allow_embed=”yes” autoplay=”ap=1″>http://www.abc.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.abc.com/thumbs/rebuildpump.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Rebuilding Your Pool Pump is Easy</video:title>
<video:description>Here is a step by step guide on rebuilding your pool pump which can save your hundreds of dollars.</video:description>
<video:rating>4.2</video:rating>
<video:view_count>555</video:view_count>
<video:publication_date>2010-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:publication_date>
<video:expiration_date>2012-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:expiration_date>
<video:tag>Plumbing</video:tag>
<video:tag>Pool</video:tag>
<video:tag>Pumps</video:tag>
<video:category>Pool Rebuild</video:category>
<video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
<video:duration>600</video:duration>
<video:restriction relationship=”allow”>GB US CA</video:restriction>
</video:video></URL>
</urlset>
Hopefully my example gives you a good idea on setting up your XML sitemap for video. But like all good things, they change and this is really no different. Right now these are the most important SEO related tags you should use for your video sitemap but to keep up on new happenings within the video sitemap world, you should also closely review and monitor Google’s Video Sitemap Specification Page (last updated 7/16/10) for specific details on tag requirements and functions for reference. Google updates this information on a regular basis, so watch for changes.
Yes, your ready to launch your video sitemap! Just a second chief, you will want to make sure the follow things are taken care of before you let the spiders know:
- Double check all your URLs are correct and crawlable (no 404 codes or broken links). Don’t forget there’s more than one file to verify. You have 4 URLs that need checking. The thumbnail, player, video and landing page should all be valid URLs.
- Verify your robots.txt file is allowing the URL’s to be spidered. A simple search on your web browser or your webmaster tools will do the trick.
- Remember to updating you sitemap is a must anytime you add or remove a video from your site.
When you’re ready submit your video site map I like to use a duel approach. I will link to the sitemap using your sites robots.txt file and ping the engines to tell them about your new sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools.
Video Feeds – Understanding mRSS
So Media RSS was created by Yahoo and is also supported by Google and Bing for discovery of rich media such as video, audio and images. It’s an extension to the RSS 2.0 specification and looks very similar to what you see used with a Blog RSS Feed. It’s nice to see all the major search engines work with each other isn’t it?
I like the addition of mRSS feeds in combonation with your XML Video Sitemap as a way to announce new content to the engines but not for resubmission of the same files. The reason why I like to add mRSS to your XML Video Sitemap is faster indexing of your video (and other media) by the engines. It is also a great idea idea for sites that frequently add new video content to their site. If you are only posting a video or two every year it’s probably not worthwhile to maintain a mRSS feed. In that situation, a XML Sitemap will be more than sufficient.
Here is an example of a mRSS entry with the minimal tags that Google requires.
<media:content URL=http://www.abc.com/rebuildingyourpoolpump.flv medium=”video” duration=”600″>
<link>http://www.abc.com/videos/rebuilding-your-pool-pump.html</link><media:player URL=”http://www.abc.com/videoplayer.swf?rebuildingyourpoolpump.flv” />
<media:thumbnail URL=http://www.abc.com/thumbs/rebuildpump.jpg/>
<media:title type=”html”>Rebuilding Your Pool Pump is Easy</media:title>
<media:description type=”html”>Here is a step by step guide on rebuilding your pool pump which can save your hundreds of dollars</media:description>
<media:keywords>pool, pumps, rebuild</media:keywords>
</media:content>
At this point you are really ready to go and start shooting video and marketing it like a pro!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Frank,
just so you know, http://example.com
is reserved for use as an example domain.