10 most common errors for the SEO of videos published on the site
91% of Internet users globally watch at least one online video per month (source: Digital 2021). That is why online videos are confirmed as a necessary tool for consumers, and the pandemic has dramatically increased the amount of online videos that people watch, and this opens up various opportunities for digital marketers, because this type of content can give positive returns on investment for sites, strongly influencing traffic, leads, sales and public understanding. As long as you do not make some SEO mistakes with videos that affect your visibility on Google!
The 10 most common errors with videos
So, we are going to resume the speech started with the article on best practices for videos shared by Google a few weeks ago, but focusing on the exact opposite indications, and then on what we must not do if we want to make our videos appear on Google.
As we said in the introduction, videos are an increasingly used content format for the creation and consumption of content on the Web and Google “indexes the videos on millions of sites to show them to its users” through “different locations on Google, including the main page of search results, video search results, Google Pictures and Discover,” says the guide.
Some errors, carelessness and technical problems can complicate the discovery, scanning and indexing of the crawlers, and ultimately cause damage to the visibility of the video and the page as a whole. So here are the most frequent causes of error for videos and how to fix them.
Not helping Google find the videos
The first, big category of error falls under the technical problems that prevent Google from properly finding the resource on the page.
- Page blocked by robots.txt or noindex metadata.
It is a pretty trivial mistake: when we upload a video, we need to make sure it is available on a public web page where users can watch its content. If the page is blocked in the robots.txt file or with a noindex meta tag, Google will not be able to locate and index it, and therefore is likely to be substantially “invisible”.
- Absence of appropriate HTML tag
Not using an HTML tag such as <video>, <embed>, <iframe> or <object> within a page makes it harder for Google to identify the video there.
- Not sending a Sitemap for videos
Not sending a video sitemap complicates Google’s work, as well (and thus exposes pages with video to risks of incorrect scans or indexing), which uses this video-specific XML sitemap to find videos on the site and avoid having to scan and detect page-by-page changes.
To check and send Sitemaps we can use the Search Console Sitemap tool or the Search Console API.
- Video entered in complex pages
If we upload the video to a page that requires complex user actions or uploading specific URL fragments, Google may not be able to find it. Potential problems include:
- Lazy loading dei contenuti principali subito dopo l’interazione dell’utente (ad esempio scorrere, fare clic o digitare), perché Googlebot potrebbe non trovare tali contenuti.
- Use of a particularly complicated Javascript language to embed video objects, which can cause Google to be unable to properly index videos.
- Use snippet identifiers for Urls for content or target pages (not supported)
- Video not featured on the page. Google explains that videos should not be hidden or difficult to find, and recommends that each video should use an autonomous page associated with a descriptive title or a unique description.
Not helping Google indexing videos
The second macrocategory of errors and problems with videos is one that produces negative effects on the indexing ability by Google: after crawlers have identified a video on a page, In fact, additional information is needed to make it suitable for display in video functionality.
- Not providing a thumbnail
A video without a valid thumbnail image is likely to appear in Google’s video functionality only as a blue link, thus missing an important opportunity to convince the user to click.
We can provide a thumbnail in one of these supported ways:
- By specifying the poster attribute if we use the HTML <video> tag
- By specifying the <video:thumbnail_loc> tag in a Sitemap for videos.
- By specifying the thumbnailUrl property in structured data.
Or by allowing Google to recover files from our video content, generating an automatic thumbnail.
Also making mistakes in the technical features of thumbnails is a mistake that can compromise the visibility of our content.
Google only supports some image formats for thumbnails – to be precise, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, Webp and SVG; in addition, the size must be at least 60 x 30 pixels, but it is preferable to use larger sizes. Also important is the appearance of the location: the thumbnail file must be accessible from Googlebot and therefore not blocked with robots.txt or with mandatory access, and available in a stable URL.
- Not providing structured data
If we do not (and correctly) add the structured data describing the video, Google may have trouble understanding the subject of this resource and showing it for relevant queries.
The indication of the guide is to verify that all the information provided among structured data is consistent with the actual video content; again, we must use thumbnails, titles and unique descriptions for each video on the site.
Not allowing Google to recover video content files
A video page can be indexed and suitable for publication on Google, but there is one last type of error that we can make, which prevents the search engine from recovering the video file itself to understand the topic of the video and enable features such as video previews and key moments.
- Not having the required bandwidth
We must also pay attention to the host page and the server for streaming video playback, which must have the bandwidth necessary to be scanned. Therefore, Google explains, “if your target page on example.com/puppies.html has a puppy video published by somestreamingservice.com, both example.com and somestreamingservice.com must be accessible to Google and available for server loading“.
- Not using stable URLs for video files and thumbnails
The use of fast-expiring Urls for video files and thumbnails – sometimes used by some Cdns – can prevent Google from properly indexing videos or recovering related files.
The suggested strategy is to use a single, single, stable URL for each video: thus, Google can consistently locate and process videos, confirm that they are still available and collect the correct video indicators.
- Uploading a video in an unsupported format
This error is rather simple to understand: Google supports a limited (but nevertheless extended) set of video encodings, and in particular is able to recover the following types of video files: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, Divx, M2V, M3U, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, Webm, WMV XAP.
This means that uploading videos in different formats – for example, among those excluded are AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition, a specific format for high definition video of digital camcorders Panasonic and Sony) and FLV, F4V and SWF (all designed specifically for Flash Player), which are however rare to find online today – exposes to the risk of not getting the file properly recovered from Google.
- Setting a past expiring date
The last mistake that can seriously compromise the visibility of a video is to set an expiration date already passed or forget to update it.
Indicating an expiration date to a video is one of the techniques to remove or limit the presence of the video from the search results: we can do it in structured data schema.org (the expires property), in meta tags in the header of the site or in the Sitemap for videos (using the video element:expiration_date>).
When Google sees a video with an expiration date in the past, the video will not be included in any search results, but the target page can still be viewed as a web result, without the video thumbnail. It can therefore be easy to mistakenly set that date in the past for a still available video, and the general advice is not to include expiration data if a video does not expire.
