Back to SEO. This time to explain how to position your video. We teach you the best practices and tips to get a rich video snippet in Google SERPs. This post is for you if you have ever wondered where you should publish your video in order to get a better positioning. Remember this goal at all times!
1. Choose the right hosting based on your objective.
Although we could talk all day about the delights of YouTube, the fact is that if your goal is to position one of your pages (from your hotel website or your blog) with a rich video snippet to improve your overall SEO rankings, we recommend that you do not use YouTube as your hosting provider.
{{cta(‘bb2971b9-bf36-4c36-8edc-75223dba5208’)}}}Think about it, YouTube is the second most used ‘search engine’ among Internet users and what you want is to appear in Google SERPs with a rich snippet video, not compete in positioning with YouTube, right? And this would be the same with a free Vimeo account. For this reason, you must think carefully about what your objective is and create the content, in this case the specific video that you are going to position, in order to achieve it.
So, what should you do? If you have not yet had the opportunity to even present the video on your website, don’t risk it and host it on your pages to ensure, at least, the traffic. Thus, you can rely on paid hosting solutions. There are many options but here are two that we find most interesting:
Vimeo Pro
. This is one of the most affordable and reliable solutions that you can find on the Internet and allows total visibility in search engines. It is a secure hosting with a good quality/price ratio for what it offers. Although it doesn’t have an XML sitemap generator it has custom HTML5 players, plus you could upload up to 20 GB per week ad-free, analyze the performance of your videos with statistics and reports, etc.
Wistia
. This is one of the best solutions you can find if your intention is to generate content (video) that reinforces an Inbound marketing strategy (including SEO positioning). Their service is great because Wistia’s embedded codes are designed to automatically optimize the videos on your website for search engines. Wistia also offers you other functionalities as well as integrations with platforms such as HubSpot.
On the other hand, you could also choose to host the videos directly on your hotel’s website. In this case, if you do not use your own services, be sure to use cloud solutions such as
Amazon S3
or MetaCDN to host your videos. Also, if you have chosen one of these options, remember to compress your videos so that they do not weigh too much.
2. Follow these tips to embed your videos.
Tip #1. If you nest the video in your domain, that is, if you add it to any of your pages, make sure it can’t be copied, and that includes yourself. Do not generate duplicate content, each video or each piece of content has a purpose, a goal. If your goal is to rank with that video, you will have to keep in mind that if it only appears in one place (your website), Google will only be able to find it there.
In addition, if this video is only available on one of the pages of your hotel’s website, users who are attracted to it (your potential guests) will only be able to see it where you embed it, increasing the possibility of user conversion.
Watch out! Tip #2. Google crawlers are not very good at indexing iFrames so you should embed the video with HTML5, jQuery or JavaScript. The two previous hosting solutions already give you that option. And if you use your own code to do it you can use
Video JS
o
Kaltura HTML5
which are free tools.
And tip #3 is not to overdo it by adding videos to your pages. In fact, it is better to opt for only one video on the page you want to rank with a rich snippet video, that way Google will only be indexing the one that your business is interested in for that particular page. Also make sure that in addition to a video there are other content formats and that it is of quality! Pages that work with different content formats tend to have a better positioning in the SERPs as they serve both those consumers who prefer video and those who do not.
3. Make sure to create a video XML Sitemap.
An XML video sitemap is what will allow search engines like Google to access the video thumbnail, raw file and other data. Take a look at the Google guide where the sitemap elements are explained in detail.
4. Choose the right keywords for your target.
Now that we have talked about the more technical aspects, it is time to talk about what we most identify as SEO. Your video, like any other content, needs to be designed for a specific target and with a keyword that corresponds to the needs of this target.
Think about what you are offering and to whom you are offering it. To decide on the appropriate terms you can follow the same exercise as with the text. Specifically, to try to get a rich snippet video you can dig into the terms (related to the travel and tourism sector) that have managed to position a video in the SERPs.
As you can see, there are terms that get a better positioning than others. But be careful when trying to position short tail keywords that have a high competition such as the keywords “booking” or “holidays“. These terms alone would be almost impossible to rank for. For this reason you should think about long tailkeywords to include in the title and description of your video.
There are words you could include that work in general. For example, if you make destination videos you can include terms such as “how to“, “what is” or “explanation“; and for rooms, “demonstration“.
Once you have chosen the right keyword for your audience, remember that if your goal, in addition to positioning, is also to convert, the video has to be as non-advertising as possible. It sells experiences, yes. But from an educational perspective, from an Inbound orientation.
