Video SEO - Why are my videos not being indexed?

[JBGlobalSEO]

Hello All,

I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking.

Here is an example of a page with a video on.

If you click the play button you will see

But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here.

Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)?

Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help?

Or is there some other issue at work here?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Rich

[DRTBA]

Hi Rich

Not sure if you done this yet but have you looked at adding the videos to your website map ?

There is a great post in Google Webmaster section about how to add videos to your sitemap so that search engines can know more about the videos and this may lead to them being indexed.

The link to the post is http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472

Hope it helps.

[PhilNottingham]

Hey Rich,

So there's a few problems here which i think are preventing your videos from being indexed.

1. The main one is around your bespoke video player and the Javascript / Lightbox delivery - which, while potentially elegant from a users perspective, isn't great for Google. Currently the flash video player is only being delivered by a JS trigger and Google probably aren't picking it up.
2. You have more than one video on each page (and tons of duplicate videos) - All the "play product video" links at the bottom of the page are more lightboxes, which means you have 34 .mp4 files visible within the page source. Therefore, which video should google rank for the page?! It's not clear and with each video also replicated across many pages, it becomes a minefield for the Robots to navigate.
3. No Video XML sitemap

To get things fixed, i suggest you implement either a static flash player file within the base HTML (.swf or .flv) or do the whole thing with HTML5 video elements and try and find a way to "reveal" the video file without using lightboxes or JS. (i would plump for the latter).

You should also fix the "play video" links throughout the rest of the page to static HTML links - rather than lightboxes with more videos.

Lastly, of course, submit an XML video Sitemap. He's an example for the page you included - replicate this for the rest of your pages.

<loc>www.oakfurnitureland.co.uk/furniture/rustic-solid-oak-4-drawer-coffee-table/1149.html</loc>

video:thumbnail_lochttp://static.oakfurnitureland.co.uk/media/gbu0/prod350/rus18-4f0f1c68245c6.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>

video:titleRustic Solid Oak 4 Drawer</video:title>

video:descriptionThe Rustic Oak Four Drawer Coffee Table features a traditional farmhouse styling with ample storage space</video:description></video:description>

video:content_lochttp://video.oakfurnitureland.co.uk/rustic/Rustic-Solid-Oak-4-Drawer-Coffee-Table.mp4</video:content_loc>

video:duration56</video:duration>

video:publication_date2012-03-14T18:30:15+00:00</video:publication_date>

video:family_friendlyyes</video:family_friendly>

video:tagSolid Oak 4 Drawer</video:tag>

video:liveno</video:live>

If you change all that and it still doesn't work - let me know.

If it does work, you owe me a beer

All the best,

Phil

[PhilNottingham]

Following up on my point - If you want to move away from using your own player - then Wistia or Viddler etc is a totally acceptable solution. It's not neccessary - as there are lots of good free video players out there you can use (rather than a paid solution), but it would be a fine way of sorting out the current problems with the JS and lightboxes.

Don't use YouTube though - as any video results will link back to YT - not your domain.

[JBGlobalSEO]

Hi Rob Phil (it's almost 5:30),

Thanks for such a detailed answer.

Off the bat we are going to fix points 2 & 3 (redoing the video delivery is a not feasible at this point in time) and see how that fixes us up.

We do have a video sitemap but it is structured to have multiple videos per <loc>, so think this is not helping!</loc>

If fixing these points don't help then we will look at the video player.

Anyways, thanks again... and are you a larger or ale drinker?

Rich

[PhilNottingham]

Sounds good Rich!

Sorry, i couldn't find the video sitemap! Definitely add that to the robots.txt file as well (assuming it's a separate sitemap).

Yeah - Google don't like the olde multiple videos per page - can only include the one.

Let me know how you get on - i'm an ale man all the way :).

Cheers,

Phil